Guild Wars 2

Allie Murdock.8152:

3 things you would change

1. Rework conjured skills
2. Rework/add new elite skills
3. Rework Glyph of Elemental Power and add stunbreaker from there to Lightning Flash

pmnt.4067:

I’d remove that filler minor traits. Water is the only line where you get 6 meaningful traits for 30 points. Either make Elemental Attunement or that 15-point spells or Elemental Attunement a baseline class mechanic. I’d favour the first one, because it would free 4 trait slots.

Changes in detail:

• The on-attunement spells (15 point minors: Sunspot, Electric Discharge, Earthen Blast, Healing Ripple) are part of the attunement mechanic.

• Lingering Elements and the 5 point minors (Flame Barrier, Zephyr’s Speed, Stoneflesh) are deleted. Soothing Mist is powerful and can be shifted further into the Water tree.

• new 5 Point Traits: Gain <element> aura for 2 seconds (fire: 5s or buff fire aura) when you attune to <element>. Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding need to be toned down (1-2s fury/swiftness/protection). Arcane Fury can stay.

• new 15 Point Traits: <element> training: Reduce the recharge of <element> weapon skills by 25%. Arcane 15: Elemental Attunement.

• The 25 point traits could stay. I’d shift Bountiful Power from Water to Arcane to make place for Soothing Mist. Bountiful Power makes more sense in the Arcane line, because it’s the boon duration line and already offers Elemental Attunement and Arcane Fury for synergy with Bountiful Power. Also, Arcane Precision is not a loss.

With that changes elementalists could run 30/30/10 specs and choose two of: Persisting Flames, Fresh Air, Diamond Skin, Powerful Auras/Cleansing Water, Evasive Arcana without the cost of wasted minor traits. Or even a 15/15/15/15/15 stance dancer.

Agree with most of this especially the on-attunement swap traits. I always felt most of the problems with build diversity is how elementalist minor traits besides arcane except lingering elements to be completely useless.

Why is it that the elementalist a supposed jack of all traits <- pun
Is stuck with 20 arcane to be able to use all his skills effectively
Can only choose direct damage for dps because we don’t have access to confusion, fear, torment, poison and only mediocre accesibility to bleeds.
Why is it that our hp and armor are so low and our healing power got nerfed because it prevented others from killing us… Now we have nothing to prevent us getting killed direct damage when opted for only gives us mediocre damage and it leaves us completely and utterly defenceless. (from a D/D perspective)

So I switched to S/F in pvp and it worked out quite alright even though I do not like the skill 4 and 5 of the focus fire or that the 4 on focus water doesn’t do any damage whatsoever.

I would remove the cricle from Meteor Shower.

Assuming that Collaborative Development is actually going to be listened to this time instead of blithely ignored like everything else when CDI was still going on:

1: Revert all changes discussed in the February Ready up show. All of them. Except probably the Signet of Restoration reversion. Maybe even that. The only one that is probably worth keeping is Armour of Earth CDR to 75 seconds.

• Evade frames on Burning Speed takes the risk out of using the skill. 15 in Air or Earth already negates the effect of Blind or Aegis on it; no need to make a strong skill even stronger by taking the risk out. It’s dumb and you can bet it will lead to imbalance in the future if Ele is buffed. Then things ancillary to Burning Speed evade frames get nerfed and we get the current state of Dhuumfire-less Necromancer. Stop it.

• Blast Finisher on Frozen Burst is un-necesary and doesn’t fix the Elementalist Sustain problem. Which smart fox was it that suggested that idea? There are no Water Fields to blast, only Fire. The only benefit this gives Elementalist is more Might stacks – of which D/D elementalist can easily retain 15+ of. Elementalist damage was never in question here – except in the Dagger and Scepter autoattacks for Fire and Water.

• 3 Seconds of Regeneration on Water Trident doesn’t increase Elementalist Sustain. For 2 reasons:
  • 1: You presume that Scepter/X Elementalist runs 30 in water for Cleansing Water for the Condition cleanse. They don’t, if they want to keep their damage. 20-30 in Air, 10 in Earth for Stone Splinters, 20 Minimum in Arcana for Elemental Attunement. Anything else is too weak or too suicidal. You will note with some use of arithmetic that there are insufficient trait points to get Cleansing Water. Which sucks now, by the way, thanks to the ICD.
  • 2: Water Trident is a strong heal and due to its slow travel time and minimal AOE will almost always be used selfishly. Elementalists wanting to support allies will run Staff, not Scepter. Trying to make a half-way house leaves everyone destitute.

• Armour of Earth CDR to 75 seconds is probably the only change worth keeping. Even with that, 60 seconds should be aimed for. Triple Cantrip Ele died when you moved most of the stunbreakers elsewhere (CF, LF). Armour of Earth was hardly the offender also; it was Ether Renewal → Mistform + Water attunement Healing Ripple + Evasive Arcana dodge.

2: Give Elementalist an incentive to finally put less than 20 points into Arcana by moving Elemental Attunement to EITHER the 5 point Minor or 15 point Minor slots, and making the boons gained selfish. For Elementalist to be able to share the boons gained, make a new trait called Powerful Boons. This would do 2 things:

• Let the Elementalist put less than 20 into Arcana at the cost of group support. Which is fine, because Powerful Boons would still find a place in Staff support builds. The point is to let D/x and S/x run less, or DPS Staff run less points in Arcana
• The freed slot would allow build diversity by finally letting traits other than the Big 3 of Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana be taken. This could also justify nerfing Elementalist Vigor uptime to 50% as it is for every other class – but only if Elemental Attunement is reduced in point requirement.

3: Stop nerfing Water and Arcana to “encourage” Elementalists to move points out of it. The point is that Water and Arcana are pretty much the only good defensive lines for Elementalist and with the most general utility. Nerfing it just nerfs Elementalist in general without generating new builds because the resulting builds are far too glassy to survive.

• If you really want Elementalist to move out of Water and Arcana, give defensive utility to Fire in the form of defensive counterpressure, offensive utility to Air in the form of more interrupts, and control utility to Earth in the form of Weakness application, knockdown procs, and CC mitigation. Examples as follows:
  • Fire, Adept, Major: Blast Finishers in Fire Fields Burn enemies for 2 seconds and cleanse a Condition. That’s defensive counterpressure. Pressure enemies while defending yourself.
  • Air, Adept, Major: When you Interrupt a foe, that foe gains 5 stacks of Vulnerability. That’s offensive utility. Playing well and interrupting an enemy should be rewarded. This has synergy with Tempest Defense as well, which has been utterly sidelined since Fresh Air.
  • Earth, Master, Major: Inflicting Cripple or Immobilise on a Weakened foe causes 5 stacks of Vulnerability and 1 second of Knockdown. That’s control utility. Alternatively; Cleanse up to 3 snares (Immobilise, Chill, Cripple) when you inflict a snare of your own (Immobilise, Chill, Cripple).

TL;DR: Elementalist will never move more points out of Water and Arcana until the other trait lines gain the defensive and general utility required for Elementalist to survive.

Mbelch.9028:

Dorid.1793:

Increase base HP (15k like mesmer).
Weapon swap button out of combat.
Attunement cooldowns – flat 10 seconds and no further reduction by Arcana.

What a terrible suggestion on increasing attunement cooldowns. What game do you play?

I want arcana to affect up to 30 points again, so that now, people who invest up to 30 points are at 6-8 seconds.

I’d like there to be a grandmaster aclarity trait which decreased all weapon skill cooldowns.

Past that, why not fix our high CD utilities.

Where did I wrote I want to increase Attunement cooldowns?
I want them to be flat 10s like with 30 Arcana now, and put in arcana something more useful.
If you need to swap Attunements more frequently than 10s then I’m sorry for you.
Try maybe warrior and swap weapons on 5s CD.

Dorid.1793:

Mbelch.9028:

Dorid.1793:

Increase base HP (15k like mesmer).
Weapon swap button out of combat.
Attunement cooldowns – flat 10 seconds and no further reduction by Arcana.

What a terrible suggestion on increasing attunement cooldowns. What game do you play?

I want arcana to affect up to 30 points again, so that now, people who invest up to 30 points are at 6-8 seconds.

I’d like there to be a grandmaster aclarity trait which decreased all weapon skill cooldowns.

Past that, why not fix our high CD utilities.

Where did I wrote I want to increase Attunement cooldowns?
I want them to be flat 10s like with 30 Arcana now, and put in arcana something more useful.
If you need to swap Attunements more frequently than 10s then I’m sorry for you.
Try maybe warrior and swap weapons on 5s CD.

I do need to swap attunements frequently, and 9 seconds isn’t enough. I feel like 6 second cooldowns is perfect, especially with how kitten susceptible to chill we are.

You can remain sorry for me, but I’ll continue my efficient use of our class mechanic, and defend it so it isn’t ruined by unfounded “suggestions”.

Bring back the old Evasive Arcana or more blast finisher.

Way back when, the golden era of Ele bunker, Evasive Arcana gave blast finisher at the end of each dodge. Anet consider this a bug with the reasoning that they don’t like self-initiated combo (pfft), but now they give us blast finisher heal.

I do agree that at that point it needs to be tweaked down, but self-initiated combos bring a lot of diversity to the game. With Evasive Arcana, you traded dodge for combos which brings different style of play and it was sooooo much fun.

The new heal is the step in the right direction.

We never had shorter Attunement CD than 10s.
Before the December Patch we had 16s CD without Arcana and 10s with 30 points in Arcana. Now we have 13s without Arcana and still 10s with 30 points in Arcana.
IMO 10s is more than enough on our Attunement CD, thats why I want it to be flat 10s and put on Arcana somthing more useful like -1% per point in Arcana recharge on our weapon skills .

Personaly I only spec 20 points in Arcana for Elemental Attunement right now. 10 points is enough for Renewing Stamina or Blasting Staff depending on build.
So maybe add to the list Elemental Attunement as base line for personal buffs and add trait that allow to share those boons.

I agree that Elementalist suffer most from chill. No other profession mechanics suffer so much from this condition. This should be changed so our class mechanic be put on par with weapon swaps (no chill penalty) for other professions.

Food for Thought

• What if attunement cooldowns began when you switched to an attunement rather than when you switched away from an attunement?

dukevonart.2691:

Food for Thought

• What if attunement cooldowns began when you switched to an attunement rather than when you switched away from an attunement?

this idea, i vote for this

The problem with blast finishers, this means nothing due to our total lack of not only fields but finishers. What can we do? Get Might and thats it. Cleansing Wave should drop a 3-4second water Field that grants Regen for 1 second every second. This then might even make the cool down it has worth it.

New Finishers:
Burning Speed = Leap Finisher
Fire Grab = Projectile Finisher
Ride The Lightening = Leap Finisher or Blast Finisher
Updraft = Blast Finisher

we need more combo options other than Might from Fire Field blasting. Ride The Lightening could be either a Leap or Blast Finisher, the blast could be done from the area you leave it or from the impact when hitting someone.

New fields:
Ring of Earth = This should have Poison added and drop a Poison Field
Frozen Burst = Ice Field
Cleansing Wave = Water Field

1) reduce the long cooldowns on skills :
- arcane shield 45 seconds.
- armor of earth 60 seconds.
- Ride The Lightning revert immediately the nerf.
- improve focus skills.
- glyph of storms 40 seconds :
earth,bleed and blind foes and give stability to allies.
water,chill foes and heals allies.
air stun foes and give them weakness, retaliation to allies.
fire, good damage + burning to foes,fire shield to allies.
- glyph of renewal break stuns 120 seconds cooldown.
- arcane power 30 secs cooldown.
- lightning flash break stun again.

2)rework traits :

fire :
- flame barrier.
- burning precision,each time you give burning to foes you and your allies gain 1 might stack,no icd.
- sunspot more damage + burning.
- fire’s embrace, when you use a signet/glyph/arcana you rip enemy boons and burn foes for the duration of the buff ripped.
- one with fire when you give burning to foes you remove his boons 1 sec icd
- rework fire shield in general.

air :
- Zephyr’s speed increase speed in and out of combat or replace this trait"when you attuned to air blind nearby foes".
- One with Air,it’s not a bad trait,need only a longer superspeed duration 3/4secs.
- Inscription when you use a glyph you heals for x and gain boons bla bla.

earth :
-elemental shielding reduce aura recharge by 20%,each aura you active it gives 3sec protection.
-earthen blast , blast finisher + 3 stack of bleeding or torment.
-geomancer’s freedom decrease the condi duration and should give regeneration or protection.
-diamond skin 70%-80% of life immune to conditions,or conditions duration on you decreased by 50% or more,or you are immune to condition when attuned to earth.

water :
- shard of ice is useless no one use it. create a water field when you drop below 50% can be blasted only 2 times and last for 3 secs. icd 30 secs.
- stop drop and roll 5 sec icd.
- powerful aura master trait.
- healing ripple should be part of the class and shouldn’t be a trait.

arcana :
- merge arcane mastery + arcane energy. adept trait.
- lingering element reworked or replaced with elemental attunement.
- arcane precision 50% of chance.
- arcane retribution useless.
- elemental surge increase the immobilize to 2sec from 1sec.

3) do something to conjurer weapons and signets.

conjurer -> engi’s kit,easy.

signet better passive and better active.

signet of water passive cure a condition every 5/10 secs.
signet of water active immune to conditions for 5 secs or remove 3+ conditions from you and your allies.

signet of fire passive increase condition duration by X%.
signet of fire active damage and burn foes for every boons they have, for example 1 boon = 500 damage etc, 2 boons 1k damage,etc

signet of air passive movement speed 25% or more.(break stun)
signet of air active create a blind field like black powder.

signet of earth passive decrease condition duration to you or convert X% of precision/tought/vitality/etc to condition damage
torment,bleeds and immobilize your foe.

Mbelch.9028:

Dorid.1793:

Increase base HP (15k like mesmer).
Weapon swap button out of combat.
Attunement cooldowns – flat 10 seconds and no further reduction by Arcana.

What a terrible suggestion on increasing attunement cooldowns. What game do you play?

I want arcana to affect up to 30 points again, so that now, people who invest up to 30 points are at 6-8 seconds.

I’d like there to be a grandmaster aclarity trait which decreased all weapon skill cooldowns.

Past that, why not fix our high CD utilities.

I love that idea!

With conditions in mind:

Traits:

Fire:
Flame Barrier – Increase chance to 50%
Burning Precision – Increase Proc chance to 50%
Fire Embrace – Increase duration to 5 seconds, Burning 2stacks 1 second, No ICD
One With Fire – Change: Gain Might(10seconds) on burning a target, 5second ICD
Sunspot – Add 3second Burning to the 5 targets

Earth:
Earthen Blast – Add 2-3stacks of Bleeding, 5 seconds duration
Serrated Stones – add chance to inflict bleeding on Critical hits, 33% Chance. Damage increased to bleeding foes from 5% to 10%

Hey guys, please vote for Elementalists to be considered for a balance pass in the next CDI round:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Vote-for-the-Profession-Collaborative-Development/first

I would increase vitality and toughness. Will reduce attunement to 9 seconds max and link all skills CD to arcane. Reduce setting skill CD.

Change elementalist active defense from healing to cantrip (reduce CD) and Auras. Auras are our thing, I see no reason why there are so few.

go back to the original design of the ele.
fire: high aoe dmg
water: healing
air: high single target dps
earth: defense.

Bring back the defense in earth and in all weapons.

style.6173:

The problem with ele is actually the player base. Let me explain. There are some fantastic eles out there. I’ve seen some in matches recently. In general though, these are few. Why? It is because other classes are easier to play.

So, the challenge… How to make the class more accessible to more people without making it completely OP to those who are already good eles.

If you have to put in 3 times the effort for 1/2 the result as the other class then the class has a problem. Difficulty for the sake of it, is a waste. If you enjoy feeling like a pro compare to everyone else, handicap yourself, but don’t use the excuse that complexity is the issue why elementalist has a problem.

The issue with the ele isn’t the player base, the issue is the fact that the class was poorly design or the design of the ele was not improved to take into account the changes in the game.

To put it in 3?
1. Better fire attunement focus
2. Better glyphs
3. Less trait dependent healing.

3 things I would change:

1. Increase base HP
2. Rework all non-Arcane trait lines; up to 20 pts, they should have many options that apply to all attunements.
3. Place more finishers on Evasive Arcana. Ex: Whirl on water; Leap on Fire; Leap on Air. Return the fun and unique dodge/combo gameplay it had from release, but without the raw power of 4 blast finishers.

though you would change 3 things, i came here to suggest a complete rework for elementalists, im talking giving it a complete other style.

My biggest issue with the ele ATM is the long windups on their attacks. The starting animations are long, the attacks themselves have delayed effects, and it makes playing the ele quite difficult. You essentially have to play the class 4 seconds into the future.

If the activation times and animation times for ele skills were tweaked to be a bit faster, the class would be much stronger.

Disclaimer – only been playing Ele (mainly D/D) for about 3 months so I missed out on the glory days. My three things:

Review Skill Cooldowns
D/D burst attacks such as Fire Grab are skills shots and require comboing/timing so they can be difficult to land. I actually really like that, but missing and being locked out for another 45 seconds is too punishing in my opinion.For the amount of work that goes into landing these attacks they should be on shorter cooldown or do more damage.

Attunement Cooldown
Scrap the attunement cooldown reduction from the Arcana trait line and give Eles a lowered base attunement cooldown. Not sure what the cooldown should be, but no more than 10s.

Auras as active defense mechanic
Auras are a great mechanic (an argument could be made to make them more potent), they make people think twice about attacking you and punish people who just spam their attacks on you. But they don’t live up to their potential because we can’t use them often enough.

Increase the number of ways we can access Auras. E.g. through the 5 or 15 point minor traits. You could even repurpose the Arcana trait line passive to give additional duration to the Auras themselves OR their effects.

about auras, i would like the aura GM trait in water tree to moved to Master, i mean , sure it is awesome to give allys aura effecs etc, but it isnt worth 30 point investment, u make up w the other GM trait way better

attunement cooldown starts when switching IN not when switching out (someone had that idea before and it is ridicilously(<-may have written this wrong) an awesome idea)

focus fire skills need rework

utilitys need shorter cd

Insanity.5174:

-geomancer’s freedom decrease the condi duration and should give regeneration or protection.

Why not just move it down to adept tier then and make it just like dogged march. I really don’t get why warriors can have access to a better trait than eles just by investing 10 points in defense.

1. Reduce cooldowns globally. This goes for Attunement swap (especially), weapon skills, utilities and elites. Any advantage given to us by having access to more skills is totally squandered by our ridiculous cooldowns.

2. Increase inherent defensive mechanics and make them less dependent on traiting. One example is making a selfish version of Elemental Attunement a baseline effect when swapping Attunements; Elemental Attunement could then be changed to apply the boons to allies. Another example is improving access to Auras across all weapon sets, improving/modifying the effect of Fire Aura, and making Fire’s Embrace an Adept trait. Yet another example is adding more condition removal to Fire Magic (for example, remove a condition from yourself when you apply burning.) The ultimate goal should be eliminating the necessity of 15 Water/30 Arcana.

3. Improve lackluster traits. Water and Arcana offer so much defensive value that it’s hard to justify speccing deep into Earth (which is actually a great trait line), Air and especially Fire. Traits like Flame Barrier, Sunspot, One with Fire and Pyromancer’s Puissance seriously need reworks, and could use some indirect defensive value (for example, condition removal.) Other trait lines also suffer from having useless, underpowered or very situational traits, such as One with Air, Soothing Winds, Lingering Elements, and Arcane Precision.

i think Auras could really be improved.

1) Combine Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding into one 10 point trait. Leave it in Earth.

2) Add Air 10point trait that increases Aura duration by 50% and decreases cool down by 20%

Shocking Aura – Remove the ICD and make it inflict 5 seconds Weakness each time they are stunned. Make it so that ranged attackers are stunned as well

Frozen Aura – Increase the Damage reduction to 25%. Remove the ICD and each attack grants either 5seconds of Regen or 2 seconds of Protection.

Magnetic Aura – Inflicts 5 seconds of Cripple on anyone that attacks while it is up, ,200 range so it affects ranged people as well

Fire Shield – first rename to Fire Aura as it is one. remove the ICD of the Burning Procs.

MonMalthias.4763:

Assuming that Collaborative Development is actually going to be listened to this time instead of blithely ignored like everything else when CDI was still going on:

1: Revert all changes discussed in the February Ready up show. All of them. Except probably the Signet of Restoration reversion. Maybe even that. The only one that is probably worth keeping is Armour of Earth CDR to 75 seconds.

• Evade frames on Burning Speed takes the risk out of using the skill. 15 in Air or Earth already negates the effect of Blind or Aegis on it; no need to make a strong skill even stronger by taking the risk out. It’s dumb and you can bet it will lead to imbalance in the future if Ele is buffed. Then things ancillary to Burning Speed evade frames get nerfed and we get the current state of Dhuumfire-less Necromancer. Stop it.

• Blast Finisher on Frozen Burst is un-necesary and doesn’t fix the Elementalist Sustain problem. Which smart fox was it that suggested that idea? There are no Water Fields to blast, only Fire. The only benefit this gives Elementalist is more Might stacks – of which D/D elementalist can easily retain 15+ of. Elementalist damage was never in question here – except in the Dagger and Scepter autoattacks for Fire and Water.

• 3 Seconds of Regeneration on Water Trident _doesn’t increase Elementalist Sustain

This is a pretty selfish view of the changes. They aren’t meant, besides burning speed, for solo purposes. They are for team play, which most of the game revolves around.

1: Increased HP pool. I run around 3200 armor and 600 healing power roaming in WvW, yet I can still die instantly to some thief burst or engi burst. If I survive by blowing big cooldowns, I still fight to match damage output/ heal to win a fight, even when their big offensive skills are on cooldown. Something is fundamentally wrong here. Eles have a poor way of “punishing” people for poor berserker play. I think an increased HP pool will open but more build diversity.

2: Give them a broader variety of conditions. If an ele wants to spec for condition damage, we soley rely on burning and bleeding unless we completely gear for, not more condition damage or duration, but for more conditions(sigil of doom/torment/perplexity runes), which makes our inherent condition pressure weaker than other classes(except guardian who suffers similiar problems).

3: Seriously remove/rework useless weapon abilities, utilities and traits. There are just some which are meaninglessly underwhelming. Staff autoattacks are really clunky, and it’s damage relies on players or enemies standing still for X seconds. Dagger autoattacks, minus lightning whip are all pretty awful. Focus is in dire need of a rework. It has nice defensive potential, but it is peppered with terrible abilities that offer very little. Other people are covering utilities and traits more in-depth.

Overall, we’re forced into cantrips and water/arcana not because they are overpowered, but because everything else is really underwhelming. It just feels better to go into arcana, and it just feels better to have healing/condition removal by swapping to water attunement. The other choices don’t offer much in terms of a good flow or feeling without sacrificing a huge amount of utility. Why not let us retain what feels good about the class innately while giving us options for flavor and utility on top of it instead of making us choose between the two.

-edit- Toughness/Armor mistake.

I Highly doubt you run with 3,600 toughness. That would mean you would have more than 5,000armor O.o

I think the attunements needs to be reworked in what they are for:

Fire – Condition Damage
Air – Direct Damage, Mobility
Water – Healing Support Conditions (Chill, vul, etc)
Earth – Pure Defense

Air is pretty much fine the way it currently is, could do with damage tweaking and increases. Fire should be pure condition damage, Keep Burning Speed and such. Just tweak how the conditions is applied. It should not be 10second burning, make it 2 stacks of Burning for 5 seconds. Same damage but quicker damage done.

My Top Three:

(1) An elite that is NOT a pet, and does NOT take away my weapon skills (i.e. no kits, no transforms)

(2) Raise our base HP to match Mesmer/Engi/Ranger

(3) Utility skill reworks on Signet Actives and all Glyphs. I suspect these are the least used skills in our tool chest.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just FYI – We’ll be rolling out another round of Collaborative Development soon. I’ll be working with the balance designers to help get some well-rounded feedback from you all. Start thinking about what 3 things you would change, and keep an eye out for the CDI thread!

Off the top of my head:

1) Ride the lightning cool down reverted to 20 second cool down whether hit or miss. Compare it to warrior rush/sword leap…this needs to happen. Ele has low survivability comparatively to stealth/warrior regen and armor. Ele can still then trait into air for reduced cool down to 16 seconds on lightning skills.

2) Water field for dagger skill 5. Once again, melee class, low survivability there, and more combos for ele to survive.

3) Lower cooldowns on elementalist utilities. Glyph of storms, armor of earth, mistform, etc. all have insanely long cool downs.

4) Signets – improve the active effects to be worthwhile to use.

5) Fire trait line…the fire aura on signet use moved to adept tier…would encourage more build options involving signets. This traitline in general sucks because elementalists have to trait so much into water/arcane.

6) Conjured weapons – give more charges? Unlimited use during the 60 second time they are out? They pretty much suck in PvP/WvW. They’re decent in PvE (lightning hammer)

7) One with air trait – improve it to 5 seconds of super speed…then it will be a trait people would take and would give elemenatlists more survivability when specing into an offensive traitline.

It’s an interesting trait but at 1 second of super speed it’s currently useless.

8) As someone above mentioned, remove the ICD on burning procs on fire auras. Would make those a lot more worthwhile.

Just some ideas off the top of my head from reading people’s suggestions on forums and some of my own

More health, less cooldowns.

I’d love a bar like necros and warriors have…it could fill up in the same way and have different effects depending on attunement. It could function like added health in earth, and bonus damage in fire, quickness in air, condi clearing or something in water. For balance, maybe certain attunements drain faster…opens up new possibilites for related skills. Nice way to add back mobility, DPs, and survivability to the class. Could also reduce need for attunement cd’s…which also suck.

I mainly run staff and it has potential, but needs reworking. Yes…it has some great aoe and cc. But other classes mitigate those things easily. And once I drop my heavy CDs, all I have left are pathetic auto skills or weak aoes that enemy’s simply walk out of. The aoe needs to be quicker, and require less dependency on cc. Also…its great we have so many skills, but honestly some are useless the way they function.

I used to run d/d…just got tired of being on the front line and getting slaughtered.

3 needed things

1) RTL revert to 20…its a gap closer a full melee weaponset can t live without….i know 20 sec cd it allows ele to kill thieves….and that is the point of a counterbuild….

2) Strong CD reduction

3) give something in return to equipment nerf you are going to make that “surprisingly” will hit ele the most. (its a direct nerf we know it……boon runes+ crit damage + celestial/assassin …..what a coincidence ALL of them are from the most used ele roaming builds).

three things? hope that’s what they consider ok to start, the work to do on this class is much much more, but I will play along.

1) reward smart playing. Make boons, attunements recharge rate, speed, power and defense related to how good you play. Think at it like something similar to MK/Street Fighter combo system.

2) extreme CD reduction on…everything

3) give us back mobility (in particular: revert RTL back to its original form)

Here is what I’ll post in a hypothetic CDI thread :

What defines an elementalist ? Attunement → We have 20 skills where others professions have only 10.
Necessary balance : low power scaling of each weapon skill, low damage auto-attack and lowest pool of HP/armour.

Even though each attunment has its own speciality the way the elementalist is designed means we cannot truly specialize.

What if I want to specialize and be an opener, a conditionmancer or a glass canon ?
Nope : each of your skill that is specialized in something (eg : Dagger earth auto-attack) is subpar compared to other classes (eg Necro scepter auto-attack).

Solutions : redesign the traits lines and some weapon skills.
- Weapon skills : evade on fire rush is an excellent idea. This encourage skillful play. More survivability is good.
- Arcane line : should not change much. Investing in this line means we switch often.
- Other lines : some traits should encourage us to STAY in the specified attunement and punish us in terms of damage/effectiveness when we switch.
In other word : traits in attunements lines should have option for bonus “on swap” and options for bonuses “on stay”.

Gameplay effect :
1) Increases build diversity : we now can have condition ele, glass canon eles etc…
2) Does not make the ele OP : you inflict bleeding like mad ? Well, if you swap to water for healing you’ll have a temporary penalty to your condition damage as compensation.
3) You still retain some of the elementalist utility (you can still cast cleansing wave or place fire fields, but on longer cd or whatever).

Im basing this on playing an Ele since day 1, along with a
warrior, thief and engineer.

1) Increased survivability. Do events like Jormag or Teq on a warrior
and than try an Ele. Same thing for dungeons. Too much regen and
not enough burst heal to compensate for the lowest HP and armor
in game.

2) The ability to hotkey weapon sets OUTSIDE of combat. This would make
it easier to switch depending on the situation. NOTE: We can do this already
without a hotkey, just not as easy, so its not like this is something game breaking.

3) As mentioned above, make the other weapons besides D/D and Staff viable.

4) For as weak as Eles are, increase there range to 1500

5) INCREASE MOBILITY! My lord, my warrior and thief and 5x the mobility of an
ele and neither need it as bad as an ele (warrior high HP and thief can stealth
when things go bad). Outside of Fiery Greatsword to aid in movement and a
900 range teleport, they have nothing. You can argue that Necros have the same
problem, but they have the highest HP pool in game. Ele has the lowest, so there
should be more compensation in escape, map travel, game closers, etc (once again
look at the warrior and thief).

Thunderbrew.7034:

Im basing this on playing an Ele since day 1, along with a
warrior, thief and engineer.

1) Increased survivability. Do events like Jormag or Teq on a warrior
and than try an Ele. Same thing for dungeons. Too much regen and
not enough burst heal to compensate for the lowest HP and armor
in game.

I agree about the problem but not with the solution : just give us water field with a weapon other than staff → use blast finishers. Adds depth to the ele gameplay : should I use my blasts for heal or for might ?

Thunderbrew.7034:

2) The ability to hotkey weapon sets OUTSIDE of combat. This would make
it easier to switch depending on the situation. NOTE: We can do this already
without a hotkey, just not as easy, so its not like this is something game breaking.

I don’t get what you mean. Can’t you already do this ?

Thunderbrew.7034:

3) As mentioned above, make the other weapons besides D/D and Staff viable.

S/F is part of dungeon speed clear meta right now. D/F is inferior but easier for beginners. As far as I can see all the weapons have their use.

Thunderbrew.7034:

5) INCREASE MOBILITY! My lord, my warrior and thief and 5x the mobility of an
ele and neither need it as bad as an ele (warrior high HP and thief can stealth
when things go bad).

Very true. Some of our weapon skills should be evades.

^^ Outside of opening our inventory and switching out weapons, no. I
know some people keep their inventory pulled up and minimized on
screen, but that’s a cumbersome way to do it. To clarify, I am talking
about a hotkey that changes weapons out, not elemental stances.

I want a new Elite Skill ( sorry for my bad english )
Aura: you gain an aura based on your attunement
1/4 cast time
6 sec duration
25 sec recharge

And
reduce the recharges of most skills :/

Thunderbrew.7034:

To clarify, I am talking
about a hotkey that changes weapons out, not elemental stances.

Like with the old weapon sets of gw1. Yeah that was good time and that was quite useful.

bluberblasen.9684:

I want a new Elite Skill ( sorry for my bad english )
Aura: you gain an aura based on your attunement
1/4 cast time
6 sec duration
25 sec recharge

---

And
reduce the recharges of most skills :/

na make duration like current aura durations, like water aura 6 or 7 sec not sure, air aura for 4 sec , idk both other aura durations

Considering that i am playing a Condition build, giving it a try currently its really fun. I would like to see an Arcane Condition based Elite. Maybe something that deals AoE damage and Conditions based on attunement or something.

2 things:

First, get rid off the attunement recharge bonus from arcana line. Our attuenement CD should be 10sec ALWAYS.
(i’m even thinking to a “NO CD” and add ICD to trait that proc on attunement swap, as you gave us 4 bar saying us “you can use each one to REACT in specific situation”, but currently with 10sec CD, how can we REACT ?)
Replace the attunement bonus recharge by a “weapon skill recharge bonus” (in my mind 2point per 1% would be good). It half-solves the issue of “insanely long CD”, then just lower CD on utilities and we’re good. Maybe delete the "alatracy trait’ cause 35% could be too strong, it will on the same way free space for new trait (traits that could suit my second point)

Second: Forget about this stupid idea saying that “condi must be inherent to fire line, raw damage to air, defense to earth and heal/cleanse to water”. Spread all these things in EVERY line. THIS open build diversity.

Something i didnt count cause its obvious: revert unfair nerf. To which nerf do i refer ? To the nerf that were done in the same time as debug. exemple: healing signet, which has been nerfed in the SAME TIME that the bug making it proc 4 times while rolling with EA was fixed. Ride the lightning: you nerfed the CD while debugging the range in the SAME TIME.

With these 3 points:
Open build diversity, solve “couldown issue”, revert unfair nerf that put the ele in a underwhelming spot.

EDIT:
I forgot about cleansing wave. This nerf was deserved, but since, condi build has been over-buffed, i read somewhere you are thinking to revert it or at least half the ICD. If nothing is addressed to cease the condi-spamm fest we’re currently playing, I 100% agree with this ^^

Shinoobi.1259:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip of my own post

This is a pretty selfish view of the changes. They aren’t meant, besides burning speed, for solo purposes. They are for team play, which most of the game revolves around.

The toolkit of D/D Elementalist is centred around PBAoE damage with good mobility and strong CC setups in melee range (in theory, before the nerfhammer came). Bruiser builds are almost universally selfish and D/D is no exception – with only 1 kind of Combo Field (Fire) and melee ranged heals, one is hardly going to be supporting team-mates with Cone of Cold or Cleansing Wave. Adding a Blast Finisher to Frozen Burst only lets D/D elementalist Blast Fire fields more for more Might Stacks. Sure you can support your team with D/D, but it’s hardly the Field machine that Staff is. Elemental Attunement, a trait that is agnostic of weapon set provides more support than the D/D toolkit. That’s how “selfish” D/D is.

As for Burning Speed, Evade frames are a terrible idea. It lowers the skill floor by making a skill unpunishable, on the weapon set that is arguably the most viable and the most balanced in terms of offense vs defense. Why change Burning Speed whilst Focus Fire and Water languishes, and Staff autoattacks can be sidestepped? The mind boggles.

Shinoobi.1259:

1: Increased HP pool. I run around 3200 armor and 600 healing power roaming in WvW, yet I can still die instantly to some thief burst or engi burst. If I survive by blowing big cooldowns, I still fight to match damage output/ heal to win a fight, even when their big offensive skills are on cooldown. Something is fundamentally wrong here. Eles have a poor way of “punishing” people for poor berserker play. I think an increased HP pool will open but more build diversity.

This is debatable. Flat statistics in GW2 are no match for the power of Boons. Protection already gives more damage reduction than a Toughness focused build. Fury is worth hundreds of Precision. 3 Might stacks provides as much Power as an extra piece of gear, and so on.

You do the same damage at 25% HP as you do at 100% (well, without Vital Striking or Scholar Runes, anyway). Elementalist has had its Protection uptime lowered and base values of its weapon skill heals lowered also; whilst condition removal was essentially crushed. I think that restoring some of the base heal values to Elementalist weapon skill heals (without touching coefficients or reducing them to avoid re-creating the bunker) will do some good.

• I think poor Berserker play should be punished by the Elementalist being able to heal back up. Increasing base Vitality doesn’t address the issue that Elementalist sustain has been nerfed in the weapon skills, the traits, and the heals multiple times.

Making Elemental Attunement selfish as a Minor trait in Arcana 5 or 15 that then requires a Major trait to share its boons will justify a buff to Protection uptime without blowing group support to drastic proportions.

What defensive utilities we have certainly deserve lower cooldowns.

• Cleansing Fire without stunbreak could do with a lower cooldown. As it is, CF is now just a weak condition cleanse. Cleanses of equivalent cooldown have much stronger utility like Engineer’s Elixir C. At the same time, Arenanet must be wary of recreating the triple-cantrip D/D bunker. Still, CF at 35 or even 30 seconds is justifiable.
• Armour of Earth is still extremely bad at 75 seconds CD. This was one of the overnerfed cantrips – unjustifiably so when the issue was Ether Renewal → Mist Form.
• Arcane Shield is nice as a stunbreak now, but is again, extremely bad at 75 seconds CD. Considering its power, 60 seconds would not be amiss.
• Glyph of Elemental Power just…doesn’t fit as a stunbreak. Either add a Glyph of Auras (Gain aura associated with attunement) or replace GOEP with Glyph of Auras. The cooldown is fine.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I Highly doubt you run with 3,600 toughness. That would mean you would have more than 5,000armor O.o

I think the attunements needs to be reworked in what they are for:

Fire – Condition Damage
Air – Direct Damage, Mobility
Water – Healing Support Conditions (Chill, vul, etc)
Earth – Pure Defense

Air is pretty much fine the way it currently is, could do with damage tweaking and increases. Fire should be pure condition damage, Keep Burning Speed and such. Just tweak how the conditions is applied. It should not be 10second burning, make it 2 stacks of Burning for 5 seconds. Same damage but quicker damage done.

I think keeping attunements as specialised as it is is the wrong approach. Why? Because it was what landed Elementalist in this overnerfed state in the first place. Condition cleanse was concentrated into Water, which was nerfed again and again and again. Boons and general utility were concentrated into Arcana, which again was nerfed repeatedly. The only positive trending Trait line was Air, which received a damage buff in the form of consolidation of traits into Tempest Defense (still useless) and the introduction of Fresh Air (so much better than Tempest Defense it’s ridiculous).

When Arcana and Water were nerfed, what was left for Elementalist? Nothing much really, aside from glass builds. Everything else was too glassy or vulnerable to conditions.

What is needed is the following, and I posted examples of this in my other post:

• Defensive counterpressure added to Fire. Pressure enemies while defending yourself. Right now Fire is all about Burning and damage and…not much else. Burning Fire was theoretically something in this vein, but in practice, it is too high up and too low uptime to be significant in the time of condi-spam.
  • A better example would be: Purity of Flame: Cleanse a condition when you Blast a Fire Field. Burn foes for 2 seconds in a 240 radius around the Finisher.
  • Alternatively: Ameliorating Fire: Cleanse a damaging condition (Bleed, Burning, Poison, Torment, Terror) when foes inside your Fire Fields are Burned (Cooldown: 2 seconds)

• CC augmenting damage and interrupt based play added to Air. CCing enemies should set up bigger damage through Vulnerability. Forcing misses with clutch Blinds should be rewarded. Interrupting a foe should be rewarded for play that gets inside of an opponent’s rotation. Right now Air is mostly about speed, damage, speed, damage, damage.
  • As an example: Lightning counter: Forcing a foe to miss a skill due to Blind causes 1 second of Daze and damage.
  • Alternatively: Mind Shock: Interrupting a foe inflicts 5 stacks of Vulnerability and Knockdown for 1 second.

• Condition reaps and counter-CC should be added to Earth. Earth should also provide extra control conditions (NOT DPS)to augment condition builds. At the same time, Elementalist’s limited condition variety should be compensated for by “reaping” the conditions from foes to deal extra damage.
  • As an example: “Earthen Shackles:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shockwave Apply 5 stacks of Vulnerability when you Immobilise a Foe. Apply Bleed when you Cripple a foe. Apply Weakness when you Knock a foe Down.
  • Alternatively: Crystalline Reaper: Cleanse all conditions on target foe when you knock them down. For every Condition cleansed, deal damage based on coefficients of your Power and Condition damage.
  • Also: Stone Striker: Cleanse up to 3 snares (Immobilise, Chill, Cripple) when you inflict a snare of your own (Immobilise, Chill, Cripple) on a foe.

Again, keeping the traits specialised into 1 line is what landed Elementalist into this mess in the first place. It would be more prudent to make each trait line provide similar utility in their own special way.

@MonMalthias :

about the form : I’m sure you have lots of good ideas but if what you have to say is larger than one post, it usually means that some stuff can be removed.

about your ideas :

- Never say something like “We should return to previous values before nerf”. If it’s nerfed it means there was a problem. The elementalist in BWE1 was the most OP of the classes because of attunements. Nowadays all our skills are weaker than the other classes for this reason. Unless the ele is reworked to the core this will not change.

- your propositions of traits in earth are overpowered. I’ll just justify for “earthen shackles” since it’s the easiest one :
– Chunning earth pulses cripple several times during cast : trait it with your “earthen shackles” → How many stacks of bleeding will you apply with just one spell ? → Way too much.

- necro have their condition related traits concentrated in blood magic. Why would one spread them ? It would just make the conditionmancers weaker. Same goes for elementalist. Keep survivability traits in water lest you completely destroy the builds that were viable.

1- Make elemental attunement baseline , with the trait making it aoe to your team mates.
2- Revert RTL. The range nerf alone was enough, it was overdone by doubling the cooldown.
3- Fix focus. Water attunement and fire attunement specifically.

If all 3 of these things actually were changed, ele would be very balanced.

• HP up to memsers for some survivability without dying in seconds
• RTL CD reverted back, 40 sec is ridiculous
  *Everybody else has some great suggestions but these are my main, especially the HP

I had this crazy idea the other day when thinking of how to make eles less dependent on arcana. Along with making elemental attunement baseline, as its already been suggested, why don’t we divide the evasive arcana trait into 4 minor traits spread on the other trait lines? It has always seemed a little odd to me how other classes get “on dodge” traits so easily and ele has to spend 30 points for it.

Anet could make it so that for example, an adept trait in the water trait line granted cleansing wave when dodging in water attunement, same on earth, fire and wind for their respective effects. That way we could pick which effects of evasive arcana we wanted and possibly save points to diversify/strengthen our builds… Was this ever suggested before? Is it too crazy/op?

Dolores.5471:

I had this crazy idea the other day when thinking of how to make eles less dependent on arcana. Along with making elemental attunement baseline, as its already been suggested, why don’t we divide the evasive arcana trait into 4 minor traits spread on the other trait lines? It has always seemed a little odd to me how other classes get “on dodge” traits so easily and ele has to spend 30 points for it.

Anet could make it so that for example, an adept trait in the water trait line granted cleansing wave when dodging in water attunement, same on earth, fire and wind for their respective effects. That way we could pick which effects of evasive arcana we wanted and possibly save points to diversify/strengthen our builds… Was this ever suggested before? Is it too crazy/op?

I don’t want it, having to spend multiple trait slots, up to four even, for the entire effect would be horrible.
We could get other “on dodge” things at lower levels, but evasive arcana is where it needs to be.

But thats the thing, most of us don’t even use the entire effects of it, given that all 4 are usefull somehow, still I find myself only in need of 2, so that would mean 10 extra points I could use in another trait.