Guild Wars 2

some simple trait/utility buffs/nerfs to bring weak stuff to the fore

fire
burning precision – 12 icd
blinding ashes – 4 sec icd 1 sec blind
earth
rock solid – grant 2 stacks 4sec of stab to allies 600 radius
written in stone – get rid of passive effect part and cut cd in half
air
inscriptions – create a half duration glyph of storms when ever you cast a glyph. get rid of boon part.
arcane
elemental surge – increase ferocity gain by 100 cd reduction to 33%
elemental enchantment – 15% to 20%
elemental attunement – swiftness + protection 5sec to 3sec

conjured weapons – cut cd in half
glyphs of lesser + regular elementals – cut pet ability cd by 33%

staff
buff staff lightning auto 0.66 to 0.86
lightning surge – cast time to 1/2sec, cd to 6 sec
gust – cd to 15 sec

scepter
shatterstone – double cd add 1/4sec daze

focus
freezing gust – 5 target 180 radius 5sec chill
comet – remove daze add 450 knockback unblockable. increase cd by 5 sec.
gale – fix

welp that’s all folks!

The big thing with icd for ele is that they do not work well with aoe the main effect from ele. Making the icd lower not going to fix the problem in say wvw or pve it will just brake the class in spvp. So its best to make the icd longer and make it per person not per activation. So make burning precision icd 10 sec (12 sec seems a bit long but i think you made an error typing) as in it will burn any one who you land a crit on at a 33% once every 10 sec. Same with blinding ash long icd but per person not per burn effect. Same with the arcain condis on crit effect. I think that would go a long way to fixing ele and letting it have a real dmg effect in the curent condi meta.

Inscriptions need to have aoe boons when you build into them its odd that that only buff you.

Sawp buffs need to be on the same level as aura buffs and inscription buffs (there a lot of classes now who can have perma protection and swiftness drooping it to 3 sec duration on ele would kill ele’s boon effects outside of auras.)

Staff problem is aoe caps and the lack of being able to put real on hit effects due to the icd that ele has.

I cant talk enofe about icd on ele and how bad it holds the class back.
The main ones are Burning Precision, Blinding Ashes, and Arcane Precision. You can make some argument that Diamond Skin is a icd that should be per person that hitting you not just per getting hit (i am not sure if that is a programmable thing) making it work like auras.

If you make all these on hit icd say 10 sec or longer but make them icd for each person as in you can only apply this effect once on a person ever x sec but each application of one person dose not effect the other ele would have some realty aoe power in this game. Right now these on hit effects are counter productive on aoe and seem to be best on single targets effects that are controllable. They simply do not fit ele as a class.

I hate half of these changes

Your idea for the inscription trait really sounds interesting. With so many traits just giving boons I have the feeling that they don’t change the way an elementalist is played much. It is all about boons and not about unique mechanic’s. Even though I have small doubts on how this trait would work, would the storm be summoned around yourself? Or would the glyphs become ground targeted? Furthermore, could glyph of storm become too strong with summoning a second Storm?

For the conjured weapons a rework would be better in my opinion. As some have suggested more like engineer’s kitts or replace only one attunment so you could still switch. They are simply not good enough to replace all 20 weapon skills.

I’ll add a view of mine suggestion as I can’t comment on all of your suggestions yet:

When we talk about buffs, how about shock Wave? Now that guardian’s zealots embrace was buffed in speed shock Wave really feels outdated. It has twice the CD and only half of its speed. The cooldown should have been reduced a little and the speed increased to that of zealot’s embrace.

Then the next offender in my opinion is gust. This skill is so freaking slow. Just like shock Wave you have to stand in more or less point-blank range to ever get a hit. Not to mention with the big amount of stability, at least in wvw, this skill is in my opinion unless now. It should be more like mesmer great sword 5. A smaller cone of course but an instant explosion. It is named gust but doesn’t feel much like it, a better name for the current version would be mild spring breeze.

Ice spike could also use a little buff or an overhaul. As the only water skill with damage on it, it could do a litter more. As you are supposed to switch attunments you are most times better off not using it at all and switch back to fire. I wish this wasn’t a fire and forget skill which is most of the time not even noticed by your opponents. Here I have no idea so fare how to make this skill better.

And last, for lightning surge: I hate this skill with passion. It is so bad, even if I get nothing in return I would want it to be off my skill bar, I rather run around with an empty slot. 1,5 channel time for an absolute pathetic damage and a small blind. Furthermore, as the blind is not on demand it is useless.
But I have a suggestion for a new skill here:

Make it a 3 level channel skill. First level is a single target low damage blind. On level two the damage on the selected foe is increased. Level 3: a single powerful lightning strike on the target with a ¼ second daze and ¼ second later, in 180 range hit additional foes with the level one lightning strikes. For the last level I think we need an 20% increased base dmg and 20% increased coefficient to the current lightning surge.

i feel like the only change that could make ele more interesting would be making the icd based on targets. ele is all about dat aoe and traits that only effect one target per icd throw off their whole point. for example burn on crit should be burn on crit per target.