Guild Wars 2

People get real you can’t have the cake and eat it too. Being uncritable while also dealing tons of damage would be borderline OP. We are being given a trait to counter annoying backstab thieves. By rendering 2 of their 3stat gear useless.

And if it is for condition we have cleansing fire, burning fire and ether renewal. Isn’t it enough? For investing full into power and condition damage?. Not like we going 1vZerg but at least we getting more suvivable.

People,

You don’t use Stone Heart to stuck yourself to earth’s auto-attacks forever.

You use Stone Heart to protect yourself against a burst, and then switch back to other attunements when your opponent’s burst is done and under cooldown.

It’s not that hard to grasp.

It’s just like Elemental Attunement’s protection, except stronger, but without overlapping between attunements.

If you use your imagination, it can lead to some pretty cool things.

With Rock Solid, you can have a more effective Ether Renewal and cast a less dangerous Churning Earth.

By itself, the time spent casting Rock Barrier and holding for an earthquake burst, or casting ring of earth and then leaping in with the magnetic leap, or trying to pull of Eruption, are all things that you’ll be able to do without a thief killing you in 3 seconds.

You then switch back, and burst them out.

In my opinion the core problem of those new traits is that they don’t really fit into the current traitlines and don’t synergize well with the other traits and skills

Most of those traits seem really odd. By definition a grandmaster trait should be build defining, i.e. influence other trait decisions or strongly influence your skill use or the way you play your class. For me, the first one is especially important: influence other trait decisions. I currently fail to see that with a lot of the shown traits.

Blinding Ashes: Propably the trait that fits best and hast most synergies with other traits and skills, like Burning percision, flame barrier, fire shield, a lot of fire spells and glyph of elemental harmony. That way it is hardly surprising that it is the trait that has the best chance of actually seeing some use, because it somehow fits in. But getting only a blind every 5+ seconds don’t really seem grandmaster to me. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I still think that trait is rather on master tier than on grandmaster.

Lightning Rod: What other trait does this trait synergize with? What other traits are there that are improved by this or that would create a condition that would trigger lightning rod? The only one I currently see is tempest defense, but that is grandmaster too and also in the air line. Keep in mind that you also need to actually interrupt your enemy, a simple stun or daze won’t trigger it. If it worked on stun/daze, then it could be really useful to increase the pressure when starting your combo with updraft/earthquake. But then again, the 20% damage boost of tempest defense might still be better.

Stone heart: No matter how hard i tried, I couldn’t figure out a single trait that would benefit from it. On a side note: It even excludes a trait, the water recieve regenration on crit trait. There is also no weapon skill or utility that profits from it. So all it can do is change the way you play. I can image that they have planned it as some sort of counter to backstab thieves or the new warrior always crit burst skills trait. But given the high reuse of more than 60% of all earth skills, i doubt that you have too many damaging options when camping in earth attunement. Just like Diamond Skin it seems too situational and pidgenholed to be of good use. I am also fairly confident that the protection boon is likely more useful overall than this trait, so if i have to decide between those two, I would rather pick protection.

Aquatic Benevolence: While this trait synergizes with almost any healing skill the elementalist has, I am not convinced that the concept itself will appeal to many players. More often than not, the elementlist itself is the one in the greatest need of healing. A heal centric role is also problematic because of the way guild wars determines kills and loot. Have fun trying to tag an enemy when your doing nothing else but heal. Have fun trying to get some event participation when the only measurement is damage dealt and enemies killed. They are trying to make people play a healing role in a game mechanic that does not reward healing.

Elemental Contingency: As others have pointed out – this trait is simply too bad to ever cut it against Evasive Arcana. That aside, it is again a trait that does not really profit from any other trait. As it requires you to get hit, it is even detriemental to dodge, block (fire shield), destroy or deflect projectiles (swiling wind, magnetic aura) or use any other mechanic that prevents getting hit. That seems very counter intuitive to the way eles are meant to be played. It also requires a condition that you don’t really control – your enemy has to fulfil that condition. On top of that, the boon durations are awfully short as well. When you’re in grandmaster arcana, there is a good chance that you have already selected better sources for those boons.

Columbo.5924:

In my opinion the core problem of those new traits is that they don’t really fit into the current traitlines and don’t synergize well with the other traits and skills

Most of those traits seem really odd. By definition a grandmaster trait should be build defining, i.e. influence other trait decisions or strongly influence your skill use or the way you play your class. For me, the first one is especially important: influence other trait decisions. I currently fail to see that with a lot of the shown traits.

Blinding Ashes: Propably the trait that fits best and hast most synergies with other traits and skills, like Burning percision, flame barrier, fire shield, a lot of fire spells and glyph of elemental harmony. That way it is hardly surprising that it is the trait that has the best chance of actually seeing some use, because it somehow fits in. But getting only a blind every 5+ seconds don’t really seem grandmaster to me. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I still think that trait is rather on master tier than on grandmaster.

Lightning Rod: What other trait does this trait synergize with? What other traits are there that are improved by this or that would create a condition that would trigger lightning rod? The only one I currently see is tempest defense, but that is grandmaster too and also in the air line. Keep in mind that you also need to actually interrupt your enemy, a simple stun or daze won’t trigger it. If it worked on stun/daze, then it could be really useful to increase the pressure when starting your combo with updraft/earthquake. But then again, the 20% damage boost of tempest defense might still be better.

Stone heart: No matter how hard i tried, I couldn’t figure out a single trait trait would benefit from it. It even excludes a trait, the water recieve regenration on crit trait. There is also no weapon skill or utility that profits from it. So all it can do is change the way you play. I can image that they have planned it as some sort of counter to backstab thieves or the new warrior always crit burst skills trait. But given the high reuse of more than 60% of all earth skills, i doubt that you have too many damaging options when camping in earth attunement. Just like Diamond Skin it seems too situational and pidgenholed to be of good use. I am also fairly confident that the protection boon is likely more useful overall than this trait, so if i have to decide between those two, I would rather pick protection.

Aquatic Benevolence: While this trait synergizes with almost any healing skill the elementalist has, I am not convinced that the concept itself will appeal to many players. More often than not, the elementlist itself is the one in the greatest need of healing. A heal centric role is also problematic because of the way guild wars determines kills and loot. Have fun trying to tag an enemy when your doing nothing else but heal. Have fun trying to get some event participation when the only measurement is damage dealt and enemies killed. They are trying to make people play a healing role in a game mechanic that does not reward healing.

Elemental Contingency: As others have pointed out – this trait is simply too bad to ever cut it against Evasive Arcana. That aside, it is again a trait that does not really profit from any other trait. As it requires you to get hit, it is even detriemental to dodge, block (fire shield), destroy or deflect projectiles (swiling wind, magnetic aura) or use any other mechanic that prevents getting hit. That seems very counter intuitive to the way eles are meant to be played. It also requires a condition that you don’t really control – your enemy has to fulfil that condition. On top of that, the boon durations are awfully short as well. When you’re in grandmaster arcana, there is a good chance that you have already selected better sources for those boons.

Good points. When you say earth and water grandmasters don’t synergize with other traits I generally agree. If you reduce arcane cd that’s quicker blast finishers if you use arcane brilliance and wave. Technically more healing helps with added protection durations. Find a way to give allies perma protection too? I feel the water trait synergies more with the staff than to certain traits. A 0 0 30 30 10 staff build seems pretty decent if full support.
As far as the earth synergy, I feel it allows for burst builds to play a bit safer. It’s only synergy is elemental attunement.

I’d like to add to the list of redundancies and anti-synergies that stone heart introduces. Since you can’t be critted in earth:

-Protection on attuning to earth from elemental attunement no longer reduces as much damage.
-Extra tougness in earth from earth 5 minor won’t reduce as much damage.
-Obsidian flesh is not as useful since it doesn’t prevent as much damage.

Why are all our defensive eggs being put in the earth basket? If we are attacked anywhere BUT earth we get almost no defensive bonuses from any traits or skills… but unfortunately with the crappiness of earth auto we usually want to be anywhere BUT earth. I don’t buy switching to earth to avoid burst as being very useful… good players can just time burst for after you switch out of earth, and just auto-attack you in the meanwhile probably trading hits better than you even without crits because they aren’t using terrible earth autos.

IMO there is a big problem with ele design. Devs think they need to put everything in nice little predictable compartments. Ele would be in a lot better place if they didn’t put ALL healing in water, or ALL defense in earth, or ALL burning in fire. This goes for skills and traits.

Jabberwock.9014:

I’d like to add to the list of redundancies and anti-synergies that stone heart introduces. Since you can’t be critted in earth:

-Protection on attuning to earth from elemental attunement no longer reduces as much damage.
-Extra tougness in earth from earth 5 minor won’t reduce as much damage.
-Obsidian flesh is not as useful since it doesn’t prevent as much damage.

Why are all our defensive eggs being put in the earth basket? If we are attacked anywhere BUT earth we get almost no defensive bonuses from any traits or skills… but unfortunately with the crappiness of earth auto we usually want to be anywhere BUT earth. I don’t buy switching to earth to avoid burst as being very useful… good players can just time burst for after you switch out of earth, and just auto-attack you in the meanwhile probably trading hits better than you even without crits because they aren’t using terrible earth autos.

The earth trait is an obvious counter to backstab. Thieves are predictable and you can easily time it.

There are enough counters to backstab, like timing dodge and shocking aura. I don’t want to take a grandmaster trait to further dampen a single skill on a single class. It’s not like thief has trouble saving initiative for next stealth after you exit earth anyways.

Bad thieves are predictable. By virtue of attunement compartmentalization, ALL eles are.

Kyon.9735:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Kyon.9735:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Kyon.9735:

This is where trade-offs happen. I think you locked yourself in the mentality that Eles explicitly require Healing, Vitality, and Boons from traits. Don’t get me wrong, this is constructive criticism. I’m not bashing you. Traits are just one thing. You still have your Armors and Trinkets to cover the things you lack.

Where to get healing and vitality? You can get Dire/Settler/Magi to cover the HP and Healing you lack. With 30 points in Earth you should at least get Elemental Shielding so you have reliable access to Protection especially since this will probably a Signet build.

I take the trait lines for the traits. Not for the stat bonuses.

Then why do you insist that Elementalists require 20/30 points in Water and Arcana?

For the traits…what else.

Soothing Mist, Soothing Wave, Healing Ripple among others
Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, Lingering Elements, Arcane Fury among others

Did you even think about what you gain by losing them?

Remember, you started the discussion about having only 10 points left if you use 2 GM traits, specifically Fire and Earth. You will still have 10 point available to Arcana for Arcane Fury and Renewing Stamina or you can split it into Water and Arcana so you have both Soothing Mist and Arcane Fury.

You now have 300 more toughness from the trait line, additional 120 toughness when attuned to earth, and Immunity to Crits and bursts when attuned to Earth.

You have 30 points in Fire, you can proc blind almost every 5 seconds. You can get Protection by activating Signets because of Fire’s Embrace and Elemental Shielding. You still have Shocking Aura and Frost Aura (DD) or Fire Aura(DF) from your weapon set.

With all these defensive traits, would you still need to heal that much?

People have been asking Anet for more Survivability. Well, here they are.

Easy Access to blinds and Immunity to crits. Did everyone think Eles can get something without losing something? Personally I can’t believe how there are players who can’t appreciate the effects of blind.

Will that blind be linked to the target or to the Elementalist? I mean, does it mean that the Elementalist can only blind 1 target every 5 seconds? If so, you could easily hit a necro minion with a AOE that will burn and waste it.
Or, am I wrong?

I heard Arenanet doesn’t support power creeping…. I think elementalist got nerfed via other professions buff.
Don’t worry brothers and sisters it just means our victories will just taste better. Spvp should be ok will the healing restored a tad but WvW please use caution! Good luck bursting a cloaked thief with 50% reduction haha.

I assume 85% builds for ele’s would still be the same…. sigh Anet. Why don’t you ever read ele forums, hope you don’t nerf water and arcane further to force us to play the weaker builds.

PS: Pew Pew sounds equals + 3 to creativity!

Waisenpai.6028:

I heard Arenanet doesn’t support power creeping…. I think elementalist got nerfed via other professions buff.
Don’t worry brothers and sisters it just means our victories will just taste better. Spvp should be ok will the healing adjustment but WvW please use caution!

PS: Pew Pew equals + 3 to creativity

I am pretty annoyed being left apart from tPvP because I main Elementalist. It has been a while already now, hasn’kitten

Edit: can’t even type " hasn’t it"…. really?

It’s not just a counter to backstab, it’s a counter to everything that triggers “on crit” and that is a lot. I’m excited to test this new earth trait, seems like the best of the bunch, blinding from fire might help scepter builds, but I don’t think its worth going 30 on fire, I don’t think anyone would drop fresh air for the new air trait, same to the arcana one.. water is just.. meh.

Alekt.5803:

Waisenpai.6028:

I heard Arenanet doesn’t support power creeping…. I think elementalist got nerfed via other professions buff.
Don’t worry brothers and sisters it just means our victories will just taste better. Spvp should be ok will the healing adjustment but WvW please use caution!

PS: Pew Pew equals + 3 to creativity

I am pretty annoyed being left apart from tPvP because I main Elementalist. It has been a while already now, hasn’kitten

Edit: can’t even type " hasn’t it"…. really?

hasn’kitten hasnt it, hasntit, hasn’ tit….

Dolores.5471:

It’s not just a counter to backstab, it’s a counter to everything that triggers “on crit” and that is a lot. I’m excited to test this new earth trait, seems like the best of the bunch, blinding from fire might help scepter builds, but I don’t think its worth going 30 on fire, I don’t think anyone would drop fresh air for the new air trait, same to the arcana one.. water is just.. meh.

Yeah, I can see it being situationally useful. And since you can easily swap to diamond skin maybe someone can make it work. I don’t know. The earth traits are still really low on synergy.

Dolores.5471:

It’s not just a counter to backstab, it’s a counter to everything that triggers “on crit” and that is a lot. I’m excited to test this new earth trait, seems like the best of the bunch, blinding from fire might help scepter builds, but I don’t think its worth going 30 on fire, I don’t think anyone would drop fresh air for the new air trait, same to the arcana one.. water is just.. meh.

At the cost of being no threat at all…
The Earth skills in pretty much every weapon set are rather poor. No threat. It would just mean dying slower than normal. Of course this is going to be a expect burst is coming – go earth. Do poor damage but dont get 1hit.

Why are people saying earth is that bad? I mean every D/D ele goes into earth and every s/d ele likes to start in earth and swap to air for 15 air procs.

Earth also has very good damage traits. It just sounds like alot of people are trying to imagine moving a whole 30 points from their previous build to pick up one of these and just don’t see it working. When these are traits to build around.

D/D’s build around 20+water and 30 arcana
S/D’s and s/f build around 30 air

Why can’t there be a build based around 30 earth?

I don’t understand the logic here. Do 30 Air eles stay in Air? Do 30 water eles stay in water? NO so why are we saying 30 earth is trash because nobody stays in earth? Cleansing water is trash because no ele stays in water and water certainly doesn’t have good damage at all. I don’t even understand how this is a thing because nobody stays in a attunement for long except maybe a staff Ele.

If you D/D the attunement you stay in the longest is Air if a burst is coming in you swap to earth! I would rather reduce a burst by 150% + whatever crit damage they have then have protection up. That is what stone heart will do reduce any incoming damage by a guaranteed 150%+ if that hit was going to crit.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

At the cost of being no threat at all…
The Earth skills in pretty much every weapon set are rather poor. No threat. It would just mean dying slower than normal. Of course this is going to be a expect burst is coming – go earth. Do poor damage but dont get 1hit.

And then out heal their burst with good regeneration, or go back to other attunements and kill them now that their burst is under a cooldown.

By the way:

Rock Barrier → Hurl → Earthquake
Ring of Earth → Earthquake
Eruption → Skill 4 or 5

Are all good stuff you can do to set up a new burst. By the time you switch back to fire/ air, your opponent will already have wasted most of their burst, or just sit iddle by then while you gradually recovered your health.

Columbo.5924:

Lightning Rod: What other trait does this trait synergize with? What other traits are there that are improved by this or that would create a condition that would trigger lightning rod?

Bolt to the Heart (assuming it’s damage qualifies), Aeromancer’s Alacrity (Shocking Aura, Updraft), Geomancer’s Alacrity (Earthquake), Elemental Contingency (triggered by damage, weaken softens that). Also, the devs mentioned Static Field while talking about this. I know using Burning Speed into a Aetherblade’s Static Field would interrupt me. The same principle should work on leap skills too, but I haven’t tested it.

Stone heart: No matter how hard i tried, I couldn’t figure out a single trait that would benefit from it. On a side note: It even excludes a trait, the water recieve regenration on crit trait.

Fair enough on the side note. But, that can be used to our advantage as that allows greater control over Soothing Wave. It also isn’t exactly a new thing as Invulnerability and block will do the same thing to traits that trigger when one gets hit.

Also, while no other traits may not benefit, they do stack. Protection + Stone Heart will reduce damage further than either alone.

So all it can do is change the way you play.

That’s kinda the point though. The traits are intended to either provide new options or to open up new builds.

Have fun trying to tag an enemy when your doing nothing else but heal.

If Soothing Mist triggers this trait, why would anyone be spending all their time doing nothing but healing? Beyond that, I see no way for an ele to be spending all their time healing. Options like Cone of Cold and blasting have damage components to them. Most of the others have long cools; longer than switching attunements.

That said, I’m not sure how many people will like this trait. We’re in agreement on that.

Elemental Contingency: As others have pointed out – this trait is simply too bad to ever cut it against Evasive Arcana. That aside, it is again a trait that does not really profit from any other trait. As it requires you to get hit, it is even detriemental to dodge, block (fire shield), destroy or deflect projectiles (swiling wind, magnetic aura) or use any other mechanic that prevents getting hit. That seems very counter intuitive to the way eles are meant to be played. It also requires a condition that you don’t really control – your enemy has to fulfil that condition. On top of that, the boon durations are awfully short as well. When you’re in grandmaster arcana, there is a good chance that you have already selected better sources for those boons.

It’s in the same vein as protection traits (which this one is too). No matter what build we run, we’ll get hit eventually. Since it’s triggered by getting hit, any skill/trait which helps lessen that damage helps this trait. In addition, it should stack with similar effects (like fire shield, soothing wave, etc). Finally, we have 1 source of retaliation, and that’s a rune set that I don’t think anyone uses. This is the first source we have outside of gear.

As an aside, Fire Shield does not block. I’m assuming you meant Arcane Shield.

Alekt.5803:

Will that blind be linked to the target or to the Elementalist? I mean, does it mean that the Elementalist can only blind 1 target every 5 seconds? If so, you could easily hit a necro minion with a AOE that will burn and waste it.
Or, am I wrong?

We don’t know. They didn’t say anything about that.

Not only earth attunement already has nice skills, but you could also equip any conjured weapon while being immune to crits, this should make conjures more viable. You might lose some HP/condi cleanse but remenber that many condi builds make use of “on crit” traits.

30 fire is going to make my world, most of you don’t seem to have any clue of the potential. Hint: Think spvp (Small number fights) and pick up the trait to burn on CRIT!

Celestial gear being revamped for spvp? Hello high crit chance with good survivability.

oZii.2864:

I don’t understand the logic here. Do 30 Air eles stay in Air? Do 30 water eles stay in water? NO so why are we saying 30 earth is trash because nobody stays in earth? Cleansing water is trash because no ele stays in water and water certainly doesn’t have good damage at all. I don’t even understand how this is a thing because nobody stays in a attunement for long except maybe a staff Ele.

Not valid comparisons at all. Both 30 air and 30 water eles take advantage of one time attunement procs like lightning strike (air) and healing ripple/EA heal/cleansing wave/regen/soothing mist (water). The whole point of these builds is to get in and out of air/water as fast as possible to trigger on attune effects as often as possible. Additionally fresh air makes it so that you don’t need to stay in air to access air skills often.

Stone heart on the other hand only confers an effect by staying in earth… which also happens to be the second worst attunement to stay in (water is worst). Most people use earth for quick protection/stability, blast finishers, knockdown, maybe immobilize/leap, and then get out.

Grimreaper.5370:

30 fire is going to make my world, most of you don’t seem to have any clue of the potential. Hint: Think spvp (Small number fights) and pick up the trait to burn on CRIT!

I’ll admit this is intriguing. But all those random blinds are gonna make it so you can no longer skillfully time blinds. You’ll always be on cooldown. Maybe if the cd was more reasonable we would have a real contender, but 5 seconds just seems too much. Thieves can blind a whole lot more often than that and they have problems staying alive too without stealth. Keep in mind going 30 fire means relatively poor healing.

You go into Earth to block Crit Bursts and block crit procs for condis. You leave Earth when you want to deal damage. With Lingering Attunements you can make full use of Stone Heart. You don’t need to be locked up in Earth.

Having a class be immune to Crit permanently is so OP so Anet made it only on Earth Attunement so it promotes skilled plays.

Jabberwock.9014:

-Protection on attuning to earth from elemental attunement no longer reduces as much damage.
-Extra tougness in earth from earth 5 minor won’t reduce as much damage.
-Obsidian flesh is not as useful since it doesn’t prevent as much damage.

learn2math.
Those things stack multiplicatively, unless there is some hidden mechanic, which I missed, where protection reduces normal damagge by 33% and critical damage by 50% or something.
Protection will always reduce damage by 33%, regardless of whether it’s a crit or not. This means, your opponent will have to deal 50% more damage to ultimately kill you.
The same applies to toughness.
I mean, if there is a thief trying to backstab you, you don’t say “I won’t dodge this, because then my protection boon won’t be able to reduce as much damage and go to waste”. No. You dodge the f out of there or try to make him face-stab.

Also to the guys complaining about having no damage output in earth attunement: For WvW, try lightning hammer. You could probably just stand there, pounding at your enemies’ hammer train as long as you got some decent gear and no zerk rubbish.
probably Ether renewal, Lightning hammer, armor of earth, lightning flash, fgs. For weapons, either a staff or s/f, depending on whether your group has enough elementalists.

For pvp, it will probably come down to a s/f build, if you want to bunker. Got additional condi cleanse in earth, some invulnerability to tap in before switching to other attunements and some extra toughness from the barrier.

For PvE, you don’t want this trait anyway.

Jabberwock.9014:

I’ll admit this is intriguing. But all those random blinds are gonna make it so you can no longer skillfully time blinds. You’ll always be on cooldown. Maybe if the cd was more reasonable we would have a real contender, but 5 seconds just seems too much. Thieves can blind a whole lot more often than that and they have problems staying alive too without stealth. Keep in mind going 30 fire means relatively poor healing.

I thought about this as well, I’d rather time my blinds skillfully than have them spammed as much as possible. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how well it works.

This is pretty much why I’d rather have ArenaNet rebalanced the existing traits. Most if not all of these traits are okish at first glance. However, being grandmaster traits, they don’t really fix our main problem: mandatory trait choices. Instead, they either introduce new ones, or get ignored after the initial hype wears off.

Netko.9271:

So new traits are :
Fire: Blinding Ashes: Blind foes for 5 seconds when you burn them – cooldown 5s

Active defense for glass cannons. This trait is actually well designed, and was much needed. Glass cannons greatest weakness was that they gave up on all the mandatory defense traits. With cleansing fire and this trait, you could actually make a damage ele that can hold its own…provided they can time their skills just right.

Air: Lightning Rod – interrupting an enemy causes them to be stuck by a damaging lightning bolt that leaves them weakened (5s)

Sounds good, but needs interrupts, which makes this skill ‘meh’. D/D will like this, Staff will pass on it. Not bad, but niche.

Earth: Stone heart – You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth

Another ‘counter profession’ trait. While it will be useful against thieves, I don’t like that eles have to pick certain grandmaster traits just to be able to survive certain professions. Don’t like hard counters in general, and I really don’t like putting 2 in the same trait slot.

Water: Aquatic Benevolence- your healing to other allies (not self) is increased by 25%

Only useful if healers ever become needed in the game. Otherwise, it feels like a filler let’s-get-people-out-of-Water trait. My guess is that it’s intentionally useless.

Arcane – Elemental Contingency- Gain a boon when you are stuck, based on your current attunement, coodown; 10 seconds. Fire: 3.5s of retaliation; air: 5 seconds of fury; Earth: 2.5s of protection; Water: 3 seconds of vigor

Hmm…so how useful would this be compared to Evasive Arcana? The retaliation is interesting, but eles’d rather not get hit if they can help it. Fury is useless because they have Arcane Fury already. Vigor is ok, but eles have a better alternative for that as well. That leaves protection, which is actually quite nice. But not enough for me personally to pick it over Evasive Arcana.

naphack.9346:

Jabberwock.9014:

-Protection on attuning to earth from elemental attunement no longer reduces as much damage.
-Extra tougness in earth from earth 5 minor won’t reduce as much damage.
-Obsidian flesh is not as useful since it doesn’t prevent as much damage.

learn2math.
Those things stack multiplicatively, unless there is some hidden mechanic, which I missed, where protection reduces normal damagge by 33% and critical damage by 50% or something.

Insulting and wrong. Would you use obsidian flesh and mist form at the same time? No, that would be stupid because one already reduces damage by 100%, making the other reduce damage by 100% of 0% of original damage… in other words 0%. The same applies for lesser values: if protection is reducing damage by 33% already you are only taking 67% of original damage. If stone heart reduces incoming damage by lets say 50%, you are eliminating 50% of 67% of original damage, or 33.5% of original damage. If not for protection, you would be eliminating 50% of original damage with stone heart. Stacking multiplicatively is a bad thing when you are talking sub-one multiplication… you get 66.5% reduction instead of 83%.

It’s not like I’m saying protection or dodging are bad when you aren’t taking critical damage. It’s just that they aren’t pulling the same weight they did alone. This is opposed to synergistic things like healing and protection, which make each other stronger.

Blinding Ashes: The trait itself may not be that bad but who specs 30 into fire in PvP unless you want to die within a split second? Blinds won’t help you because you will just randomly die in AoE even when you’re not fucused. Blinds usually also need perfect timing to be usefull which is hard to achieve via the 10s CD and the fact that your access to burns will drop nearly to 0 when switching out of fire. Fire in general is not attractive for PvP because of bad adept and master traits so who speccs 30 into it anyway?

Lightning Rod: Eles have effective interrupts with low CD that can be timed well? No, they don’t have – so why would I ever pick this trait – especially when I can have Fresh Air instead that’s giving me both more burst and sustained damage? Also the best trait this would synergize with is Tempest Defense which is a GM-trait in the same attunement…

Stone heart: Another one of those futile attempts to make eles playable just like Diamond Skin. You won’t deal damage in earth and when you try to stay as long as possible in earth you’re restricting yourself because you don’t use all your attunements efficient and therefore won’t get the full potential out of the ele. May be nice against thieves or warriors but still those classes can put permanent pressure on you so you’d propably will have to stay in earth all of the time to feel a difference. This also doesn’t help you against conditions and even non-crits will hurt you a lot as an ele. Additionally there’s 300 useless condi-damage from the earth-traitline which is just a waste of stats (especially when you consider that eles have the worst base-stats in the game with its low vita and toughness).

Aquatic Benevolence: I always liked the idea to make support more viable but unless the game doesn’t need support it will be useless to pick traits like these. Eles are the ones that are the squishiest on the battlefield. They’re the ones that get focused first – healing to others will help nobody. I also think that scaling with healing-power would in general have to be increased to make traits like these a viable pick.

Elemental Contingency:This trait is way worse than Elemental Attunement … why the heck is this a GM-trait? Random-proccs are bad btw. This is the most underwhelming trait compared to the others.

Once again the traits seem to go somehow in the right direction and I think they’re partly meant to adress the eles lack of survivability but they won’t help at all. They’re like Diamond Skin that nobody uses or the new heal that nobody uses or Burning Fire that nobody uses. They’re way too underhwelming and situational to make a difference.
I think I won’t even come back to try out those new traits… Builds won’t change because there are other traits that are so heavily needed for making ele playable in PvP. Still some of them seem to be in a good spot compared to other classes’ new traits.

Jabberwock.9014:

Would you use obsidian flesh and mist form at the same time? No, that would be stupid because one already reduces damage by 100%, making the other reduce damage by 100% of 0% of original damage… in other words 0%. The same applies for lesser values:

Not really, no. The reason why it’s stupid to stack both obsidian and mist is they cannot create a bigger effect together than apart. Protection and Stone Heart do not have that same restriction. I’d rather get hit with 39% of a critical hit than 58% or 67% of the same damage.

1000 * 1.7 = 1700 * 1 = 1700 (full damage)
1000 * 1.7 = 1700 * 0.67 = 1139 (protection only)
1000 * 1 = 1000 * 1 = 1000 (stone heart only)
1000 * 1 = 1000 * 0.67 = 670 (both)

It’s not ideal, but it’s far from stacking two invulnerability skills together.

Kyon.9735:

You go into Earth to block Crit Bursts and block crit procs for condis. You leave Earth when you want to deal damage. With Lingering Attunements you can make full use of Stone Heart. You don’t need to be locked up in Earth.

Having a class be immune to Crit permanently is so OP so Anet made it only on Earth Attunement so it promotes skilled plays.

I don’t think anyone is arguing to make the trait apply to all attunements. It seems pretty obvious that an across the board immunity would be insane. What we’re saying is that the current version of the trait is situational at best. This normally wouldn’t be problematic except for the fact that earth traits are low on synergy and earth skills encourage the elementalist to leave the attunement as quickly as possible. The trait thus contradicts current mechanics without providing any synergy other than a possible buff to conjure builds in pvp/wvw settings.

Nageth.5648:

Kyon.9735:

You go into Earth to block Crit Bursts and block crit procs for condis. You leave Earth when you want to deal damage. With Lingering Attunements you can make full use of Stone Heart. You don’t need to be locked up in Earth.

Having a class be immune to Crit permanently is so OP so Anet made it only on Earth Attunement so it promotes skilled plays.

I don’t think anyone is arguing to make the trait apply to all attunements. It seems pretty obvious that an across the board immunity would be insane. What we’re saying is that the current version of the trait is situational at best. This normally wouldn’t be problematic except for the fact that earth traits are low on synergy and earth skills encourage the elementalist to leave the attunement as quickly as possible. The trait thus contradicts current mechanics without providing any synergy other than a possible buff to conjure builds in pvp/wvw settings.

By saying situational, you mean you want something with more passive play? I don’t know, IMO it’s good as it is. It promotes skilled plays instead of passive plays. You predict that someone will burst you? Switch to Earth to completely negate the crit burst. With Lingering Attunements, you should have decent up time of Stone Heart’s bonus.

Kyon.9735:

Nageth.5648:

Kyon.9735:

You go into Earth to block Crit Bursts and block crit procs for condis. You leave Earth when you want to deal damage. With Lingering Attunements you can make full use of Stone Heart. You don’t need to be locked up in Earth.

Having a class be immune to Crit permanently is so OP so Anet made it only on Earth Attunement so it promotes skilled plays.

I don’t think anyone is arguing to make the trait apply to all attunements. It seems pretty obvious that an across the board immunity would be insane. What we’re saying is that the current version of the trait is situational at best. This normally wouldn’t be problematic except for the fact that earth traits are low on synergy and earth skills encourage the elementalist to leave the attunement as quickly as possible. The trait thus contradicts current mechanics without providing any synergy other than a possible buff to conjure builds in pvp/wvw settings.

By saying situational, you mean you want something with more passive play? I don’t know, IMO it’s good as it is. It promotes skilled plays instead of passive plays. You predict that someone will burst you? Switch to Earth to completely negate the crit burst. With Lingering Attunements, you should have decent up time of Stone Heart’s bonus.

No, by saying situational I don’t mean wanting something more passive. By saying situational I’m implying that the situation for which it is useful is very infrequent. Again, I stated that situation is not necessarily bad. When you have situational abilities that have high synergy it is good.

For instance, applying regen also removes a condition. This is situational. You have to be getting hit with a lot of nasty conditions and have access to a lot of regen for it to work. Conditions are prevalent in WvW fights. And staff has access to lots of regen (as well as other traits in water increase the ability to apply regen). So the situational trait that has synergy works well.

Compare this to our new earth gm trait. Again, it is situational. You have to be in a situation where you can predict you will be taking spike crit damage (if you cannot predict it there is a chance the earth attunement will be on cooldown or you’d be spiked down so fast that you won’t have a chance to respond). There are some situations where this can happen. For instance, if you know there are some thieves that are roaming an area you can be prepared. Another would be warriors. However, now that you’re in earth and protected from crits, what now? You cannot support your teammates because earth primarily has low dps finishers, not combo fields. The one high dps ability is on a very long cooldown and is very hard to hit people with. The control skills in earth are also low in number and high on cooldown.

Essentially, earth skills are built to either provide defense that carries over between attunements or sets up combos for other attunements or provide control skills that limit enemies on a higher cooldown. This makes for an attunement where you have nothing to do in it for any length of time. The only way this could provide synergy is if this trait works while using bundles/conjure weapons.

Nageth.5648:

Kyon.9735:

Nageth.5648:

Kyon.9735:

You go into Earth to block Crit Bursts and block crit procs for condis. You leave Earth when you want to deal damage. With Lingering Attunements you can make full use of Stone Heart. You don’t need to be locked up in Earth.

Having a class be immune to Crit permanently is so OP so Anet made it only on Earth Attunement so it promotes skilled plays.

I don’t think anyone is arguing to make the trait apply to all attunements. It seems pretty obvious that an across the board immunity would be insane. What we’re saying is that the current version of the trait is situational at best. This normally wouldn’t be problematic except for the fact that earth traits are low on synergy and earth skills encourage the elementalist to leave the attunement as quickly as possible. The trait thus contradicts current mechanics without providing any synergy other than a possible buff to conjure builds in pvp/wvw settings.

By saying situational, you mean you want something with more passive play? I don’t know, IMO it’s good as it is. It promotes skilled plays instead of passive plays. You predict that someone will burst you? Switch to Earth to completely negate the crit burst. With Lingering Attunements, you should have decent up time of Stone Heart’s bonus.

No, by saying situational I don’t mean wanting something more passive. By saying situational I’m implying that the situation for which it is useful is very infrequent. Again, I stated that situation is not necessarily bad. When you have situational abilities that have high synergy it is good.

Compare this to our new earth gm trait. Again, it is situational. You have to be in a situation where you can predict you will be taking spike crit damage (if you cannot predict it there is a chance the earth attunement will be on cooldown or you’d be spiked down so fast that you won’t have a chance to respond).

This, my friend, is what you call skilled play. Being able to know when and how to use your skills and advantages is what makes a player good.

Imagine that you’re a thief and you’re trying to burst an Elementalist with Stone Heart. Right before you burst from stealth, he switches to Earth and negates your crit burst. If I was that thief I’d say that Elementalist is skilled for knowing when to proc Stone Heart.

This is better than having it more of a passive skill. I’d rather say “Oh, that Ele switched to Earth to block my burst. He’s good” than say “Oh, he blocked my crit burst because of a passive/RNG skill. He’s a lucky sunuvab!tch”

And about synergy, this trait have great synergy with Lingering Attunements. You attune to Earth for defensive purposes. Now you want to deal damage? Switch to Fire or Air. You will still have 5s of Stone Heart after you switch out of Earth.

Jabberwock.9014:

naphack.9346:

Jabberwock.9014:

-Protection on attuning to earth from elemental attunement no longer reduces as much damage.
-Extra tougness in earth from earth 5 minor won’t reduce as much damage.
-Obsidian flesh is not as useful since it doesn’t prevent as much damage.

learn2math.
Those things stack multiplicatively, unless there is some hidden mechanic, which I missed, where protection reduces normal damagge by 33% and critical damage by 50% or something.

Insulting and wrong. Would you use obsidian flesh and mist form at the same time? No, that would be stupid because one already reduces damage by 100%, making the other reduce damage by 100% of 0% of original damage… in other words 0%. The same applies for lesser values: if protection is reducing damage by 33% already you are only taking 67% of original damage. If stone heart reduces incoming damage by lets say 50%, you are eliminating 50% of 67% of original damage, or 33.5% of original damage. If not for protection, you would be eliminating 50% of original damage with stone heart. Stacking multiplicatively is a bad thing when you are talking sub-one multiplication… you get 66.5% reduction instead of 83%.

It’s not like I’m saying protection or dodging are bad when you aren’t taking critical damage. It’s just that they aren’t pulling the same weight they did alone. This is opposed to synergistic things like healing and protection, which make each other stronger.

No, that’s using the glass is half empty theory. It’s like after winning a lottery and complaining because you are in a higher tax bracket.

Someone could be just as negative about your synergistic healing and protection example. That the healing pulls more weight alone and when you add protection, the heals needed aren’t as big.

Edit: and just to clarify. You would prefer the Stone Heart to be in another line so the Earth Protection isn’t watered down?

Yes and while the Ele might have survived that Backstab, the Thief will know that the ele is no threat what so ever while being in Earth so can continue to attack without fear until the ele is forced to change to water for healing and which point the Thief will stealth and go back in with a BS.

Personally i think this is a rather terrible trait. Mainly because Earth offers VERY little in terms of offense. So you are sacrificing not being a threat to survive a BS at which point what do you do? you are stuck in a attunement that is no threat you are stlll taking damage. You go to Water to heal and that means you are a free target for Crits for at least 10seconds. That is enough time for several Backstabs.

I think this will just make Thief even harder to kill, as they will be expecting this will build for more power so even if they arent critting they are still doing solid damage and they will just keep attacking and attacking until you are forced to move out of Earth into Water to dodge roll heal, use other healing skills and such. Then you are an easy target again.

Personally i would rather have had a trait that increases Toughness by 50%. Or maybe have it increase Toughness by 50% of Condition Damage, seeing as its in the condition damage line it fits. This would be useable in ALL attunements as well.

Kyon.9735:

This, my friend, is what you call skilled play. Being able to know when and how to use your skills and advantages is what makes a player good.

Imagine that you’re a thief and you’re trying to burst an Elementalist with Stone Heart. Right before you burst from stealth, he switches to Earth and negates your crit burst. If I was that thief I’d say that Elementalist is skilled for knowing when to proc Stone Heart.

This is better than having it more of a passive skill. I’d rather say “Oh, that Ele switched to Earth to block my burst. He’s good” than say “Oh, he blocked my crit burst because of a passive/RNG skill. He’s a lucky sunuvab!tch”

And about synergy, this trait have great synergy with Lingering Attunements. You attune to Earth for defensive purposes. Now you want to deal damage? Switch to Fire or Air. You will still have 5s of Stone Heart after you switch out of Earth.

Again, you’re putting words in my mouth. Where did I say I wanted a passive? No where. In fact, I said the exact opposite (and you happily cut out my examples that say as much). If you care to address my point, which is about skill and trait synergy rather than a semantic argument about situational abilities then feel free. But so far all you’ve done is completely misconstrued my point twice. You only briefly mentioned how the trait has synergy with another trait which is explicitly designed to have synergy with every attunement effect by design. This does not address how earth traits are low on synergy over all (because the trait in question is in Arcana). Nor does this address how earth skill synergy comes from quickly swapping out of earth attunement, not from sitting in it while a thief wails on you until they get bored.

You also use this Arcana trait as an excuse for the no damage part. Okay, so you have 5 seconds of crit immunity (assuming the trait isn’t buggy). Lets talk about skilled gameplay too while we’re at it. Lets assume the thief is moderately skilled and won’t just heart seeker spam you and then run around randomly (your example of a skilled thief involves a not very skilled thief since it assumes he’ll be standing around doing nothing while you swap attunements).

So lets assume an actual skilled thief. Lets assume he sees you’re in earth attunement (because he can see that). So he baits you out of earth attunement or waits for you to switch. He can then wait for the earth attunement to fall off (because again he can see that). And now you’re stuck with a window where you can be crit down. And I think we’re aware that a skilled thief can spike you down significantly in a 4 second window.

You see the problem here? The ability is dependent on you sitting in an attunement that has no synergy to sit in it. The only example of synergy you provided was on in Arcana that allows for a 5 second grace period (when the trait works correctly). How does that address the earth trait line. How does that provide a coherent play style?

Lets link it back to the example I provided that has synergy. How does this trait have the same synergy as the water trait that removes conditions when you apply regen? That trait is just as situational. But it has actual synergy. And yes, it too requires skill. If you blow all your regen skills at the same time you will be open to conditions eating you. So yes, playing well requires skill. But that is no defense for a trait that lacks synergy with traits and skills in the profession overall, my friend.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yes and while the Ele might have survived that Backstab, the Thief will know that the ele is no threat what so ever while being in Earth so can continue to attack without fear until the ele is forced to change to water for healing and which point the Thief will stealth and go back in with a BS.

Personally i think this is a rather terrible trait. Mainly because Earth offers VERY little in terms of offense. So you are sacrificing not being a threat to survive a BS at which point what do you do? you are stuck in a attunement that is no threat you are stlll taking damage. You go to Water to heal and that means you are a free target for Crits for at least 10seconds. That is enough time for several Backstabs.

I think this will just make Thief even harder to kill, as they will be expecting this will build for more power so even if they arent critting they are still doing solid damage and they will just keep attacking and attacking until you are forced to move out of Earth into Water to dodge roll heal, use other healing skills and such. Then you are an easy target again.

Personally i would rather have had a trait that increases Toughness by 50%. Or maybe have it increase Toughness by 50% of Condition Damage, seeing as its in the condition damage line it fits. This would be useable in ALL attunements as well.

First of all, Earth Attunement is supposed to be a Defensive set. Why do you insist that it needs to do superior damage as well?

Second, if you want to deal damage and still have the effects of Stone Heart, do something in your build which allows you to have 30 points in Earth and 15 points in Arcana for Lingering Attunements. That way you can switch to Fire or Air if you want to deal damage while still having the effects of Stone Heart.

Lastly, I think it’s fair to let the thief to still get a time window where he can burst you.

I think it would be an interesting test. Glass Cannon melee vs S/D condi ele in Earth.

Kyon.9735:

First of all, Earth Attunement is supposed to be a Defensive set. Why do you insist that it needs to do superior damage as well?

Second, if you want to deal damage and still have the effects of Stone Heart, do something in your build which allows you to have 30 points in Earth and 15 points in Arcana for Lingering Attunements. That way you can switch to Fire or Air if you want to deal damage while still having the effects of Stone Heart.

Lastly, I think it’s fair to let the thief to still get a time window where he can burst you.

Did i say anything about superior damage? Earth, especially Dagger/x Earth is rather terrible and is no threat. By no threat i mean no threat not that i think it should have insane burst damage or anything – it just isnt a threat to anyone. So while in that attunement, sure you wont be crit hit but you will also not be a threat. We have no indication that Lingering Elements will actually work with this trait.

Forzani.2584:

I think it would be an interesting test. Glass Cannon melee vs S/D condi ele in Earth.

Mmmmm, i have been looking into Scepter. Not quite sure how a Condition build would work. Burning is better on Dagger which is the best condition we have access to. a double heal with Scepter/Dagger with Water Trident and Cleansing Wave would be decent though.

Nageth.5648:

Kyon.9735:

This, my friend, is what you call skilled play. Being able to know when and how to use your skills and advantages is what makes a player good.

Imagine that you’re a thief and you’re trying to burst an Elementalist with Stone Heart. Right before you burst from stealth, he switches to Earth and negates your crit burst. If I was that thief I’d say that Elementalist is skilled for knowing when to proc Stone Heart.

This is better than having it more of a passive skill. I’d rather say “Oh, that Ele switched to Earth to block my burst. He’s good” than say “Oh, he blocked my crit burst because of a passive/RNG skill. He’s a lucky sunuvab!tch”

And about synergy, this trait have great synergy with Lingering Attunements. You attune to Earth for defensive purposes. Now you want to deal damage? Switch to Fire or Air. You will still have 5s of Stone Heart after you switch out of Earth.

So lets assume an actual skilled thief. Lets assume he sees you’re in earth attunement (because he can see that). So he baits you out of earth attunement or waits for you to switch. He can then wait for the earth attunement to fall off (because again he can see that). And now you’re stuck with a window where you can be crit down. And I think we’re aware that a skilled thief can spike you down significantly in a 4 second window.

You see the problem here? The ability is dependent on you sitting in an attunement that has no synergy to sit in it. The only example of synergy you provided was on in Arcana that allows for a 5 second grace period (when the trait works correctly). How does that address the earth trait line. How does that provide a coherent play style?

You see, this is why I think you want a passive trait. Stone Heart is an Active Defense which you need to use at the right place and at the right time. What you want is something that cannot be countered that doesn’t let the thief to get a time window when he can burst you.

Do you think it’s fair that a thief gets no window at all to do what he’s best at which is bursting?

And if a thief baits you out of Earth Attunement and successfully bursts you then he deserves to be called skilled and he deserves the kill. You said it yourself, the thief only has a 4 second window to burst you assuming you’ll switch back to earth as soon as it’s available. Without Stone Heart? He can burst you anytime. From Anytime down to 4 seconds, I think that’s really big.

It’s the same as waiting for your enemy to dodge twice before dropping all your bursts.

You’re not supposed to “sit in Earth Attunement” to maximize its use.

Let me give you one build as an example which will be possible because of Stone Heart.

S/x Fresh Air Stone Heart Build (x/30/30/x/x)

We all know that Fresh Air builds will always be prone to crit bursts (usually killed in seconds by thieves in PvP). Earth Attunement in Scepter and Focus are Defensive (AoE Blind, Additional Toughness, Condi Cleanse with Projectile Reflect, and Invulnerability). Stone Heart would fit this weapon set perfectly because it will allow you to survive an incoming burst and counter your enemy with your own burst.

Same thing goes with Scepter/Dagger but this is less defensive. Going into Earth just for Defensive purposes won’t be a waste at all.

This lets the naturally squishy Fresh Air build a lot more survivability if used properly.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Kyon.9735:

First of all, Earth Attunement is supposed to be a Defensive set. Why do you insist that it needs to do superior damage as well?

Second, if you want to deal damage and still have the effects of Stone Heart, do something in your build which allows you to have 30 points in Earth and 15 points in Arcana for Lingering Attunements. That way you can switch to Fire or Air if you want to deal damage while still having the effects of Stone Heart.

Lastly, I think it’s fair to let the thief to still get a time window where he can burst you.

Did i say anything about superior damage? Earth, especially Dagger/x Earth is rather terrible and is no threat. By no threat i mean no threat not that i think it should have insane burst damage or anything – it just isnt a threat to anyone. So while in that attunement, sure you wont be crit hit but you will also not be a threat. We have no indication that Lingering Elements will actually work with this trait.

Forzani.2584:

I think it would be an interesting test. Glass Cannon melee vs S/D condi ele in Earth.

Mmmmm, i have been looking into Scepter. Not quite sure how a Condition build would work. Burning is better on Dagger which is the best condition we have access to. a double heal with Scepter/Dagger with Water Trident and Cleansing Wave would be decent though.

I have played the last month in WvW with a S/D dire condition/perplexity build. 2600 toughness and 20000 HPs. With full 9+ seconds duration on bleeds Scepter 1 does insane damage because you can get 4 stacks (12 bleeds) in that time. Plus the melee has to back out when you show churn all while he bleeds. Plus with sigil changes you can proc say lightning or poison with a hit…don’t need crits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJArIIQoHAgQBCY8QD+gOseQHA-z0BBoOAk0AZSFRjtsuIas6GYKWER1eFFRrmUALKNC-w

Kyon.9735:

You see, this is why I think you want a passive trait. Stone Heart is an Active Defense which you need to use at the right place and at the right time. What you want is something that cannot be countered that doesn’t let the thief to get a time window when he can burst you.

Do you think it’s fair that a thief gets no window at all to do what he’s best at which is bursting?

And if a thief baits you out of Earth Attunement and successfully bursts you then he deserves to be called skilled. It’s the same as waiting for your enemy to dodge twice before dropping all your bursts.

Let me give you one build as an example which will be possible because of Stone Heart.

S/x Fresh Air Stone Heart Build (x/30/30/x/x)

We all know that Fresh Air builds will always be prone to crit bursts (usually killed in seconds by thieves in PvP). Earth Attunement in Scepter and Focus are Defensive (AoE Blind, Additional Toughness, Condi Cleanse with Projectile Reflect, and Invulnerability). Stone Heart would fit this weapon set perfectly because it will allow you to survive an incoming burst and counter your enemy with your own burst.

Same thing goes with Scepter/Dagger but this is less defensive. Going into Earth just for Defensive purposes won’t be a waste at all.

This lets the naturally squishy Fresh Air build a lot more survivability if used properly.

Where in the world did I say I didn’t want active defense? The entire profession is based around active defense. Everyone knows that. Look at the example I provided. Removal of conditions on active application of regen by the elementalist. That is active defense.

No where did I say “lets make this trait apply to every attunement.” I said “this trait is situational and lacks synergy with existing traits and skills”. Those are two completely different things.

I repeat. No where did I say “I want an I Win button against a thief.” You have provided no evidence of me ever saying that.

So looking at your example. You talked a lot about the air traits. The air traits have a good bit of synergy and seem to have some identity. Yeah. What about the earth traits? The only one you talked about was the gm trait. My point is, that the trait line should be more relevant than a gm trait that will help you in a situation. Again, look at the water gm I keep using as an example. There are traits that help you apply regen in that trait line which helps make that trait of condition removal viable.

Lets drill down on this earth gm trait in more detail. It has two components. One is immunity to criticals (do we have confirmation that it prevents on crit procs or does it just negate crit damage). The other part is you having to be in earth attunement. There isn’t really much synergy you can have from not being crit (unless they put in some weird traits that require not being crit for a period of time to work). This leaves the second part for the synergy, sitting in earth attunement. Okay so what earth traits do we have that provide an advantage for the elementalist to sit in earth for a period of time.

There is the minor trait that increases toughness. By extension there is a trait to increase condition damage based on your toughness. And there is the alacrity trait that reduces cool downs for earth (while not encouraging you to sit in earth it at least helps you do it if you want).

Now lets look at the earth traits that encourage you to swap out quickly.

There is a minor trait that damages and cripples on attunement. There is also stability on attunement.

So we have more toughness if you sit in earth but you have more damage and stability if you swap in and out of earth as fast as possible. And thats it.

The rest of earth applies to a random assortment of other skills and traits (e.g., auras, signets, and weapon skills overall).

Does what I’m arguing make sense now? Earth has a split personality. They seem to simultaneously want you to stay in earth and leave earth.

Forzani.2584:

I have played the last month in WvW with a S/D dire condition/perplexity build. 2600 toughness and 20000 HPs. With full 9+ seconds duration on bleeds Scepter 1 does insane damage because you can get 4 stacks (12 bleeds) in that time. Plus the melee has to back out when you show churn all while he bleeds. Plus with sigil changes you can proc say lightning or poison with a hit…don’t need crits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJArIIQoHAgQBCY8QD+gOseQHA-z0BBoOAk0AZSFRjtsuIas6GYKWER1eFFRrmUALKNC-w

The only problem i can see, no non-targetable auto attacks. They can be very helpful against Stealth users as well as the fact they can hit multiple targets. Shocking Aura would be a big loss as well. As would the loss of Drake’s Breath and Burning Speed as well as Cone of Cold. Doom isnt a crit sigil.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Forzani.2584:

I have played the last month in WvW with a S/D dire condition/perplexity build. 2600 toughness and 20000 HPs. With full 9+ seconds duration on bleeds Scepter 1 does insane damage because you can get 4 stacks (12 bleeds) in that time. Plus the melee has to back out when you show churn all while he bleeds. Plus with sigil changes you can proc say lightning or poison with a hit…don’t need crits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJArIIQoHAgQBCY8QD+gOseQHA-z0BBoOAk0AZSFRjtsuIas6GYKWER1eFFRrmUALKNC-w

The only problem i can see, no non-targetable auto attacks. They can be very helpful against Stealth users as well as the fact they can hit multiple targets. Shocking Aura would be a big loss as well. As would the loss of Drake’s Breath and Burning Speed as well as Cone of Cold. Doom isnt a crit sigil.

You guys are better than me on the Ele but I would think a good chunk of time in Earth. If thief goes stealth, and churn is down I would likely go fire and lay down some flames and aoe on the move…maybe even water to buy time to get back into earth..

but yea , it always comes down to Thieves …the bane of my existence. No matter what class I play and do well on, along comes a Thief or two to ruin my day

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJAoYhMMKgWExnBr0AQowAjHdsBAiHW4AAA-zUBBofBM1sIaslRFRjVZDT9iIqWMAMB-w
Melee zerg build?
10/30/30/0/0. PVT because wvw but it could be optimized.

D/D or D/F or staff, depending on utility/temporary roaming capabilities.
Importantly Conjure hammer/shield and tornado because you can camp earth attunement. The 3rd utility can actually be anything.

The hammer has static field so it procs stuns and the air trait. Leaping through the field is a another daze with hammer 2. Hammer 3 is a knockback. Hammer auto is of course awesome. So basically CC like a warrior and then let your whole zergs leaps do more CC but the ele doesn’t have an AOE limit.
Earth shield 3 is a daze. Earth shield 4 is an unblockable AOE pull. Earth 5 for some immunity to dmg.

Geomancers freedom, melandru and lemongrass for the near condition immunity. CC and DPS is pretty good and you have plenty of interrupts which = more damage and weakness which is more tankiness. Weakness + immune to crits is even better because you camp earth with conjures. Also, earth shield 4 gives protection so this is going to be super tanky. Then add your actual weapons for a bit of flavor.

Tornado will buff power and precision as usual but it now also spams bonus damage and weakness in an AOE.

Let these traits sink in a bit before you decide water and arcane are absolutely necessary for the ele. Even 30/30/0/0/10 could probably go almost full zerker and survive with weakness and blinds in small groups.

^^^^

Just need to test it. I love theory crafting. That sounds excellent on paper. April we can test it.

Agreed. Wish they’d open a PTR for us to test this stuff out.

Nageth.5648:

Agreed. Wish they’d open a PTR for us to test this stuff out.

Absolutely. I am still surprised there isn’t one. It helps everyone involved to have people testing the kitten out of something before it is released.

I reallyt dont think conjures (other than FGS) are really that viable. Either until they reduce the cool down or make them so we dont have charges. Of course this would require adjustments to them (minus FGS – leave as is)

You would also be losing out on a rather lot of stuff by ignoring both Water and Arcane lines.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJAoYhMMKgWExnBrEBA9AMhCDMe0xGAIPYBA-zUBBofBMHtIaslRFRjVZDT9iIqWMAMB-w

Maybe something like that could work. Changed a few things. Not too sure about the Conjures still. Wouldn’t Scepter/Dagger also be a better option considering the power?

I guess since my build is conjurer, I’ll add in a few notes.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

The 3rd utility can actually be anything.

You might want to stay away from mist form. It will cancel any held conjure. Arcane Shield is what I tend to use there. If you do use mist form, just plan around picking up a conjure or fight normally until you can recast.

D/D or D/F or staff, depending on utility/temporary roaming capabilities.

First thing I noticed about your build was that actually. It’s currently very melee focused. Having a staff on hand would be a good idea. The alternative is switching to frost bow/flame axe on occasion. I’ve used them to create sorta a mini-ac setup which works ok if normal acs aren’t available.

On the other hand, having daggers would be helpful to keep fighting in melee if someone swipes your ground conjures. That tends to happen a lot especially for hammer and bow.

Geomancers freedom, melandru and lemongrass for the near condition immunity.

That’s what I use.

stone hearth is such an awful trait. for gods sake anet, pls change all the traits that grant bonus on only a particular attunement. what is with 10% dmg increase when attuned to fire/air etc. instead of 10% dmg increase when wielding a dagger? something that will bring the bonus across ALL attunements? since u gave us long cooldowns and want us to keep rotating attunements why don’t u give us sensible traits to back it up?

change stone hearth to u cannot be critically hit when ur health is above xx% and it will make sense.

with that being said, ele traits need a major overhaul.

You always lose out on something when you go into a different line. The reason I ignored water is that this build is meant to camp earth. Swapping away means 120 less armor and no longer immune to crits. The build you proposed is a different playstyle but I would make it 10/10/30/20/0 instead. 15 air isn’t great without fresh air. Both would be viable depending on the setting but that’s good. This is just adding options. Just keep an open mind about the new stuff.

Also, I think you are underestimating weakness as it’s about 25% dmg reduction. If the lightning bolts hit as hard as scepter 2 then it’s going to be a lot of extra damage when you go 30 air. Dagger is a great mainhand power weapon so I’m not sure what you mean. I picked dagger because air 3 can interrupt plenty. Fire 3 is now an evade and some extra mobility. If you want ranged, I would go staff actually since static field and earth 4 are more interrupts without an aoe limit. In smaller groups sc/d could work for quick spike/might stacks then back to conjure melee stuff but I thought of this idea as a zerg build and sc/d is not a zerg weaponset.

As for how viable they are… they can be clunky but I’ve had good time using the hammer and it works. Really high dps and blind on auto attack for usually pve. Great stuns for pvp stuff. I haven’t played with the shield as much but I think it’s this build that makes it shine.