Guild Wars 2

• I still dislike the effects of attuning. If you have some, it is nice. But there are still too many problems…
  • Attacking after attuning annoys me…
  • AoE-Effects (15th trait fire and earth) around you are useless, if you are ranged and play with allies/against ranged…
  • I often have a problem with air. In many fights i have low use for the skills, the 5th-air-trait and in my current build no attunement effects (20/10/10/30/00) keep me from attunig to air.
  • I would prefer traiteffects always affecting all attunements, other than other professions my playstyle (which attunement i will mostly use) is decided through my build while with other professions the changing of the traits will give great options to change my playstyle without buildchzange
• Lingering elements… i hate it, especially after it depends strongly on the other traitline (wether are all effects granted without at least 5 points in any other traitline nor seems the earth one to be ever extended. If at least other traits (like might for each attack while attined to fire) would also be extended….
• The adept traits…
  • 2 seconds of fury after a change may are nice, but they are also often over before the stronger effects can hit… (change->auto attack before choosing the strong attack->casting attack->attack hits short after fury ends…
  • Soothing mists is great, it even has an effect on allies!
  • Flame Barrier… If not hit (in groups beeing the backline) it is useless, if hit a bit, it may is nice but not the world, if hit a lot i prefer to change to earth.
  • Zephyrs Speed… It seems to not work together with other speedincreasing effects and does wether damage nor heps you. It may is good for running from melees in fights or changing foes with dagger range, but it seem rather useless to me…
  • Stone flesh is not bad, but with enough healing power and in a group Soothing mists is better.
• Conjured Weapons. May give 4 versions of each weapons depending on the element while creating them. I would love to get a IceAxe or a EarthGS^^
• I forgot about the fifth one, may i said it already during discribing the 4 ones above…

I do agree that there should be more incentive for picking an element and devoting yourself to it, and that our minor traits are laughable.

I remember know, the 5th one was to reduce the recharge of your favourized element^^

Soo, im a little bit bored, so i will make a few suggestion, which will never be used^^

Minor Adept Traits
should work all like soothing mists, affecting allies, renewing after 3 seconds…
furthermore should Zephyr’s Speed at least have a small effect, if a stronger speedincreasment like a further increasment of 20% (swiftness 33%->40%) or so.

Minor Master Traits
should be swapped with Embers Might, Soothing Winds (bonus, not converted), Salt Stone and Elemental Attunement.

Major Grandmaster Traits
should be able to reduce the recharge of this attunement:

• Pyromancer’s Puissance: Fire Attunement recharges 30% faster and grants you 5 stacks of might
• Aeromancer’s Alacrity: Air Skills recharge 20% faster and Air Attunement recharges 30% faster. (as if the aura would be soo great)
• Rock Solid: Earth Attunement recharges 30% faster and grants stability (2s) to nearby allies when attuning to earth.
• The Attunement Recharge Rate of Arcana is reduced to 0,33%, but the recharge of your skills is also reduced for 0,33%

Special Case Water

• 10 Points (instead of cleansing water): Arcane Abatement
• 15 Points: 5% of Vitality is given as a bonus to power
• 20 Points (instead of Arcane Abatement): Grants Regeneration and Healing to nearby allies, if attuning to water.
• 30 Points: Water attunement recharge is reduced for 30% and regeneration removes a condition if granted to you or allies from you.

After reaching 80 with my ele, i change my opinion a bit, these changes wouldn’t bring my wanted changes

Trust me when i say this, you don’t want to pick an element and stick to it. It will turn completely monotonous like most other classes. Save for the mes, in PvE, all other classes are two button playstyles. Be thankful you get more than two for a 10 mins boss fight. Zzzzzz

Troponin.4081:

Trust me when i say this, you don’t want to pick an element and stick to it. It will turn completely monotonous like most other classes. Save for the mes, in PvE, all other classes are two button playstyles. Be thankful you get more than two for a 10 mins boss fight. Zzzzzz

This. This so much.

Attacking on attunement change only happens with Air, and it’s a noted bug.

Air attunement is a bit strange, but I find it very useful in D/D and S/D and even S/F. Staff air attunement may need a touch of love as it really doesn’t gel with the rest of what staff does. Like wow does the #3 suck. I can never get the kitten thing to hit. Too much control, not enough single-target damage.

The 15pt Earth trait is very useful since it applies cripple. It’s great for evading folks that have closed into melee with you. The fire one isn’t as good, but dagger elementalists certainly have no trouble making use of it.

Lingering elements doesn’t actually work with most things, and that is a problem. It works with Soothing Mist, but not really any of the other 5pt traits. It also doesn’t work with any damage bonus traits. What else does it work with? I’unno.

The 2-seconds of fury on attunement change is actually incredibly useful for stacking duration, especially if you’ve got boon duration buffs on you. Between this and Zephyr’s Boon, it’s easy to get perma-fury.

First of all I think you may have the wrong idea about the Elementalist. Even though we can specialize our traits into one or a few of the elements, this does not reflect the actual gameplay of the profession. No matter how you spend your trait points you should be swapping Attunements very frequently. This is a core mechanic of Elementalists and is not a result of how you spend your traits.

You mention the AoE effects being PBAoEs (Player-Based Area of Effects), and this is true. These effects are very useful in any build and here is why: In a Dagger/Dagger build (very powerful with surprisingly high survivability) you are in melee range and directly benefit from these effects. However even if you are using a ranged playstyle you will still often find that players or monsters will get into melee range despite your efforts to stay away from them. When this happens those PBAoEs come in very handy.

As mentioned Lingering Elements could definitely use a buff/fix so that it properly affects all the bonuses you get from attuning.

Also as mentioned, 2s of Fury can be incredibly powerful. 2s is a long time in the heat of battle. You mention that when you switch Attunements you “auto attack before choosing the strong attack”, I don’t know why you would do this. You should know exactly which skill you want to use before you switch Attunements, and you should be ready to activate that skill immediately. Also remember that you can swap Attunements during a spell cast, allowing some time for you to reposition your fingers (although this shouldn’t really be necessary…).

Flame Barrier is really more of a PvP/solo trait.

As to your mention about Zephyr’s Speed, I do agree that the Air Traits and Skills could use some work in the movement speed area. Because all of our Swiftness Skills are located in the Air Attunement, they are basically only about 54% as powerful as they would be without this trait.

Conjured Weapons changing depending on Attunement would be pretty cool, but the amount of balancing that they would have to go through would be crazy, and I for one would rather ANet spend its time fixing other areas of the Ele first.

To your comment about Attunement recharge, I honestly cannot see how you can complain about this. With 30 points in Arcana we only have a 9s recharge on Attunements which is the same as other Profession’s Weapon Swap. The difference is we have 4 Attunements while other Professions have 2 Weapons. As it is Elementalist’s already have an advantage with how quickly we can access our alternate Skills, so there is really no need to reduce the cooldown.

@Prism: Hmm, i don’t have the feeling, we understand each other too well. I swap pretty often. I know my skills very well. About the 2s fury, i was only whimming a bit ;d Furthermore is a 30 Arcana build pretty nice, but i like my 0 Arcana build and for such builds a “main attribute” with shorter recharge would be pretty nice^^.

@Troponin: Yeah, man, the ele is a sleeping pill sometimes i wake up and think it is a good time to shatter… I love my mesmer, but i wanna try to get my ele at least to lvl 80…

I am back and bored again. So i will make some suggestions about ele and other pofessions again^^.

Starting again with the minor adept traits, they still should work like the water one, but with a little difference. First, they should get a far weaker version to make them a groundeffect to the attunements. Fire will give for example only a 5% chance (after i cant balance, there is no sense in making my own suggestion to the changes in detail). The effect lasts 9 seconds and is renewed every 3 seconds while attuned takes 3 seconds to take effect after attuning. This will make lingering elements more useful, especially without 5 points in any attunement. Furthermore, this effect stacks now up to 25 stacks, but the additional stacks (alone you cant get more than 3) have a far weaker effect (while one stack of Flame Barrier gives 6%, any additional gives only 1%, reaching a maximum of 30% and only with full 25 stacks).

Next come the new minor adebt traits. These will give one stack to up to 5 nearby allies each time you get a stack. Actually soothing mist is a pretty strong effect, but pretty useless, if there is already another waterele around… The limitation of 5 nearby allies shall weaken the effect a bit while through stacking, even groups of many eles will have good results through these traits.

Than there is the special case air. First problem is the limited speedincreasement, making Zephyr’s Speed useless wit any other speed bonus. Second problem is the overpowered effect, if the speed of other allies would be effected. My idea about this would be a onetime speedincreasement of 10% only given to the ele himself and 1% increased endurance regeneration for each stack (or so). This way the ele would have even benefits, while another speedbuff takes effect.

One with Air could give a 4% speed bonus for each additional stack only to the ele himself and with a maximun of 25%. Furthermore this trait could give an additional stack each time (also to allies), producing up to 6 stacks. On with Fire could give a 2 additional stacks, producing up to 9 stacks (14% chance).

Next the minor master traits. They are not bad, but i still have some problems with them. I still prefer to make them major traits to make them chooseable. The new major traits will be the Alacrity traits and the actual master minor traits will be master major traits (make Arcane Abatement a adept trait for this). A special change is, that the Alacrity traits will now also effect the attunement itself. Water Attunement will recharge 2 seconds faster with 15 points in Waterattunement. Many traits like the Alacrity traits or the damagebonustraits (Strength of Stone) while attuned to a specific element won’t work good with changing often, so a way to reduce the recharge time of the element with benefits in the choosen traitline would be a great way to buff one element and switch to other elements at the same time.

solving, not rdy yet

Some small trait ideas: I really like Burning Fire and Soothing Wave, I would love such traits for earth and air. So here some changes to give two additional traits.

• Salt Stone: You deal +20% damge to bleeding foes while attuned to earth.
• Strength of stone: Armor of Earth, Earth Shield and Signet of Earth inflict bleeding. You gain 2 seconds of protection to yourself or allies if you grant stability.
• Air Training (now adept trait): Lightning Flash, Lightning Hammer, Signet of Air and Tornado grant you 2 seconds of fury.
• Bolt to the heart (now master trait): 10% higher critical hit chance to foes with less than 66% health and 20% more damge to foes with less than 33% health while attuned to air.

Some suggestions to playing with many players of the same profession: This cases may are not happening too often, but non-stackable (trait-)buffs are a pain for groups with identical professions. One example above is soothing mist, which is less effective on more than one ele in the group. My idea to this would be a stack up to 5 and with weaker effect for additional stacks again.

Spotter could increase Precision up to 20 to each additional stack with a maximum of +150 with 5 stacks, Same for Empower Allies and Strength in Numbers. I mean +150 is may a lot, but you need 5 rangers with spotter for this and all 3 of these traits would give +210 (to different attributes) and need 2 traits less for this.

Furthermore there other effects. The guardians virtues won’t stack, but i dont see a problem there, they only have to time it. Battle Presence is a great trait, but it is already problematic through the non-stacking with itself (bugmark on the wiki), two of this traits would create a pretty useless grandmaster trait. I would really wish to make this also stackable, it may won’t happen often to be in a group with 5 guardians with this trait, but it still can happen.

Last i think about Auras. They should also stack up to 5 and have a weaker additional effect for each additional stack. It may wont happen often, but with enough fire or chaos fields it can happen fast to gain two or more auras of the same kind for a short time. Same goes for more than one Ele with powerful aura. Btw, when i talk about auras, i talk also about Chaos Armor and Arcane Shield. I would like to see these 6 effects officially stated as auras (although powerful aura shouldn’t effect these two non-element auras).

Troponin.4081:

Trust me when i say this, you don’t want to pick an element and stick to it. It will turn completely monotonous like most other classes. Save for the mes, in PvE, all other classes are two button playstyles. Be thankful you get more than two for a 10 mins boss fight. Zzzzzz

The point is that there should be a choice. Currently, there is no choice, you are forced to attune swap often, and consequently, virtually forced into 10+ arcane.

IMO putting points into an element should decrease that element’s CD, with arcane continuing to decrease all elements’ CDs.

eg: for 30 Fire, 10 air, 20 water, 10 arcane, CDs would be:

• base CD 12sec, -1sec to all elements due to 10pt arcane.
• Fire 8sec CD (-1sec 10pt arcane, -3sec 30pt fire)
• Air 10sec CD (-1sec arcane, -1sec 10pt air)
• Earth 11sec CD (-1sec arcane)
• Water 9sec CD (-1 sec arcane, -2sec 20pt water)