Guild Wars 2

I agree healing signet needs toning down, and if possible, by a means more interesting than just cutting the numbers. However I don’t really like any of your proposals too much.

How about making the amount of passive healing scale with adrenaline level(makes sense thematically, more healing when more engaged into the fight, true warrior style). Keep current regen as max adrenaline regen.

This would further reinforce bursty front-loaded damage as a counter to healing signet, while still shining in drawn-out fights.

cheshirefox.7026:

i must have been ported to the far side of the mists where only skill-less elementalists play because all i ever see in wvw is them getting facerolled.. you have your bunker elem that never kills anything or some bursty types which is the same story unless they manage to completely blind side someone.. and let’s get the praise for staff elem out of the way because it’s only so useful

I’ve heard this before so I guess my server is the odd one out since this place is overflowing with D/D eles of all skill levels. Most of my matchups have a lot of eles as well though.

I play in EU, maybe its different here.

Depends on how you define diminishing returns, agreed power will always add the same damage, but the higher the number the less relevant flat increases become. Crit damage and damage modifiers become more and more important the higher your power and damage, so the point of my post still stands. If you’re trying to do crazy damage while at 4k power and high crit chance, you don’t want more power but more crit damage and dmg modifiers

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Mochann.5298:

As for Ele…. There is a skill ceiling, I passed it a month or so back while immersing myself in WvW. But once you get past it, you WILL play well, and often dominate. Those who are whining about the prevalent, “class is fine, you just lack skills” thought on the Ele forums need to wakeup to this reality: there IS a high skill requirement because of the added complexities in Ele play due to the defining class mechanic (attunements) coupled with low health and low armor.

This is what I hate the most. WvW players that don’t even play for long thinking because they can AOE while hiding in a zerg the class is fine. It is anything but fine, it’s the complete opposite.

WvW zerging doesn’t require any skill. At all. Roaming does, because it’s mostly 1v1 and 1v2 but ele completely sucks at roaming since the RTL nerf and is simply a free kill for the other roaming classes.

I won’t say the class is “fine” — I’d love a buff to be honest, though I’d like it to be a damage buff and not a life buff. Let me do more damage! That’s what I live for. I’m really only good at killing and breaking things with my play style.

I will say though, as a staff ele, I rock in all the game formats — open world pve, dungeons, fractals, sPVP, WVW : but I can’t go it alone. I simply cannot go solo or 1v1, except in open world pve.

But team me up with at least one good person to tank for me or front line for me, and I am a walking nuke.

Again, you don’t “rock” at PVP, especially not with a staff ele. You are simply a free kill for any thief, mesmer or warrior. And again, you don’t “rock” at wvw, you’re simply hiding behind your zerg using your AOE. That is neither fun (at least to me) nor does it require any amount of skill. A bot could do that with a few scripts.

“tank for you” “front line for you”… what? There are no tanks in gw2 and peeling is extremely limited and all glasscannons have gap closers galore. Even if you have someone running with you with a staff in pvp, you’re a victim. Plain and simple.

I’ve been playing ele exclusively in pvp for 1 1/2 years like a lot of other pvpers. Do you really think you know more about skillful play than these people? Kitten, please.

I’ll ignore the negativity of this post for the good of the discussion.

Elementalist is a top tier roamer in WvW. Not because I or anyone else can do well with it, but because of the nature of the tasks a roamer must be able to accomplish. In order of importance:

-1vx groups of unskilled players, this is the most important thing a roamer can do, since it puts however many people you are able to beat out of the rotation of capping your camps, or weakens the commander tag they were going to by that number. I understand this may sound hard to believe, but the skill level in WvW quickly allows for a D/D ele to rise to this task, due to their excellent aoe burst and sustain, which throws many new players off, and lastly due to their control of the engagement by mobility and aoe CC.

-Take camps. Complete walk in the park with either fiery greatsword into a wall (to be quick) or earth elemental (to be safe), or even without elite.

-Be able to win 1v1s and be able to escape/chase. The reason elementalist is such a good class in WvW is because of the inflated stats in comparison to PvP. This benefits the elementalist far more than other classes due to having such low base stats. The difference in base stats matters less when you have more stats overall, benefitting the elementalist the most as a result. As for chasing/escaping: not a single class in the game will catch up to a ride the lightning/lightning flash/burning speed/ fiery greatsword 3 and 4 spam ele. Not a single one.

By top tier, I really mean top tier: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1sxp6v/how_would_you_rank_up_the_professions_for_the/

As far as PvP goes, you should try going into WvW and finding this power an ele can have. Ele is weaker in PvP no doubt about it, but maybe you will appreciate at least some strengths more if you had a taste of them in WvW.

Elementalist is considered by many the worst PvP class at the moment. However, since the last patch, viablity of the elementalist has gone up due to most important meta builds, especially the ones that specifically countered the ele, getting nerfed. People are playing elementalist succesfully at every spot in the leaderboards, but it’s not as easy to do that well as it used to be.

You can still play D/D ele like you used to, you just won’t be a god. Other important builds are S/X glass cannon, staff glass cannon and diamond skin D/D (new earth grandmaster trait that makes you immune to conditions above 90%. Highly situational trait)

D/F is very strong in duels, but not good at roaming since it offers no mobility nor aoe crowd control (no comet is not an aoe for all real purposes).

Problem with bringing just 1 condition necro is that he will be focused down quite easily.

Generally you should try to get a group that is stronger than the sum of its parts. Venom sharing thief, shout warrior/guard, ele (possibly with aura sharing), staff mesmer, engi necro condicleave, double burst stealth thieves,…

If you’re just a couple randoms with no synergy, you’re gonna get rolled by the glorious aoe damage+aoe support class that is the elementalist

Celestial armor will do nicely since it’s the most expensive part. All else should probably be zerkers (easier to get another durable set for wvw). Given 20+ stacks of might your damage loss won’t be too dramatic, and that armor can be used in WvW as well as an added bonus.

As for the traits, I never liked fresh air on D/x. To be honest I would go 0/15/10/15/30, picking up damage modifiers in water and earth while giving out good heals+protection.

Also not really a big fan of armor of earth in dungeons. My bar is usually something like LH, arcane shield/wave, lightning flash/mist form. Sometimes signet of fire if really easy content.

Obviously far from a dps optimal build, but pugs be pugging.

I find a more durable playstyle much more fun, for the rare occasions where the party wipes and I have to finish something alone, or have to constantly be ressing people.

No -_- They avoid the hits through other means, but still can’t effectively trade hits. Ever had an autoattack battle between a glass thief and a balanced D/D ele? Even though dagger thief autoattack is arguably stronger, they cannot possibly outtrade you straight up. They can ofcourse if they get a 10k backstab, but so can you as an ele if you get an uninterrupted fire burst+air burst.

Mesmer invulns/dodges,… Thief stealths/blinds, warriors endure pain. Although a warrior can indeed get away with full glass since they have such high base stats. But as a punishment they are limited to strictly melee range.

Otaur:

A glass elementalist doesn’t trade hits. He either doesn’t get hit at all or dies.

That’s a bit exaggerated but you get the point. You can’t expect to be able to trade with anyone if you have 0 defensive stats.

Soothing wave has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds, so it’s roughly the same

The first important step in D/D play is to learn to have as little downtime as possible between spells. Avoid using all autoattacks other than the air attunement one, and make sure you swap attunements as soon as you begin channeling the last spell of the attunement you need. Sounds obvious but is pretty hard to master.

Secondly, pretty straightforward, landing your fire spells is crucial. A little trick that can help you is placing your camera above your character when using burning speed, resulting in a much shorter dash which helps you land it on melee opponents. But in all honesty only practice will get you there.

You mention that you play defensively, that is generally not a good idea. Part of your defense as a D/D ele is overwhelming your opponent, putting him on the back foot, taking the lead, whatever you want to call it. A good way to get used to that is not use ether renewal for a little while, but signet instead, since ER relieves your pressure too much in 1v1s.

As a D/D ele, you are able to disengage from fights with most professions. Do this when you have run out of cooldowns and are not winning the battle yet.

Lastly, you have immense over time heals at your disposal. Learn to maximize health gained from them, and you will find that that implies spending as little time as possible in water attunement, to get the swap to water attunement bonus as often as possible. That also helps you keep up the pressure.

There have been a couple threads like this one the past few days, might wanna look them up for more advice

Maybe this helps:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Resources-for-New-D-D-Ele-s/first#post3467008

Care to show us your build? Sounds like you’re using the glyph heal which really is not a good idea. An optimal build gets you a long way. We’ll work from there

Mbelch.9028:

Bingo, Gokil, we do find two hard counters in terrormancers and well played condition 20/20/30 mesmers, but that doesn’t mean we suck.

Unless we slap on diamond skin ofcourse But I’d rather not

Mbelch.9028:

ThiBash.5634:

Kyon.9735:

Cool. “Elite” Forum eles teaming up, are you guys?

Why not? We’re always getting ganged up on by the people that scream for buffs and thrash the profession, so why shouldn’t we work together too? Whether you like it or not, there’s a small group of players that can handle the elementalist the way it is now. So maybe if the thrash talkers and the elite town things down a bit, we can actually find the buffs that are actually needed. Instead of just yelling ele sucks/rules and calling it a day…

Huge +1 here. Half the time on the ele forum I feel overwhelmed by people who just aren’t good at the class and are frustrated. If this is the case, just ask for help, don’t flame the ele.

+1. Like I said before, since Dec 10th the ele is much more viable in PvP due to their nemesis the S/D acro thief being nerfed to hell and all other meta builds having lost a good bit of power. People just don’t bother to try it out again

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Grevender.9235:

honestly speaking, after the last patch the class imho doesn’t need anymore a complete overhaul. While I cannot speak about sPvP, I find very few troubles in WvW.

The last patch changed nothing in pvp. Diamond skin is a waste of a grandmaster trait, and all the other changes were nerfs (moving elemental attunement and cleansing wave up to master). So overall we’re even worse off than we were before the Dec 10 patch.

You simply cannot judge class performance by wvw because the completely overpowered gear there masks all class issues. You can have 1800 toughness 17k health 2k power and still have 20% crit chance and 90% crit damage there. In pvp you’re running around with 1500 toughness, 14k health, 10% crit, 1800 power and 15% crit damage.

Pretty much every other class barring mesmer got hit harder than we did. Don’t overlook that.

Fortus.6175:

Im guessing you saw a screen shot of that in WvW.

Here is the trick; balls to the wall zerker staff 30/20/0/0/20, can also do 30/20/0/10/10 for more damage. Cast meteor shower, stay in fire, cast tornado.

Tornado actually doubles your amount of power, so a 6k meteor will hit 12k, I have personally hit 13k on what im guessing was an upleveled toon or some poor squishy.

Traits to focus are 10% on fire attunement, 20% more damage to <33% hp targets, 10% crit damage increase on arcane, 10% damage above 90% hp coupled with scholar runes, blasting staff.

Tornado does no such thing. It triples your base power (which is 916) and doubles your base precision (which is also 916).

Crit damage and damage modifiers are the best ways to boost tornado shower damage. Power has incredible diminishing returns, and you will get about 41 crit chance for free from tornado.

Blaze.4726:

sadly if i could take the money i spend in this game i would instantly………its kinda crappy when the community isnt heard…..i guess i am use to play League of legends where if enough people think that i completly fine skill is wrong even though its balanced the developer will hear and nerf it a little bit to just make the community happy or COME TO THE kitten FORUM AND TALK!!!! hell the people come and are willing to talk about everyday things balancing nerfing everything. they are so involved!!!! while gw2 the only time i see anet respond is when they close threads………..no talks about what the community want what changes should be done. really dissapointing but i shall remember in the future before buying a game dont see how good the game is see how good the people who made the game are! I just cant get over the fact that warrior who are so tanky with so much health and armor can do as much damage as elementalist………

I do not mean to offend you, but you absolutely need more experience before you start shouting this and that. A couple of days ago you ask for help for a new elementalist, and by now you think you’ve got it all figured out. Warrior is an enormously simplistic class that can be very impressive to new players. In time you will realize that although they can do certain things very easily, we can do most these things too, but require a bit more effort. Warrior is very easy to do well on, but there’s not much improving after that. Whereas elementalist is hard to do well on, but with practice you can improve immensely, to warrior level and beyond in some areas.

Warrior may seem like a god to a new player, when he beats a billion mobs with one hundred blades while tanking away with five signets, but he really isn’t.

Not to say healing signet doesn’t need toning down. It definitely does.

As for the whole balance issue, please talk in the present, and not in the past. Since december 10th, the landscape has changed in sPvP. It took a long time before everybody jumped aboard the hammer hypetrain in the past, and may take a while still before we truly see how all professions currently stand in sPvP. In the meantime, you can make an elementalist work in PvP. It’s hard but that’s the nature of the class.

Your build is good, but I would personally add just a little bit of toughness (~100).

In my opinion, a 30 water 30 arcane build with about 500 healing power benefits a lot more from signet of restoration than it does from ether renewal. You say you have trouble against bursty classes, and this is exactly why. Heavily offensive builds can take advantage of the enormous channel time of ether renewal, and easily outdamage the heal it provides during the channel. Signet however increases your pressure by a LOT, and against bursty classes, offense is the best defense. On top of that it has amazing scaling with healing power. I would advise taking cleansing wave in the water tree master tier if you switch to SoR.

Seems like you have a little trouble with the playstyle however. Generally speaking, you want to leave water attunement as fast as possible, so you can get the condi cleanse+regeneration+1800 heal back up as fast as possible. Same goes for earth, since that will drastically improve your protection uptime. I don’t mean you should leave it immediately, but just get into the mindset of leaving as soon as you can. Air and fire are the best attunements to stay in, air because air autoattack is the best out of the 4, and fire because landing your fire cooldowns is extremely important.

As a D/D ele you have to focus on pressuring your opponent so they can’t freecast on you. That’s why signet will help you a lot. Try to get as much healing per second out of your water attunement (dodge+swap to water mid dodge+use cone of cold+immediately swap away, use cleansing wave and frost aura when they’re off cd).

TL;DR: Try signet of restoration, don’t stay in water attunement too long but rather as short as possible for maximum heal per second, offense is the best defense, a thief won’t come and burst you if he’s almost dead, giving you a window to heal back up.

As for other builds: 0/20/0/20/30 and 0/15/10/15/30 work a bit better for roaming imo. You have to use ether renewal on these though.

Two remarks, tempest defense will proc when you use stability to prevent the cc, which makes it a whole lot better. Also don’t forget the 20 percent damage modifier you can use on earthquake combos, or passively make use of by the numerous stuns from your auras.

Second: the area frost armor combo gives 3 seconds of frost aura as opposed to 7 from D/D. Ofcourse it doesnt stack in duration so ice field blasts are really only good to get the related boons on people from zephyr’s boon and/or elemental shielding.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Fasyx.9347:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-mdnFHyP88

Dont even try this as an ele.

All of these videos showing winning on 1vx amount are always misleading. Any good player perfectly knows that one versus two good players no matter what profession or build you might be using, you just won’t win in this game. One good player is enough to give you a lot of trouble. I can easily show my burst ele winning 1v4 last night against awful players and state ele can do as much or even more than the engi……. but a video like that will simply mislead you into the wrong direction just like this one.

I wasn’t gonna say this because I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging, but you put it quite well.

If 1vX roaming fights is what you are looking for, I think elementalist might actually be the best class out there for the job. Stuff like that happens all the time in WvW, and not just to me, it’s weird to see a video made about it.

The stickied threads have all you need and more.

Looks good!

I feel it’s a bit overkill on the condi-clear side. I’d go 0/0/20/20/30. Earth majors are amazing.

Vitatlity is definitely a bit low as well, use dire trinkets for that.

Also one neat trick not many people know: you can use a sigil of tormenting in combination with a sigil of doom, since sigil of tormenting is bugged so that it doesnt share internal cooldowns with other sigils. That’s amazing for an ele since he desperately needs cover conditions.

Last one: when you’re in a situation where you don’t need mist form as much (e.g.: a duel), glyph of elemental power is amazing to keep burning up on people, and can be used for other conditions as well depending on the situation

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Gokil.2543:

Neat little idea. If I could control where and when my water elemental does its splash 7k heal that would be pretty gamechanging.

I can’t see how it could work as a trait though. A trait that adds an extra button somewhere seems rather odd. Maybe as a toggle on the glyph itself after the elemental has been summoned, much like ranger spirits work

The control idea was more to help handle the issue of mobility. All but the air run up into Melee to fight which is not always ideal for our squishier defences. So I purpose a counter measure to us having control. Make them like a rangers spirite as you suggested that follow closely behinds us like a bodyguard that swings at our targets in Melee range and shots something at a ranged distance. Giving us a means to manage their movements and just trigger their special by reclicking the glyph?

Sounds pretty good, but I think we might have to choose between being able to control where they go, or control when they use their special ability, cause otherwise we need an additional button. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

I’d choose being able to reclick for special ability. On demand protection/7k heal/ranged stun/ good aoe damage volley, would make this SO much better.

Hambow, burn your dodges when he pulls out the bow for a chance at dodging pin down, alternatively, be ready to heal through bow dmg since it has no interrupts on it. When he switches to hammer, don’t waste your stun breaks. As long as you dodge 2 stuns you dont have to stun-break the third. Hammer has a very simple 3-stun lockdown, if you avoid two, the one remaining stun shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Always stun-break when you get stunned right away though. Spam blinds cause hammer hits very slow.

P/U mesmer: you really shouldn’t be fighting this guy, you’re most likely more useful somewhere else. If you really have to, avoid his scepter block (it has an icon in the effects bar) by dodging right after you pop the block, or by waiting the block out. If you don’t you’ll get 5 stacks torment which will destroy you. Don’t be too afraid to destroy his clones in a fire burst, he will override them with new ones and they’ll explode anyway. Generally you should avoid killing the clones, but don’t make it hurt your damage too much.

Shatter mesmer: Dodge when all the clones start running at you, gtfo when he uses illusionary leap, dont blow cooldowns on distortion/blurred frenzy. But most of all, PRESSURE this guy. Go hard or go home, seriously this is the best advice against shatter mesmers, get up in their face and pressure them.

Condi ranger, if he uses spirits, know that they will die by your fire burst, and will all proc their passives on death. Dodge through the clusterkitten of effects this creates. Try to kite the pet, dodge the fear (when you see his wolf howl), always use stability with your heal unless he blows his concussion shot, which he really shouldnt. Rangers lack overtime heals but have very thick skin. Not the best matchup for something glassy. Try to last decently long by making good use of water.

Condi necromancer: very susceptible to cc! Try to keep him locked as long as you can and maximize your burst. Once it goes sideways and conditions start ticking up, learn to leave before its too late since he cant chase you. So try to stunlock and burst. Not gonna lie if he has a stunbreak you’re not gonna pull this off.

Forgot condi warrior: dodge impale! It’s the sword throw thingy. Heal through the sword adrenaline skill. Condi warrior has no interrupts so shouldnt be too hard

Neat little idea. If I could control where and when my water elemental does its splash 7k heal that would be pretty gamechanging.

I can’t see how it could work as a trait though. A trait that adds an extra button somewhere seems rather odd. Maybe as a toggle on the glyph itself after the elemental has been summoned, much like ranger spirits work

reikken.4961:

Even the running heavy golem in the heart of the mists has enough time to get up and jog out of the way if you down it with earthquake and immediately use dragon’s tooth on it.

Then you have to be faster. I don’t know about earthquake but I can assure you the only way to avoid a dragon’s tooth/updraft or gale combo is by popping a stunbreak. But you have to switch attunement during the animation and start casting dragon’s tooth immediately.

Updraft and fiery greatsword whirl seem to help for me

I’m gonna assume you’re not level 80 yet. Once you’re 80 and have exotic gear, most dungeon runs become a LOT easier.

Use it right after updraft or gale. Fits perfectly

Use it for a 6 second cooldown blast finisher, to force a dodge by standing under it, to pressure downed people or people ressing or after an updraft/gale.

It’s not useless, but its not easy either. Not every skill can be as useful in PvP.

Although I do agree shatterstone needs some work. That skill is utterly useless

Haha point taken

I should stop forgetting this is not the D/D forum anymore

I feel like a lot of you people are having flashbacks here. Thieves may have easy access to resets, but there’s a limit. It’s really a bit silly to say thieves are still ‘broken as ever’, ‘unbeatable’, ‘easymode’ and what not.

I agree that when two unexperienced players face off, the thief has an advantage due to a much more straightforward playstyle, and will probably win most of the time. However when both are averagely skilled (not insane l33t pro, just some knowledge of each other’s class), it is not as one-sided a duel as much as you seem to believe it is.

S/D thieves have been hit hard by infiltrator’s return getting a cast time, D/x thieves have been hit hard by the nerf to infusion of shadow. In a proper 1v1 setting, especially in WvW, elementalist stands a very good chance. The classic D/D build has enough defense to not die to a thief burst, enough heals to top back up and use the thief’s reset as a reset of his own, and on top of that can produce enough CC and burst to finish a thief.

I agree they were once as you described, so many months ago before the countless nerfs. They have come down to earth though.

Good work.

Unfortunately daphoenix’s celestial analysis is quite outdated, now that we have celestial armor and weapons.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tawyu/psa_the_order_to_add_ascended_celestial_gear_for/

This is a good resource for choosing what pieces to make celestial first. Daphoenix’s post is still relevant information on why to pick celestial, but not what pieces.

I have actually, but I don’t find them too threatening at all. Much like rifle warriors they cannot keep an ele at range effectively enough. As for S/D, it really got hit hard last patch. They can’t juke any of your stuff with infiltrator’s return anymore. They used to be extremely hard though I agree.

As far as advice against S/X thieves/thieves in general: If your opponent is decently good, he’ll shadow return/infiltrator’s return your burning speed every time. Flash on top of his platform just before you complete the slide. Also try to keep the fight as close to their return platforms at all times. If you don’t, there’s no way you’ll be able to kill them.

Might is where the damage is at. At 20 stacks of might, that crit damage and precision get put to good use.

Not that this setup does crazy damage, and that arguably isn’kittens strong point. 0/20/0/20/30 or 0/15/10/15/30 setups do quite a bit more damage, but lose cleansing potential.

silvershadez.8421:

I don’t think buffing auras is the key to make elementalist players happy.

I personally was never relying on auras and I don’t really want to.

They should switch around traits abit and get rid of the useless ones. Nothing gamebreaking tho. Don’t want this class ending up being a warrior v. 2.0.

You may not have been relying on them, but they have saved your life and won your fights more times than you can imagine.

Assuming you’re talking about D/D ele here:

It’s all about the auras versus a thief. I can’t stress this enough, both shocking aura and frost aura are your most important assets against them. In order of difficulty:

P/D condi
D/P
D/D
S/D
all other thief weapon sets

From my experience in the obsidian sanctum duelling arena, I’ve been told that elementalists are one of the hardest matchups for thieves generally, which is also what I’ve been experiencing as I hardly ever lose against them. Only P/D condi with dazing steal that can interrupt your ether renewal through stability can reliably beat you. Second hardest is a very methodic and tanky D/P thief.

TL;DR: Elementalist wins most of the time

Shame the internal cooldown on runes of resistance is so absurd, I was looking forward to using a build like that one.

I’m sorry if you expected me to give you a genuinely interested reply on a rage-filled post.

Would you deny the current trait is being used at least ten times more than the old one? Are you just looking for a place to flame about the state of the game, or do you genuinely believe the new trait is worse than the old one.

Where in the build you described does http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Soothing_Wave&oldid=466306 act as the crux of that build?

Where’s the perma prot?

It’s just another cookie cutter cantrip D/D 0/10/0/30/30 build tbh :-/. A little squish but nothing too crazy. Will do fine

Conncept.7638:

This traits is undeniably worthless, and the one it replaced was amazing and potentially the crux of a dozen PvE builds. Way to go ANet.

Show me this magnificent pve build of yours…

It would be rather strange to adapt the combo system for elementalist only, although looking at the fire grandmaster trait persisting flames, it’s not impossible.

I really like aura sharing to be honest. I’ve been running 030/10/30/0 tempest defense aura sharing with protection on aura, and let me tell you, it’s insanely strong. Lacks durability, makes up for it in raw damage and team support. Tempest defense procs even when you negate the cc with stability. Very strong indeed.

By the way, chaos armor is technically not an aura, so don’t get your hopes up.

I find it a good counter to the on-crit condition application traits. Mainly engi burning, since it will cleanse that faster than you ever could, without even having to go into water.

Honestly, the old trait was completely and utterly useless, outclassed by so many others in its tier. It even messed you up often, breaking your stealth from a refuge when in downed state and vapor forming to get out of the aoe.

On the topic of being able to not take any crits ever, why would you even be in the water tree if you could have 100 more power z0mg. This trait was never meant for you to go and stand in a warrior’s hundred blades to get some measly regen, but rather to help you fight mainly condition classes.

I agree we need some aura related traits. Having to go 30 into a trait line without aura-boosting traits just to pick up powerful aura is very strange to me. Things like ‘auras last one additional second’, or ‘auras grant regeneration’.

The problem is that with the existence of powerful aura anet is very afraid to boost auras, since we could spread whatever defense it gives us to an entire party, so they have to find a way to make auras viable for solo play, without making them OP in group combat.

The thing I would love to see fixed the most is being able to share the fire aura from a fire leap combo. I hope to someday see that happen, since it’s technically an aura with a 10 second cooldown.

You probably have a stat conversion of toughness or vitality to power somewhere.

I misread the build you described as saying you were going for celestial trinkets, where you said you were going for ascended trinkets. I’m sorry. Massive kitten , want me to remove these posts?

Btw I would say a little celestial is nice for the healing power and critical damage, but thats a matter of opinion, not fact which is how I presented my proposal.

Jabberwock.9014:

^ Flawed logic, which Anet is mysteriously embracing. I could just as easily say something ridiculous like: “movement is an incredibly powerful and game-changing ability. For this reason we are moving the use of WASD keys to a grandmaster trait.”

Point is, the strength of traits should not be examined in a void, but in how powerful they make us in comparison to other classes. If ele is balanced or UP compared to other classes with elemental attunement as an adept trait or even baseline, that is what it should be. If it is more powerful than other traits then they should instead be brought up to par.

Movement is not unique to any profession, elemental attunement is. I agree it wouldn’t be a problem balance-wise if we got it baseline or if it went back to adept, I’m just saying it won’t happen, and we should work from there.

To clarify, this is what you’re proposing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoIGAIKcxERBAKPyZGbA-jkCBYLBkgAkEBIHtIaslhBp6KslXRTVTQWlET5KpSBonwI-w

And this is what I’m proposing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoIGAIKcxERBAKPyZGbA-j0CBYfgYLAEEgkIAJqFRjtMMIVXht8KaabYKXJVFTQWKA9EGB-w

Both builds have pretty much exactly the same stats, except the second one gets 10 percent extra critical damage. This is due to weird roundings which make celestial armor better than trinkets, and cavalier trinkets better than cavalier armor.

Hope it helps!

I’m sorry I meant celestial armor :o

That made no sense, sorry for the confusion

Celestial armor is better than celestial trinkets, and cavalier trinkets is better than cavalier armor