I’ll do a bit on the WvW D/D ele we all know and love.
Arcana:
- The vigor nerf hurts us slightly more than average(cause evasive arcana). Renewing stamina is still best in slot for the adept tier, but I’d advise everyone to get yourself an energy sigil if you don’t have one already.
- The master tier is a bit of a wasteland now that elemental attunement is a minor (kitten yeah). Both final shielding and elemental contingency seem to be looking equally strong. Which will become the preferred choice will probably depend on the prominence of boonrip and the overall threat a thief poses.
- Evasive arcana>bountiful power, make no mistake
Water:
- Soothing mist radius nerf is quite a big hit to ele in small teams. Especially since we lose lingering attunements as well, which drastically cuts the uptime of this buff on allies allround.
- Soothing ice is really kitten strong. It’s a bit of a shame we lose some cleanse now that the icd is up to 20s, but frost aura more than makes up for that.
- Soothing disruption seems like the obvious pick in the master tier. Whether the regen and vigor will be applied at the start or at the end of ether renewal, and whether it will be applied at all if the skill is canceled/interrupted will make a huge difference. If at end+not when cancelled, signet will still dominate. If at start, ER looks to take over.
- Soothing power is interesting, but gets outperformed by both other excellent grandmasters in solo or group play.
Here it gets interesting. All three other lines seem to offer some serious value. I’m currently leaning towards air for general purpose, but both others are worth glossing over.
Air:
- Zephyr’s boon is the obvious choice in adept slot
- While tempest defense + lightning rod looks very alluring, I think aeromancer’s alacrity will be the better choice here. 17s shocking, 13/27s rtl, 27s updraft are hugely impactful. Since the damage boost from tempest defense doesn’t work on updraft, even moreso.
- The grandmaster is a tough one. Lightning rod seems to be the winner. The weakness will be even more impactful now that vigor is nerfed, and the damage is very respectable.
Earth:
- Elemental shielding+soothing ice is amazing
- Geomancer’s training + – condi food + hoelbrak is snare immunity. The cdr part isn’t really that important though.
- Diamond skin looks like the best choice in gm. The fact that you have very good upfront mitigation with frost aura+protection(+geomancer’s defense) means you’ll have little trouble popping back above 90%. Too many people view this as a trait you are meant to constantly maintain. It’s more of a trait that filters out a good percentage of condis here and there, so your cleanses go a longer way.
Fire:
- Burning fire is amazing
- Pyromancer’s training is hard to judge. In theory it sounds amazing, but in practice it changes your rotation quite a bit. You’ll be in fire for a very short time, so you can be back in time to catch the 10s recharge of burning speed and ring of fire. This might hurt your overall pace. Burning speed also no longer aligns with every lightning flash, making its dramatically lower cooldown not as big a deal as it could be.
- Fire gms aren’t great. If you have a respectable amount of condition damage, persisting flames is best in slot, since ring of fire now inflicts 3(!) stacks when crossed. Meaning a moment’s negligence might cost an enemy 6-9 stacks of burning.
Yes, all other classes are getting buffed, so situationally we’re not that much better off if at all. However we were utter gods in WvW up to this point, winning 90% of 1v1s and going 2v1 with unparallelled ease. We have plenty leeway for some other classes to catch up.
(edited by Gokil.2543)
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