Guild Wars 2

Now that eles are getting a nerf and elemental attunement will be a grandmaster, most eles will take evasive arcana and lose the extra swiftness that we had from elemental attunement as a master trait.

I suggest that updraft and windborn speed get kitten buff to its base swiftness going from 10s to 15s.

Necro’s warhonr: 50% uptime swifness
Mesmer’s focus: 48% uptime
War’s warhorn: 66% uptime swiftness
Ranger’s warhorn: 50% uptime swiftness
Engi speed kit: 100% uptime
Guardian’s staff: almost perma swiftness if you stand on the symbol

ele dagger: 25% uptime
ele staff 33% uptime

A light armor user with such a low hp needs more mobility.

would also accept a 20s cd rtl as compensation.

Elementalists are not necessarily being nerfed, it will just change how evasive arcana builds are used, also ele is extremely mobile and your numbers are slightly off and misleading.

While what you are suggesting is not outrageous, ele’s have more than enough options for movement speed. Blasting lightning gives area swiftness, can trait auras to give fury and swiftness, signet of air, traiting air is 10%, Glyph of renewal and Lightning Hammer all provide options that increas movement speed.

I am all in favor of reducing the cd on RTL, but on the topic of evasive arcana vs elemental attunement, I am not sure I agree with you that we will pick Evasive over Attunement.

Think of it this way: Both are designed to be utility and assist you with survivability, but on one side, with the CD reduction on element swap to 8,7s with full Arcane trait line, you are looking at, without boon duration bonus, a Might of 21 3/4s, Regen of 8s, Swiftness of 10s and the much needed protection at 5s.

With appropriate elemental swap, you will have almost 100% uptime of Regen, slight below 100% of protection (but if combined with other sources such as auras this can go to 100%) and 100% uptime of swiftness.

Now look at what Evasive Arcana currently gives you:

- On fire: a difficult to hit 180 radius flame burst to mainly trigger kitten burning (poor).
- On Water: Cleasing Wave – about 1,5k healing and remove one condition (good, but the same can be achieved with the regen above and water trait line combo, on a shorter cooldown and without burning a dodge I might add).
- On Air: A blind.
- On Earth: Shock Wave – note that it appears to have changed from the very nice churning earth (good for might stacking) to Staff 5 shockwave, in my opinion a weird change and not sure how this would work.

At the end of the day you got 1 good (Cleasing Wave), 1 poor (Fire), 1 very situational (Air blind) and 1 that might be a poor choice as well (Earth).

The benefits of Elemental Attunement are far above those of evasive arcana… In my view, the way it stands, what ANET has done by putting both at GM level is not create a choice, but rather remove Evasive Arcana from play.

@vizarlorde

Blast lightning field: only works for staff, and you would need to drop eruption and stay there waiting around 2s for it to blast your field. Lightning field is also 40s cd… Not really viable to do if you want swiftness to run away or chase someone.

Signet of air: 25% is not really good. you will still get caught by someone with swiftness.

Lightning hammer: for real? Who brings a lighting hammer to wvw or spvp? Anet also said they are nerfing conjure hammer and bow soon.

gliph of elemental harmony: waste a heal to get 10s swiftness does not sound very good….

@azel
The problem is that from the 4 boons 3 are kind of weak. 1 stack of might is meh, eles already get good regen, swiftness alone is meh. The only thing left is protection. Now on evasive arcana, dodge on water will heal much more than the regen and you can use earth to blast a water field if playing staff for even more heal. Evasive arcana also comes with blind, cripple, bleeding and burning.

For staff: keep running while casting eruption and drop the field when you pass on it at the time it explodes.
Burning retreat forward.

I disagree, I think Elemental Attunement will be picked over Evasive arcana. You don’t really gain that much from it, I mean the heal in water is good, but fire is pretty bad and air and earth are not that crucial to ele. The blast is really good, but I don’t think it’s needed as the aspects of Elemental Attunement. At least in pvp. However, Elemental Attunement is hard to replace. The protection is crucial, the rege synergizes with water traits, swiftness helps the movement and might is always good.

Vizardlorde.8243:

traiting air is 10%

Could not resist to quote that for comedic effect.

The basic problem with EA vs. EvA and all the boons the Elementalist has, not only speed buffs has not been addressed by Anet yet: The possible removal of secondary abilities we currently get from Trait lines, such as Boon duration which right now comes from the Arcana line.
Yes, we get a new baseline attunement recharge that is about as much as spec’ing into Arcana with 4 points now, there was no hint yet where the 20% boon duration will go that is associated with those four points. Without a compensation our boons and EA will be significantly weaker and EvA will be so much stronger.
At the moment the appeal of a dodgy Ele after the Trait change is much higher than to go Glyphs/Boons/EA (+the problem that Glyphs are still way inferior to Cantrips).

PS: If you do dolly escorts in WvW with a staff Ele, you will have a hard time keeping the beast running without the 20% to Boons you have now. Another role in the meta you might lose to other classes.