Guild Wars 2

No cutscene here

I wonder if they’d consider putting up all LS season one-related skins on the store indefinitely once the Epilogue is up, in celebration of the end of the first arc. That’d be great.

I know this has probably been discussed to death, but I tried searching the forums and couldn’t find an answer.

Why is PvP Masquerade Armor unavailable in PvE?

This is IMO one of the coolest looking sets in the game, especially for male scholars. At the moment it’s only available if you’re at Wolf rank or higher.

Why isn’t there a PvE version of this set?! It’s such a shame!

The problem is, at least in SPvP, you help your team a whole lot more by playing a class that can effectively fulfill a defined role well than by playing ele, which can fulfill a variety of roles but not optimally. Roamer? Thief. Bunker? Guardian. Teamfight? Necro/Spirit Ranger. Hilariously, the Warrior does the jack-of-all-trades role better than the Ele. Even Engi has at least one role that it excels at (decapping.) Plus the higher skill floor of the ele makes it a chore to achieve mediocre results with the profession.

I suspect that the devs want to give Ele a role that it can perform better than other classes in the feature patch. I’ m gonna guess it’s some sort of group condi removal/support type role. I’m also gonna be pessimistic and say that it isn’t going to help Ele one bit (gut feeling, no real evidence to back any of this up.)

Why can’t they just combine Shard of Ice and Piercing Shards (and move that to Master maybe) and move Stop, Drop and Roll to Adept?

At the very least, SDnR should have its cooldown eliminated. Like someone else said, you have a limited number of dodges anyway, that should be punishment enough for trying to abuse this trait.

The only ones that appeal to me are the Largos. Since Largos are (I think) primarily aquatic, it’d be cool to see their main city (the Tethyos Houses?) as an underwater major city. Water combat though would have to be revamped and rebalanced a bit if an entire species is supposed to be aquatic.

I don’t like Tengu because the xenophobic nonsense has been overdone in this lore, with the Stone Summit, the Canthans and the Dredge. Plus I don’t like bird people; I can barely tolerate Charr as it is :p

I wish the Dwarves could be brought back from extinction/petrification…they had some cool lore and could make for valuable allies against the other Dragons. Plus I’d totally fight with them to reclaim the Southern Shiverpeaks and Sorrow’s Furnace from the Inquest and Dredge.

Yeah, it should replace Arcane Precision, which IMO is not at all worthy of being a Grandmaster minor trait (I could be wrong though.)

That could free up the Water Grandmaster minor trait spot for a new and better trait (I can dream…)

Maliken.5630:

Elemental attunement should be a standard thing for all elementalist (its just part of the mechanic of the ele i think), but it should only affect yourself. With the trait it should affect others around you. This is just my opinion.

People have been saying this for months now. Eles don’t take Elemental Attunement to support their parties, they take it mainly to be able to survive longer with the regen/protection. I really do not see why this can’t happen. It would free up a trait slot in Arcana at the very least.

The pipe organs in Ebonhawke and Caledon Forest are still bugged on Tarnished Coast. It’s sad because playing them is extremely immersive but is impossible at the moment because pressing a note results in the note being sustained for multiple seconds. Sometimes the organs aren’t even interact-able.

I realize this bug has been present for months now and isn’t exactly high-priority, but would just like to draw attention to it once again.

1. Magnetic Current: this skill causes a self-stun and locks us out of all our non-instant-cast skills. This stun can even be stun broken via Armor of Earth/Arcane Shield etc. Why does this self-stun happen?! Totally pointless and damaging, makes me want to never use this skill.

(On another note, why isn’t this skill a pull-foe-to-you skill? Wouldn’t that make more sense for an Elementalist underwater? We’re not the most durable profession, and the trident doesn’t do us major favors in melee range outside of Forked Lightning/Rock Blade/Rock Spray. If the skill is to remain as a pull-yourself-to-your-foe skill, it should at least be a Leap finisher.) Regardless, the self-stun needs to GO!

2. Forked Lightning misses very often if used at point-blank range. Sucks because this skill is most effective when all 3 forks hit (close range.)

I agree with you OP that we need to be able to see attack cues better. I think graphical effects should universally be toned down, at least in PvP. In particular, I think Asura should be banned in PvP, but that would cause an uproar. Their size and animation tells need to be normalized so that you can’t use screen clutter to be essentially invisible at times.

I am extremely annoyed right now. I didn’t know that Celestial armor pieces behave differently from every other exotic armor in the game (i.e. you need recipes for each piece rather than discovering each piece.) Each piece’s recipe costs multiple gold. Yes, I suppose I could have looked up a guide and realized this, but how is this intuitive in any way? I blew through a lot of materials and gold and now I’m stuck with insignias that I cannot use.

I’m going to address Attunement Swaps.

The fact that each swap is accompanied by an explosion of fire/water/lightning/rock around the Elementalist, auras around the Ele’s wrists and an icon next to the player’s portrait telling you which attunement the Ele is in isn’t enough of a clue? Sometimes the Ele will even yell out the element that was swapped to…

Elementalist skills are the most telegraphed skills in the game, the only obvious exceptions being the Arcanes.

BlackBeard.2873:

Most eles have enough skills and utility on their weapons, that they gravitate towards instant-cast skills on their bar that allow them to quickly respond to damage/cc/condis. To take a skill with a cast-time, it has to be really strong (like frost bow) or something like signet of earth/fire where the active is never used.

This is an excellent point. To be honest, I think most classes gravitate towards instant-cast utilities, at least in PvP, but the Elementalist requires instant-cast Utilities more than any of the other classes due the pace of the game and the Ele’s low health/armor and lack of inherent defenses. Cantrips aren’t great (especially due to their horrendous cool downs) but are automatically better because of their instant cast times and mediocre defensive value. Second comes Arcane Shield and Signet of Air is a distant third.

I hope the devs can take this into account and buff our more useless utilities to be more useful. I’m looking at Signets mainly (give me a reason to activate them) but this also applies to Glyphs other than Elemental Harmony and most Conjures.

Wait, the reversions to Cleansing Water and Signet of Restoration happened already??

EDIT: Sorry, my bad. The changes have been announced but have not gone through yet. Still excited though, these are good first steps!

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Additionally, our changes has brought a new role to ele and it’s one hell of a role! I’m sure plenty of people will have tons of fun messing around with what they can do on ele now.

Any hints as to what this role is? Pretty please? Of course with the caveat that nothing is written in stone (pun intended.)

Also, I hope that this role, whatever it is, is one that other classes can’t perform better than the Ele.

Yeah, I feel stupid for not knowing that Chill doesn’t affect weapon swap.

It needs to affect only our skill cooldowns, NOT our Attunement swap. With the abundance of Chill in PvP, this unfairly targets our profession mechanic. It means you have to blow your cleanses as soon as you see the Chill instead of saving them for Immoblizies, Confusion or Poison. It also directly makes an entire attribute stat bonus useless (Attunement Recharge Rate from Arcana) and paradoxically makes Arcana even that much more necessary (since you’re even more screwed if you have no Arcana investment and get Chiled), limiting build diversity.

If the devs want to keep this effect, they should extend it to every other profession. This means Warrior Burst skills, Mesmer Shatter skills, Ranger Pet commands, Necromancer Death Shroud, Thief Steal, and Engineer Toolbelt skills should be affected by Chill. Note that this STILL doesn’t affect them as badly as it does the Elementalist, so I’d much rather just see Chill not affect Attunement swap.

And another problem with Stop, Drop and Roll, besides the fact that it is a Master, Major trait, is that it is in Water Magic, a trait line that has so many good competing traits. Even if SDnR were to be an Adept trait, it’s hard to justify taking it over Cantrip Mastery (PvP) or Vital Striking (PvE.)

It’d be awesome if swapping Attunements removed specific conditions as an inherent bonus (Fire cleanses Chill, Air cleanses Immoblize, Water cleanses Burning, Earth cleanses Vulnerability.) I also think Cleansing Fire should always cleanse Chilled in addition to three other conditions, and could lose its AoE burn to compensate.

I’d love a dev’s input here.

Just a thought: have you guys thought about using a Sigil of Geomancy? It adds an AoE 3 stacks of bleed fairly often enough and I think can be a good cover condition. I find that with this, Ring of Earth and the occasional Earth auto I can apply bleeds fairly constantly. The trouble is staying alive while the conditions tick…I also hate having to pick between Sigil of Geomancy/Agony and Doom/Venom…

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.

TriggerSad.2597:

My top three would have to be:

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Engineer

Allie Murdock.8152:

CastIron.7364:

I took the liberty and counted ALL votes till svracak.9671. You guys are just too fast for me.
As it stands the results are now:
Elementalist: 230 Votes (22.66%)
Necromancer: 162 Votes (15.96%)
Engineer: 132 Votes (13.00%)
Guardian: 13 Votes (1.28%)
Warrior: 29 Votes (2.86%)
Thief: 74 Votes (7.29%)
Ranger: 299 Votes (29.46%)
Mesmer: 76 Votes (7.49%)
Total: 1015 Votes (100%)

If there is any interest I could give numbers on how often a profession was ranked 1. etc.

This is awesome. I was going to do this at the end, but it’s cool to keep an updated list like this. Thanks for taking the time to do that! How often a profession is ranked 1 would also be super awesome.

I’d just like to point out that some people may have posted multiple times at this point, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to double/triple check the votes to make sure they’re accurate.

Seconded.

Ben K.6238:

With a script it’d be easier. Unfortunately it’s tricky enough to read through the non-standard posts without keeping track of who’s voted too.

Oh, I mean whoever from Anet is tallying up the votes. But I do appreciate your hard work too! Thanks.

Thedenofsin.7340:

1. Mesmer
2. Warrior
3. Elementalist

You’ve voted at least five times on this thread, lol.

I hope whoever’s tallying up these votes keeps track of who’s voting.

Vote here!

The devs are asking the community to vote on which Profession is most in need of updates/tweaks. Please vote for the Elementalist, as we really need the help!

The only other profession that needs as much, if not more help, than us is the Ranger. But since they haven’t indicated what the scope of this CDI will be (PvE/PvP/WvW) I don’t have an issue listing Elementalist at #1 since it is the class that needs the most help in SPvP/TPvP.

Go vote!

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

1. Elementalist
2. Ranger
3. Necromancer

Ugly? Pshh.

The Sovereign Artifact is one of the coolest Focus skins in the game.
The Scepter and Staff skins are quite Art Deco. Although the Staff’s glow is a bit too understated.
And who doesn’t want a gigantic stone face as a shield?

Whatever changes Eles end up getting need to accomplish the following:

1) Enable the Ele to fulfill a role—ANY role—in SPvP. At the moment, it is outclassed tremendously by the other professions at bunkering (Guardian/Warrior), roaming (Thief), team fighting (Necromancer/Spirit Ranger/Engineer), and 1v1ing on nodes (Mesmer/Thief/Engineer/Necromancer) to name a few roles. An Ele needs to be babysat by a teammate at all times, because he will melt very quickly when focused—and he will almost always be the prime target once noticed. As it stands, he is more of a liability than an asset to his team, plain and simple. It’s not enough to say “Oh, but Ele is the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none class”; that will ensure that the Ele never again sees the light of competitive play again. Heck, Engineers and, hilariously, Warriors fulfill the jack-of-all-trades role a heck of a lot better at the moment.

2) Enable an Ele to reliably spec for damage without losing every single bit of defense, or conversely to reliably spec for defense without sacrificing all offensive potential. Eles have been pigeonholed into Water/Arcana/Cantrips for far too long, with mediocre results. They need better INHERENT defensive mechanics that do not require heavy Trait investment to function to begin with. Sure, make these mechanics (whatever they end up being) improve with Traiting, but don’t make them dependent on Traiting to even be useful.

I know this was lacking in the details department, but I think it still needs to be said.

Well, if you played GW1 and have linked accounts via the Hall of Monuments, you can get the Icelord’s Diadem from the Eye of the North.

It’s a pretty awesome crown skin. I have it on my Necro, who’s named “Prince of Wails.” :p

Thanks for letting us weigh in, devs, and for recognizing that Elementalists need a lot of help to become viable again. The proposed changes are good, but not good enough on their own.

Our biggest issue is that in order to have anywhere near acceptable survivability, we have to trait significantly into Water and/or Arcana, in the process sacrificing damage. Our only “inherent” survivability mechanics are our Water Attunement skill heals, which a) need at least 15 in Water to even be useful and b) have been nerfed time and again.

I don’t know how to best improve our baseline survivability; I’ll leave that to more experienced players. But what I do have to suggest are some skill tweaks to help us out:

Please consider upping the effectiveness of our auto-attacks
*Scepter: Flamestrike, Stone Shards and especially Ice Shards are all TERRIBLE! It takes too long to stack conditions with the former two attacks; please either speed up activation, up damage or increase condition duration. Ice Shards can be easily dodged; please increase projectile speed. Arc Lightning is only good because it’s paired with Lightning Strike.
*Staff: Make Water Blast a self-heal regardless of where the splash happens. Make Chain Lightning do more damage on its initial hit rather than splitting the damage equally between bounces.

Please revisit the Focus!
*Fire Attunement skills on the Focus are GARBAGE. Fire Shield in particular is on a 40 second cooldown (!) and is no serious deterrent to attackers. Flamewall similarly is easily avoided and does not punish foes trying to cross it enough. Maybe consider adding boon-ripping to it and upping its CD to compensate.
*Water Attunement. Freezing Gust: A 3-second Chill on a 25-second cooldown, even if it’s ranged, is not good enough for a #4 skill. Maybe let it strip a boon or two as well? Or at least increase the Chill duration.

Miscellaneous Weapon Skill improvement suggestions:
*Staff: Please improve projectile speed and/or width for Gust and Shockwave! Currently these skills almost never hit due to how slowly/narrowly they travel.
*Staff: Please consider allowing Lava Font to do damage immediately upon being cast (a la Necromancer Wells), and splitting its damage to do more damage on its initial ticks.
*Offhand Dagger: Ride the Lightning! Please don’t punish us for using this as a gap closer. Change it so that it additionally does NOT incur the CD penalty if the target blocks, evades or stealths while RtL is moving towards it.

Please give us a reason to use Glyphs!
*Glyph of Storms has too long of a cooldown. Its AoEs can easily be avoided, and are lackluster outside of Water and Earth.
*Glyph of Elemental Power: Its status as a stun breaker is counterintuitive
*Glyph of Lesser Elementals/Glyph of Elementals: Please consider allowing the Elementals’ special skills to be controllable by the Elementalist, or at least predictable (for example, the Elemental will cast its special skill immediately after being summoned.)

Please consider further lowering baseline Utility skills cooldowns
*Mist Form is more of a hindrance than a help in SPvP due to locking us out of our skill. Please consider lowering its CD to 60-70 seconds.
*Arcane Shield could use lowering to 60 seconds.
*Armor of Earth could go to 60 seconds; its boons don’t last long enough to warrant 70 seconds.

Thanks guys.

Gokil.2543:

This build is unbelievably squishy, combined with the fact that you lack defensive utilities (cantrips) and more importantly, the fact that condition damage is based on attrition and outlasting your opponent. Glass builds can work given you drop your opponent quickly enough, which you never will with a condi build, especially on ele.

Squishy by virtue of the fact you have neither 15 water, nor 30 arcane, nor vigor(!), nor high protection/regen uptime, nor invulns/blinks/reflects. Nothing basically.

I’m open for condi builds, but this one doesn’t make any sense to me. You will simply never survive any encounter, by effectively being full melee on the squishiest of all professions with none of it’s redeeming qualities in the form of heals and boons.

Thanks for your comments.

I realize I have next to no defenses (the one exception I do have is decent protection uptime from Elemental Shielding+Fire’s Embrace+Forge runes.) However, I have switched out Signet of Water for Signet of Earth and picked up Rock Solid and Written In Stone…which have provided me with marginally more survivability. While I do still melt embarrassingly quickly in team fights, I’ve found that while roaming and 1v1ing I do okay if I effectively use my CCs to allow my conditions (primarily Burning covered with Bleeds, Poison [from Doom Sigil] and Chill) to tick…but the huge caveat is that I play primarily in 5v5 Hotjoins and would never dream of taking this build into anything resembling serious PvP.

I usually run at LEAST 15 Water, 20 Arcane and a Cantrip or two when I play D/D, and I was bored to death of it. I also tend to see Evasive Arcana as a huge crutch, but that’s beside the point. Plus, with the way the vigor-on-crit traits for Mesmer and Guardian took hits recently, I’ve been trying to play without Renewing Stamina in case it gets hit too (as hard as that is.)

This build wasn’t really meant to be super serious. With the knowledge that Ele condition builds will never hold a candle to say Necro or even Warrior builds, I’m just trying to figure out what a halfway decent condition build for an Ele would look like, and I assumed going full Fire and Earth for maxed out condition damage and duration was the way to go about doing it. The fact that Earth has some decent defensive traits was also something that stood out to me.

But I see your point; there just isn’t enough defensive utility outside of Water/Arcana and Cantrips. I feel like that’s still the perennial problem with this profession

Perhaps there are better alternative condition builds out there with a focus on Arcana?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Hi guys,

Condition builds for Ele are lacking, mainly because we lack effective ways to re-apply a range of conditions. However, we are fairly decent at applying and maintaining Burning and Bleeding. I’ve been running with this condi/hybrid build for a while in Hotjoin now, and it’s really fun to play. I’d like your thoughts on how to improve it:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmabsR3wjDAhHHggBjHgohIiCPA-ToAgyCuIATBmDMDYSwsgN8YGA

I don’t have any points in Water or Arcana. I know, crazy. But I was tired of going 15+/10+ Water/Arcana in every single build and wanted a challenge. You have to pick your fights carefully because with only 1 stun breaker and limited condition removal, you’ll melt more quickly than usual in team fights. Positioning and counting dodges is vital.

That said, I find that the Elemental Shielding trait (which gives you on-demand protection, which is further boosted by Forge runes), combined with Fire’s Embrace and Signet Mastery, gives you decent survivability versus Power-based builds in the form of near-permanent, on-demand Protection, which is further lengthened by Forge runes. Combined with the Toughness from Earth and Forge Runes, you’re pretty durable.

Versus conditions though, you really need to be careful. I slotted Signet of Water and Burning Fire for two relatively brain-dead ways to mitigate condition spam; with Cleansing Wave (Dagger 5), these constitute the entirety of your condition defense. It’s not much. However, Burning Fire has the additional effect of causing a fairly long-lasting AoE burn, which synergizes with the build. I’m seriously considering replacing Signet Mastery with Diamond Skin (reducing survivability vs Power builds in exchange for temporary condi immunity), and I’d like your input.

Signet of Fire gives a gigantic burn, something like 10k+ damage if allowed to tick its full duration. Therefore it’s vital to cover its burn with bleeds which you can easily do with Sigil of Geomancy and your Earth Skills. Chill from Signet of Water is an additional fairly long (6 second) cover condition that you can use once they’ve used up their condition cleanses. Use Updraft/Earthquake wisely to optimize your condition uptimes (prevent/delay them from cleansing.) Remember Earth 15’s Cripple can be used as a short-duration cover condition. Also remember you have a decent amount of Power too, so don’t be afraid to spam Lightning Whip while your condis tick away.

So guys, thoughts/opinions?

Ghostextechnica.3270:

This bug can fail the whole Marionette event for hundreds of people when they head onto the platforms and can’t help out at all.

I saw a number of people complaining in chat.

This happened to me lol. Got onto a platform and my skills weren’t responding. The only thing I could do to help was spam Arcane Wave and Attunement Swap to trigger Elemental Attunement :p

Yes, I do. Seeing a group of hundreds of players coming together to take down a common foe is REALLY fun for me, and gives me the epic feeling I look for in GW2.

This does not mean I don’t enjoy small-group or even solo content though. Each has its own place and depending on my mood I prefer each in turn.

Just happened to me twice in a row while trying to do the Wurm and Marionette. The only skills that worked were Attunement Swap and Arcane Wave (instant-cast skills.) Other people around me were complaining too (“My skills aren’t firing.”)

They said that the feature/balance patch would follow the end of the Living Story patches. Which will be a couple months from now. I don’t have an exact source for you though, sorry.

Signet of Restoration needed to be un-nerfed; good change. Not enough to help our sustain on its own, but still a good change.

Burning Speed is an evade! YES! Awesome change. I’m going to enjoy using this as a gap closer, AoEs be kitten ed

Frozen Burst is a Blast Finisher on a 15-second cool down! DOUBLE YES! More of these are always welcome, especially for a D/D. Brings might-stacking up to par to S/D I think.

Water Trident is now a ground-targeted AoE condition removal when the Cleansing Water trait is taken (which in itself is bad since they wanted us to move away from Water Magic, but whatever.) PROBLEM IS, it can’t be used as a quick-response AoE condition cleanse when you’re in another attunement. Cleansing Water will proc (only for you) when you switch to Water thanks to Soothing Mist, which means you’ll have to wait 5 seconds to use Trident if you want Trident to do its AoE cleanse. 5 seconds during which time those condis will tick away.

Armor of Earth is now on a 75-second cool down (60 when traited), which I think also applies to the Earth’s Embrace trait…good change, but I still think 75 seconds untraited is too long for this skill. Maybe 60 untraited?

Overall we received some nice buffs. However I don’t think these on their own will help us become any more viable in PvP; rather, the nerfs to the other professions (Dhuumfire, Healing Signet, Poison Grenade, Net Turret, Guardian/Mesmer vigor-on-crit traits, Deceptive Evasion, Spirit of Nature, etc.) will do more to help the Ele I think.

Of course, this is all assuming that the change to Crit Dmg and to Runes/Sigils doesn’t screw us over.

EDIT: Issues we still have:

1. Survivability(!!) Not really buffed significantly by these changes.
2. Mobility. Why was RtL not un-nerfed? At the very least, why do we still incur a CD penalty for using it offensively and having it blocked/evaded?
3. Fire Focus skills. Really? No changes to Fire Shield?
4. Useless Utilities. They buffed Armor of Earth a tiny bit. Okay, great, but didn’t you want us to move away from Cantrips? Signet Active effects are lacking; buff them! Glyphs are underwhelming; buff them!
5. Useless Traits. Fire Magic HELLO. Lingering Elements still requires speccing into other Traits to even have an effect. Give us more Traits that are always functional rather than being attunement-dependent.

TL;DR: Good changes but not enough on their own to return Ele to viability.

Well, Josh did say they were going to have devs from the Skills and Balance Team on their next stream in early January.

But a dedicated S&B stream would be great, with its own Q&A session.

I never played healer Monk, but Unyielding Aura is awesome.

Also, Wounding Strike on Dervish. Dat spammable covered Deep Wound.

And how has no one mentioned the Jesus beam? Ray of Judgment was hilarious to use in ABs with all the MMs running around.

The nostalgia hurts

Elementalists: what is our compensation for having the lowest health and armor supposed to be? Our access to evades, blocks and blinks is limited. Our mobility has been nerfed. Our healing has been nerfed. Our traits don’t really cut it in the survivability department.

What is our inherent defensive mechanic?

The high skill ceiling argument is used a lot to justify the Elementalist’s state. And it has some value I guess, because it does take extra effort and skill to play a competent Ele.

But then why do I keep hearing that most, if not all, the top Ele players have long since either swapped classes or moved on to other games? Isn’t that indicative of a deeper problem beyond skill ceilings/floors? Or weren’t even they skilled enough?

I’m not trying to troll here or anything, I’m legitimately asking.

Seconding request for vid(s) if possible

Arcane Precision is an insult. Why this is a Grandmaster trait is beyond me.

Spell Slinger. IMO this is only useful when using Lightning Flash to land Earthquake/Churning Earth. MAYBE after Cleansing Fire too. Cantrips are defensive otherwise.

Flame Barrier and One With Fire; I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Terrible traits.

One With Air. What is the point of this? Especially if you’re not running Fresh Air?

Bountiful Power should be un-nerfed, with how common boon hate is nowadays.

Earth has so many great traits though.

I agree. I think giving us huge skill cooldowns AND Attunement cooldowns was a terrible move. Elementalists are supposed to be adaptable, but being locked out of one or more Attunements means that not only are we unable to adapt to a fight properly, but also that our rotations become easily predictable and exploitable. Combined with the lowest health and armor, it just makes basic survivability a huge chore.

On top of that, so many of our traits have “on Attunement swap” effects which would have to be redone if Attunement cooldowns were done away with. Not to mention reworking Arcana to do something else.

It’s just messy all around. Maybe at this point it would help just to lower the CDs across the board on our skills, AND get rid of global Attunement recharge (but not previous Attunement recharge.)

I wish Water Trident had a knockback/knockdown like in GW1

oZii.2864:

Well you wouldn’t really have anything up once you cycled once or twice. In a sense they could just remove it and icd the swap traits like you said. If it was like that I don’t see it being op. I just think the global icd should be removed and I would be happy.

Not sure what you replace with investment into the arcana line. Celestial was suggested before but +30 to all stats is meh. After I thought about that suggestion. +60 with 2 critical dmg would be really strong easily reaching 120 critical damage if you wanted with gear. 3k lightning whips would be fun though.

I feel like Attunement cooldown was added simply to give Arcana something to do besides Boon Duration. Celestial IMO isn’t too great because depending on the scaling it’d be too weak or OP. An idea I had was to tie the on-swap traits’ (Stone Flesh/Sunspot/Discharge/Ripple/Rock Solid/Superspeed/Elemental Attunement etc) internal cooldowns to Arcana. The individual internal cooldowns and their scaling with Arcana would require careful balancing though. The biggest problem with this though is that you’d have to have a very awkward Trait spread to get all of them.

I’m not trolling, I’m legitimately wondering. Elementalist skills have long cooldowns because we have access to 4 Attunements, but why do the Attunements themselves need cooldowns? Doesn’t being locked out of Attunements ruin the whole point of being able to adapt to any situation by swapping to a different Attunement?

I understand that by eliminating Attunement cooldowns, the on-swap traits would be OP; but they could just have internal cooldowns themselves, like on-swap sigils.

Just seems unnecessary and counter to the point of the class (adaptability.)

Lostwingman.5034:

Actually guys…their graphics may be set real low in which case the res’ing animation looks like they’re getting stuff thrown at them.

Yep, at lowest settings, the animation used for rezzing someone is the same animation used for building seige, repairing walls etc. So it looks like you’re hammering away or throwing stuff at the downed person.

Quite funny when you have multiple people trying to rezz one person lol.

Humans need their redemption. I get that the other races needed more space to grow in their own right, but the humans got a raw deal from the writers. Nearly extinct in Tyria, isolated in Cantha, isolated AND enslaved in Elona. Abandoned by their gods. And still infighting. They have nothing going for them at this point other than “tenacity”, and it’s annoying. How long is tenacity going to last against Charr aerial superiority? Against Asura technomagic? How much time till the Sylvari hive mind matures enough to realize that humans are irrelevant? How much longer till the Norn finally unite and use brute force to push farther into Kryta, or south towards Ebonhawke? The Dragons are ironically the only thing keeping the races united, but the second the dragon thread is neutralized, humans will be next up on the chopping block.

They need their redemption now. Humanity’s strength has always been MAGIC. They need to regain their magical superiority, independent of their gods.