Guild Wars 2

Signets need a stun breaker and good condition removal. In theory, if our focus was any good, s/ f could cover our defense and condition clearing. But it is not.

- Improved water signet’s condition removal;
- Add a stun break to one of the signets (signet of air?);
- Revamp focus’ fire and improve Focus’ water so that focus can be any good;

The thing about glyphs, is that they offer generic improvements instead of specialized effects. That means that, for a glyph build to be any good, an elementalist needs to have their utility already covered outside of their utility skills. Condition removal they can somewhat get with weapons, or with water’s grandmaster trait combined with the glyph’s inscription trait, although that was heavily nerfed in today’s patch. S/F can also offer them that. But they need stunbreaking from somewhere, be it a weapon skill, a trait or something.

- Improve air’s shocking aura trait and add any trait somewhere that can stunbreak;
- Improve air’s incription trait so that glyphs in fire give 3 stacks of might instead of 1;
- With the nerf to cleansing water’s trait, the inscriptions + healing glyph combo can no longer remove two conditions at once. It would be nice if this synergy came back somehow;
- Improve glyph of elemental power, because it’s underpowered;

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that non-cantrip builds aren’t up to par because they lack a stunbreaker?

That is something I can agree with. Just did the new dungeon boss and while in theory you can dodge everything, the charr boss has a nasty stun that you’ll be glad to break out of if you didn’t dodge it in time. Which means you’ll want at least 1 stun breaker in your build, and that severely hinders your choices. Add the superior condition removal and vigor, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Regardless of what the skill does otherwise.

As long as stunbreakers are manadatory, expect cantrips to rule supreme.

- Improve glyph of elemental power, because it’s underpowered;

The one part of your comment I disagree with. I run it on my staff build and it helps immensely with making stuff hit stuff. The fact that it has a cooldown per target means you can have a snaring meteor shower versus zergs, or snaring auto-attacks in 1v1. Both are pretty useful tools. But as a whole, the glyph build just won’t cut it yet.

I don’t think it’s such a big deal to run Glyphs with a Cantrip mixed in there for stunbreaking. Take Cleansing Fire and you’ve got your condition removal covered as well. You won’t have as heavy defense as Cantrip Eles but that’s the tradeoff for better offense.

Not to say it would be a bad idea to add those to Glyphs, just that Glyph-heavy builds work better than you might think if you alloy them with a cantrip or two.

Can anyone confirm if glyph of storm’s water version’s duration was increased? It seems to last about as much as the conjure’s version (and we know conjure’s storms weren’t updated), and less than all other storms from the glyph.

Signet of Water should clean a condition every 5 second and I’d consider using it, now that Cleansing waters has also 5 seconds CD.
Signet of Earth should also give Stability on use. (at best just copy Armor of Earth)
Signet of Fire should also burn an area around the target.
Signet of Restoration should get unnerfed.

No need for cantrips or 30 points in water any longer. Just imagine that for a second… well, second is over, It will never happen.

The thing that irks me about a Glyph build is that the “boon on Glyph use” trait and the nature of glyphs themselves don’t really gel.

Glyph effect is based on attunement. The boon you get when traited for Glyphs is based on attunement. You can only choose your attunement to match one of those two things. You’ll probably choose based on the effect of the Glyph, since thats the more important thing. So the boon will end up being just something thrown on that you might not actually need at the time.

If I want a blinding Glyph of Storms, I need Earth attune. That means I’ll get Protection from my boon on glyph effect. Which is going to go to waste because enemies won’t be hitting me much due to the Glyph effect.

Or maybe I want to add Chill to my attacks so I need Water attune Glyph of Elemental Power. Battle is just starting and I’m undamaged, but I get a Regen boon which does nothing.

And Swiftness is rarely useful unless you’re just avoiding combat and rushing the map. Using Glyphs specifically for Swiftness is a waste (unless its Elemental Harmony) otherwise, and in combat Swiftness is of marginal usefulness. Any time I use a Glyph in Air, the bonus boon is just wasted.

I think that particular trait needs a major rework. So often its just not useful, and having 2 things based on attune when you can obviously only have 1 attune at a time just doesn’t work well.

Either give the trait a flat boon regardless of attune (like the Cantrip trait which just gives a couple boons on cantrip use period) so that at least you can know what you’re getting and not have to worry about attune at all, or forget the boon thing altogether and have it boost Glyphs in a different way. Perhaps Stability while casting Glyphs or just boosting Glyph effectiveness. Storm would have a damage boost, Elemental Harmony would have longer lasting boons applied, Elemental Power could have shorter ICD or apply vulnerability as well, and Elementals could have stronger damage or more health, or give the elementals innate boons like regen.

The biggest problems with glyphs are their power to cooldown ratio.

Glyph of storms does less damage than lava font, with a 60 second cooldown and it takes longer to deal its damage. Based on its current power level, I wouldn’t take it in a competitive setting at anything over 20s cooldown. It’s not instant. It’s not a combo field or finisher. It’s not high damage. Exactly what is the purpose of this skill?

Glyph/lesser glyph of elementals has the bad aspects of other pet skills without the strengths. It’s temporary, squishy, and lacks a user activated power. If the pets stayed out until they died, they might be worth taking. As is, they’re not very good, and even the elite pets typically die before they trigger their useful RNG abilities. The elite is also bugged and doesn’t work with inscription.

Glyph of elemental power is good on paper, but it should be a 100% proc chance considering the cooldown is already longer than the effect.

Inscription was decent (except in fire) because of cleansing water. But you crapped all over that with this completely misguided nerf. Between the nerfs and the long cooldown on glyphs, it’s now somewhere between really bad and worthless.

For glyph of elements: Fire storm needs 1second burns.
lightning storm+ ice storm need to be more accurate, maybe increase the radius of each one? And lightning storm needs some extra buff as well, maybe 50% more raw damage, or some 2 stacks of 10sec vulnerability a hit. They’re also the idea of keeping lightning storm as is and giving it 1/4 sec dazes.
Possibly increase the bleeding of sandstorm from 3 seconds to 4, or make the the blinding hits bleed and blind at the same time, rather than just blind.
Or instead of buffing the storm individually as above, each can act as a combo field as well.

Inscription should give 3 stacks of might, not one, and it should trigger on glyph of elementals.

Glyph of lesser/greater elementals: have the pet’s ability on demand like engineer turrets. Of course the greater glyphs should have the better abilities on demand, instead of the same ones as the lesser.

Glyph of elemental power: You’re only gonna get around 3 procs in using something like a staff, but lower cd might make rapid attacks to strong. I think 60% proc rate should be fine for it., since it will activate roughly 5 times that way.

As for the original statement about stun breakers; Yeah, I think that’s exactly the reason most people flocked to cantrips. All cantrips have stun breakers, so the whole sub type could be traited. When it comes to glyphs/signets, its not as worth while to trait them because you’re still going to need to same a slot for a stun breaker.

A condition every 5 to 7 seconds would be nicer for signet of water would be nice.

Any of the signets could arguably be made into stun breakers, although currently only air has the instant-cast needed for actually breaking stun properly. I can see water or earth’s effect easily being changed to add in a stun break, though either would probably drop the chill/immobilize effect. Signet of Fire is… necessary in it’s current state for a condition build that never wants to leave earth, and I can’t imagine a stun break being added to that without nerfing the burn effect to balance it out. It could easily be given a stun break similar to Cleansing Flame, but the current effect would have to be reduced and it’s the only signet I use for the active effect…

I can’t see, thematically, which glyph could have a stun break added to it They all have cast times which are very much tied to the unique glyph casting anmation, and you can only use spells with no cast time while stunned. Maybe the elemental glyphs could be tweaked to add a self-destruct effect to elementals, with either earth or air elementals giving AoE stun break or something? But that steps on necro’s toes.

Conjure Earth Shield might be nice with a stun break. It’d give people a reason to use it, at any rate. Arcane skills could easily become stun breaks as well… maybe it’s most suited for arcane shield.

Focus wants stun breaks, but Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh are plenty good enough already, and the other attunements probably want complete skill redesigns for stun breaks to make sense on them.

Maybe it could be worked nto trait lines? Earth has a trait that grants 2 seconds of stability on attuning to earth as a grand master trait – I could see a lot of people taking that if it was also a stun breaker (with or without an increased internal cooldown on the stun break); heck, Air needs a grandmaster trait worth using, too, and a stun breaker could definitely fit that.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Not to say it would be a bad idea to add those to Glyphs, just that Glyph-heavy builds work better than you might think if you alloy them with a cantrip or two.

A cantrip or two means it stops being a glyph build. If you look at other professions, you’ll notice their stunbreakers are spread among different skill types. The ranger for example, can run a full signet build with a stunbreaker. However, he isn’t required to always have a signet if he wants a stunbreaker in his build. Same goes for engineer, that has both gadget and elixir stunbreakers.

Meanwhile, we get only 1 type of stunbreaker, that also happens to have the best traits and the most desirable traitline to work with them. And if you’re gonna invest traits in something, you’ll want to make the maximum use out of it…hence 3 cantrips to make a build.

But trying to make a full glyph, signet or arcane build…that’s quite a bit harder, especially since the stunbreaker is more or less mandatory. It’s a gamechanging effect, hence it’s popular.

ThiBash.5634:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Not to say it would be a bad idea to add those to Glyphs, just that Glyph-heavy builds work better than you might think if you alloy them with a cantrip or two.

A cantrip or two means it stops being a glyph build.

Says who?

Cantrip builds can’t ever bring more than 3 Cantrips. Glyph builds can grab Lightning Flash and Arcane Wave and still have three Glyphs. So if you really think you need the extra safety, you can grab two Cantrips. Or you can just grab one (Cleansing Fire) and cover both conditions and stuns.

ThiBash.5634:

If you look at other professions, you’ll notice their stunbreakers are spread among different skill types. The ranger for example, can run a full signet build with a stunbreaker. However, he isn’t required to always have a signet if he wants a stunbreaker in his build. Same goes for engineer, that has both gadget and elixir stunbreakers.

Ok, Engineer gadgets are a joke so I’m not sure they’re the best example. But I see what you’re saying, I just don’t think it’s all that big a deal. Signet Warriors don’t get a stunbreaker, for example, nor do Signet or Consecration Guardians. Plenty of specs have to grab an off-spec Utility for their stunbreaker and they manage just fine. The vast majority of Utility skills in the game are good enough without traiting that you can take them as part of another build (and the remainder are usually pretty bad even with traiting). The Ele doesn’t lose out on too much by having to take a Cantrip for stunbreaking.

ThiBash.5634:

Meanwhile, we get only 1 type of stunbreaker, that also happens to have the best traits and the most desirable traitline to work with them. And if you’re gonna invest traits in something, you’ll want to make the maximum use out of it…hence 3 cantrips to make a build.

Cantrip Eles certainly have the best trait line but that’s not an issue with Glyphs or Arcane skills lacking stunbreakers so much as it is those trait lines needing straight buffs.

ThiBash.5634:

But trying to make a full glyph, signet or arcane build…that’s quite a bit harder, especially since the stunbreaker is more or less mandatory. It’s a gamechanging effect, hence it’s popular.

How much you need a stunbreaker depends heavily on what you’re doing. In sPvP, you very probably need one, maybe even more than one. In a WvW zerg fight, I’d argue they’re less necessary (there are so many effects flying that one or even a few stunbreaks won’t always save you, especially if you’re squishy). In open-world PvE, they’re actually pretty pointless most of the time since most mobs have a low rate of attack and most PvE stuns are a quick chain (break one, you’ll just get caught in the next pulse anyway).

But again, running an X build doesn’t require you to run all three X utilities as well as an X heal skill and X Elite. You’re overstating the drawback to leaving out one.