Guild Wars 2

The elementalist is a versatile prefession that uses each element to cover different roles in combat: sustain dmg in fire, burst dmg in air, cleanse and heal in water, defense in earth. This versatility is balanced by locking up attunements with CD and having long CD on skills. Therefore, if the elementalist can choose to focus on one role, by specializing in that element line or try to improve its versatility by specializing in arcana.

Specializations in each element should therefore increase the elementalists efficiency on such roles and provide ways of being able to perform what they are supposed to perform in that element.

Arcana Spec in the other hand promotes a more varied playstile by making it more viable to quickly change attunements (att dance). That is why is so popular, makes the ele gameplay more fluid and action-packed while making the ele more balanced across elements.

To reflect this concept, Minor traits should make the core of the spec, they are the baseline of a spec (no options) and should reflect the main spec idea and role and make it more viable to perform it for longer (att camp). At the same time Arcana should promote the constant change of attunements and provide small bonuses when attunements are activated, but never more than each attunement have by itself.
For this, I belive it would be a good thing to make all attunement skill CD traits to be minor traits for their specs, and all the “on attunement” minor traits (current/old t2 minors) to be merged in one trait in arcana.

I also strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

So, here are some proposed changes to specs to reflect this and some explanations I hope reach the devs somehow…

Any constructive feedback is appreciated.

And sure, we don’t know how things are going to be in the end. But we do know how long it takes to fix things that get broken, and after trying to “wait and see” since betas, I think its time to propose changes before they do more dmg to the elementalist by locking it in a single spec for pve (Staff) and a single one for pvp (bunker).

Fire: – Fire is about sustain dmg. It should focus on high dmg and burns with defensive options to keep the ele in the fight to deliver its sustain.

Minors: Burning precision(Critical hits cause burning (1s, 1s icd) in fire attunement and burning last 33% longer.) , Pyromancers training (20% fire skills CD reduction part only), Burning rage
This reflects the spec main goal, deal more sustain dmg and extensive burn application.
The change to burning precision make it more useful to eles that focus on fire attunement, but working with lingering elements can extend to attunement dancers for a small period. The 1s duration and 1s icd make it viable to keep the burn but not over stack (no more condi duration bonus in trait lines)

T1: Flame Barrier (Gain 3s fire aura while attuning to fire, 100% chance), Pyromancers inscriptions (signets give 3sec fire aura, deal 10% more dmg while in fire attunement), Power Overwhelming(Gain 10% condition damage based on your power and improved condition duration)

T2: Burning Fire, One with fire(fire auras you apply last 33% longer and give 1 stack of might every 2secs), Conjurer (conjured weapons have 10 extra charges and increased attribute bonuses),

T3: Blinding ashes, Pyromancers puissance(Each skill you use while attuned to fire grants you might. Might have improved effects on you), Persisting flames

This open up different synergies and playstyles.
The change to flame barrier makes it a good option to be used by attunement dancers, while the glyphs can be used as a good source of fire auras for other aura builds. The proposed change to Power overwhelming makes it a good trait for pve (with condi stack changes) and condi builds, and it can replace the condi duration lost.
The change in Pyromancers puissance makes it a good trait by not only giving might per skill (not per spell, so works with conjures) but improving might effects could net you a dps increase equivalent of persisting flames in some scenarios, making it a good option.

Air: Air is the burst dmg element. Specialization in air should increase burst dmg and provide ways to deliver that burst. Extra procs for more dmg, bonus dmg and hard CC and mobility are what this speacialization should provide, so that the air ele can get in the fight fast, deliver its burst, and move out of harms way.

Minors: Zephyrs Speed (move 25% faster while attuned to air), Aeromancers Training (Reduce air skill CD by 20%), Weak spot

T1: Zephyrs boon, One with air, Ferocious Winds (gain 5% attack speed and 10% dmg while attuned to air)

T2: Inscriptions(Grants a boon associated with your current attunement – fire: vigor, air: haste, earth: resistance, water:regen – when you cast a glyph. Reduce Glyph Recharge by 20%, Bolt to the heart (20% dmg against foes under 33% hp), tempest defense (Surround yourself with a Shocking Aura when disabled.)

T3: Lightning rod (Disabling an enemy causes them to be struck by a Lightning bolt, Deal 20% more damage to disabled enemies), Fresh Air, Lightning Inscriptions (glyphs are instant cast)

Zephyrs speed needs to be a 25% increase. a 10% is useless even to run around in pve. 25% would make it viable, but would still keep the signet for holding the speed on other attunements and stun break.
Ferocious (as proposed here) winds make camping air attunement a good contender to use conjures with, improving the attack speed and dmg. It also improves the auto-attack capacity of scepter and staff users that are very slow…
Bolt to the Heart needs to be on T2 to have it synergy back with fresh air. But at the same time, moving the bonus dmg against disable foes to GM makes a possible great synergy with BttH and Lightning rod. this opens the possibility of high burst (BttH+LR) or more sustained bursts (BttH + Fresh air).
The changes to the buffs provided by inscriptions can make the trait more attractive to eles, opening up room for glyph uses… combine with instant cast glyphs in GM could make a great option (instant cast ress glyph? still long CD) for a buff spec ele or support ele.
The loss of electric discharge may seem harsh, but by combining it with other traits in the arcana would give the fresh air ele even more procs that would help him, if he specs in arcana.

Earth: Earth is the defence element. Specialization in earth should boost the elementalist defence and provide it with ways of being more of an attrition fighter (conditions and control).

Minors: Stone Flesh, Geomancers Training (20% CD reduction to earth skills), Geomancer’s defense

T1: Armor of earth, Elemental Shielding, Serrated stones

T2: Strenght of stone(Gain 10% Cond dmg based on your toughness, inflict bleed on critical hits), Rock solid( Break stun and Grant stability to nearby allies when attuning to earth 3 stacks for 3 secs), Ground training (You recover from crippled, immobilized, and chilled 33% faster and gain 3s protection (10s icd) when afflicted with movement impairing cond).

T3: Diamond Skin, Written in Stone, Stone Heart

Earth line is turning in a great defense line, but it lacks options to create a viable condi ele. Creating a way to cause bleeds outside of the earth attune (with bleed on crit trait) could improve that.
The changes to stability made rock solid a bad trait. It need to be improved to get its functionality back. Turning it on a stun-breaker gives it a more active playstyle, and increasing the stacks and duration a bit make it able to be used to heal, stomp or burst.

Water:Water is the healing and support line. Specialization on water gives better and more ways of the ele to heal and remove conditions and act as a healer and support.

Minors:Soothing mist, Aquamancers training (reduce water skills CD by 20%), Cleansing water

This minor trait set up sets the theme for the water element. the loss of healing ripple is compensated with 20% reduction on water healing skills, and can be regained by traiting it in arcana. Cleasing water makes more sense than aquatic benevolence, that fits more the suport playstyle that not all water eles will persuit, even more with the water line becoming more important to dmg eles.

T1: soothing ice, piercing shard, stop, drop and roll (dodge removes burn and poison)

T2: soothing disruption, cleansing wave, vital striking(gain 10% dmg while you are above 90% hp, cause vulnerability to foes you strike that are above 90% health)

T3: bountiful power, aquatic benevolence (Healing and regeneration are increased by 20%), powerful aura

This makes a clear path for support eles (auras or heals) or dmg eles.
Making stop, drop and roll remove poison also makes the line better for healing, and create good synergy with the trait in earth to decrease movement impairing condis.

Arcana: Arcana line promotes diversity. It makes the ele more flexible by granting small boons to all attunements, but for smaller periods. The idea is to grant the elementalist faster attunement swap and more versatility.

Minors: Arcane fury, Lingering elements (this works with all attunement exclusive traits), Arcane precision (20% chance on crit, works with lingering elements)

T1: Arcane Energy (Arcane skills restore 33 endurance when used and have 20% lower recharges), renewing stamina, arcane abatement

T2: elemental attunement, Arcane attunement (Creates a spell at your location when you attune to an element – previous t2 minors traits spells, earth is blast finisher, fire has 600 radius), Final Shielding (Create an Arcane Shield for 5s and recharge all arcane skills when your health drops below 25%)

T3: Evasive arcana, elemental surge, Elemental Contingency (change buffs to – Fire: vigor, Air: haste, Earth: aegis, water: resistance)

This creates the synergy to promote an arcane skill based ele. With the recharge of arcane skills (including the heal) and the recover of more endurance to compensate the lack of vigor from Renewing stamina.
The change to lingering elements is much needed to builds that want to camp a single element but need to cycle the others to get their respective utilities. Extending their traited buffs (dps or defense) for a bit longer after they left their attunement, promotes the attunement swapping this line is about.
Arcane precision, working with lingering elements and with a greater chance to trigger can make the condi ele viable, by increasing condi application and making it possible to apply more than one condition per hit based on attunement.
The new proposed trait to include the old (or current) t2 minor traits from each element would make more sense in this line and combined with evasive arcana promote an active game-play. Giving the ele more options to blast fields and provide utility for the attunement swap not only on the specific attunement traited. This would open up more builds that don’t rely on water spec for healing (getting both heals from arcana) but would still make water great for healing (with shorter CD on the evasive arcana water dodge and all other water heal skills)

A few more changes after some readings and considerations.

Elemental Contingency is a passive defense trait (buffs on hit), not only it should be able to use it with other passive traits in the line (like final shielding) but it should give buffs that can be use for defense. Aegis on earth and resistance on water are good options as they protect the ele against what those elements are themed to protect. Haste on air as air focus on defense by mobility and quick response.
The changes would make EC very powerful and a good contender to Evasive Arcana on T3. Also, would open up the buff ele spec with Elemental Attunement on Master Tier without removing the active playstyle synergy of the EA traits (Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement).

With Blasting staff being a baseline, allow the current Master Minors (effects on attunement swap) gain the increased AoE.

While I do appreciate seeing someone passionate about the Elementalist, I am firmly against any form of promoting attunement camping or creating things like “Fire ele” or “Water ele”. I personally see it as removing the complexity from the class in it’s entirety and removing the very base mechanics of how the class is meant to function.

A change like this would lead (and is currently with the fire staff PvE build) to be boring in my eyes. Thief has Initiative to manage, Mesmers have Clones to manage, Warrior has Adrenaline to manage (lol). With attunement camping you have…. nothing. In this playstyle you don’t want to swap attunements, you don’t want to do anything save 1/2/3 in fire, there’s nothing added there’s no active gameplay and no added mechanic. It’s boring and bland (glad you enjoy it but) I would hate to see developers put more effort in emphasizing attunement camping.

The elementalist is one of the few “complex” (grain of salt please) classes this game has as far as mechanics. I don’t want to see it changed to be a less complex class.

Raif.9507:

While I do appreciate seeing someone passionate about the Elementalist, I am firmly against any form of promoting attunement camping or creating things like “Fire ele” or “Water ele”. I personally see it as removing the complexity from the class in it’s entirety and removing the very base mechanics of how the class is meant to function.

A change like this would lead (and is currently with the fire staff PvE build) to be boring in my eyes. Thief has Initiative to manage, Mesmers have Clones to manage, Warrior has Adrenaline to manage (lol). With attunement camping you have…. nothing. In this playstyle you don’t want to swap attunements, you don’t want to do anything save 1/2/3 in fire, there’s nothing added there’s no active gameplay and no added mechanic. It’s boring and bland (glad you enjoy it but) I would hate to see developers put more effort in emphasizing attunement camping.

The elementalist is one of the few “complex” (grain of salt please) classes this game has as far as mechanics. I don’t want to see it changed to be a less complex class.

i agree with this. its too bad they have gm traits that support staying in attunements. Like stone heart. Fresh air was probably the best implentation of attunement focus they have. If they had traits like everytime you apply burn fire attunement is reset, or everytime you are hit for more than 20% of your health earth attunement is reset. increase the damage of sunspot by a large amount. increase the radius of earthen blast and increase cripple duration.

FrownyClown.8402:

Raif.9507:

While I do appreciate seeing someone passionate about the Elementalist, I am firmly against any form of promoting attunement camping or creating things like “Fire ele” or “Water ele”. I personally see it as removing the complexity from the class in it’s entirety and removing the very base mechanics of how the class is meant to function.

A change like this would lead (and is currently with the fire staff PvE build) to be boring in my eyes. Thief has Initiative to manage, Mesmers have Clones to manage, Warrior has Adrenaline to manage (lol). With attunement camping you have…. nothing. In this playstyle you don’t want to swap attunements, you don’t want to do anything save 1/2/3 in fire, there’s nothing added there’s no active gameplay and no added mechanic. It’s boring and bland (glad you enjoy it but) I would hate to see developers put more effort in emphasizing attunement camping.

The elementalist is one of the few “complex” (grain of salt please) classes this game has as far as mechanics. I don’t want to see it changed to be a less complex class.

i agree with this. its too bad they have gm traits that support staying in attunements. Like stone heart. Fresh air was probably the best implentation of attunement focus they have. If they had traits like everytime you apply burn fire attunement is reset, or everytime you are hit for more than 20% of your health earth attunement is reset. increase the damage of sunspot by a large amount. increase the radius of earthen blast and increase cripple duration.

The idea of my suggestions was not to push the ele into camping, but giving each spec line more synergy.

I think an ele that specs into one attunement (for instance fire) is trying to focus on one role while keeping the other attunements as utility. And this should be as viable as rotating attunements fast.
Fresh air permits the air ele to do just that. rotate attunements for utility (blasts and invul, cleanse, etc) while always going back to air for dps.

If Lingering Elements would work properly, the ele that swaps attunements wouldnt need EAtt so badly. If he traited for dmg (fire and air) he would keep those bonus out of his attunement longer, being able to rotate attunements better. Same for those speced on defense and heals (earth and water).

The proposal I tried to do is to balance each line to have more synergy with each playstyle. Be it constant swap, situational swap or camping.

I just think that each of those playstyles and their variations (support, sustain, tank, burst, auras, etc) need to be viable and have synergy for that. So that if you like to play D/F you wont get people asking you to fire camp staff or the other way around.

Examples:
PVE:
With the changes above you could play the fire staff build with fire/air/water for good sustain dps camping fire. You could also use the same specs and go D/F with fresh air without loosing too much dps. Or you could do fire/air/arcana for D/F fresh air, loosing the bonus dmg from water but getting extra dps procs when you swap attunements and better arcane skills, and using lingering elements to keep the dmg bonuses for a short period out of fire and air – improving the burst capacity by going air-fire-air. Also you could go fire/air/water with conjures and camp water for the bonus dmg of piercing shards. All those playstyles would be viable on dungeons and not very unbalanced between them.

The idea is not force a playstyle, but make them all (mostly) equally viable.
Make fire auras viable for pve and pvp, make glyphs a valid option etc…

lLobo.7960:

Fire: – Fire is about sustain dmg. It should focus on high dmg and burns with defensive options to keep the ele in the fight to deliver its sustain.

Minors: Burning precision(Critical hits cause burning (1s, 1s icd) in fire attunement and burning last 33% longer.) , Pyromancers training (20% fire skills CD reduction part only), Burning rage
This reflects the spec main goal, deal more sustain dmg and extensive burn application.
The change to burning precision make it more useful to eles that focus on fire attunement, but working with lingering elements can extend to attunement dancers for a small period. The 1s duration and 1s icd make it viable to keep the burn but not over stack (no more condi duration bonus in trait lines)

T1: Flame Barrier (Gain 3s fire aura while attuning to fire, 100% chance), Pyromancers inscriptions (signets give 3sec fire aura, deal 10% more dmg while in fire attunement), Power Overwhelming(Gain 10% condition damage based on your power and improved condition duration)

T2: Burning Fire, One with fire(fire auras you apply last 33% longer and give 1 stack of might every 2secs), Conjurer (conjured weapons have 10 extra charges and increased attribute bonuses),

T3: Blinding ashes, Pyromancers puissance(Each skill you use while attuned to fire grants you might. Might have improved effects on you), Persisting flames

This open up different synergies and playstyles.
The change to flame barrier makes it a good option to be used by attunement dancers, while the glyphs can be used as a good source of fire auras for other aura builds. The proposed change to Power overwhelming makes it a good trait for pve (with condi stack changes) and condi builds, and it can replace the condi duration lost.
The change in Pyromancers puissance makes it a good trait by not only giving might per skill (not per spell, so works with conjures) but improving might effects could net you a dps increase equivalent of persisting flames in some scenarios, making it a good option.

Air: Air is the burst dmg element. Specialization in air should increase burst dmg and provide ways to deliver that burst. Extra procs for more dmg, bonus dmg and hard CC and mobility are what this speacialization should provide, so that the air ele can get in the fight fast, deliver its burst, and move out of harms way.

Minors: Zephyrs Speed (move 25% faster while attuned to air), Aeromancers Training (Reduce air skill CD by 20%), Weak spot

T1: Zephyrs boon, One with air, Ferocious Winds (gain 5% attack speed and 10% dmg while attuned to air)

T2: Inscriptions(Grants a boon associated with your current attunement – fire: vigor, air: haste, earth: resistance, water:regen – when you cast a glyph. Reduce Glyph Recharge by 20%, Bolt to the heart (20% dmg against foes under 33% hp), tempest defense (Surround yourself with a Shocking Aura when disabled.)

T3: Lightning rod (Disabling an enemy causes them to be struck by a Lightning bolt, Deal 20% more damage to disabled enemies), Fresh Air, Lightning Inscriptions (glyphs are instant cast)

Zephyrs speed needs to be a 25% increase. a 10% is useless even to run around in pve. 25% would make it viable, but would still keep the signet for holding the speed on other attunements and stun break.
Ferocious (as proposed here) winds make camping air attunement a good contender to use conjures with, improving the attack speed and dmg. It also improves the auto-attack capacity of scepter and staff users that are very slow…
Bolt to the Heart needs to be on T2 to have it synergy back with fresh air. But at the same time, moving the bonus dmg against disable foes to GM makes a possible great synergy with BttH and Lightning rod. this opens the possibility of high burst (BttH+LR) or more sustained bursts (BttH + Fresh air).
The changes to the buffs provided by inscriptions can make the trait more attractive to eles, opening up room for glyph uses… combine with instant cast glyphs in GM could make a great option (instant cast ress glyph? still long CD) for a buff spec ele or support ele.
The loss of electric discharge may seem harsh, but by combining it with other traits in the arcana would give the fresh air ele even more procs that would help him, if he specs in arcana.

Lightning rod as a tier 3 minor is far and above broken considering it hits as hard as what mesmer have to land interrupts for and take a gm trait to have. There are better ways to make ele have a strong burst spec without making a better better melee tank spec than glassy midranged build.

Sadrien.3470:

Lightning rod as a tier 3 minor is far and above broken considering it hits as hard as what mesmer have to land interrupts for and take a gm trait to have. There are better ways to make ele have a strong burst spec without making a better better melee tank spec than glassy midranged build.

Its listed as a T3 major.
I see where it might have been confusing… I’ve listed the Minors but havent listed the majors as major traits…. just by Tiers…

Oh ok… that confused me. I like the lightning glyphs idea!!!