Guild Wars 2

Sunshine.5014:

I main an Ele, and I’m between rank 50-100 on soloq, ~200 on teamq, just in case people ask.
I’ve been playing Ele since the start of the game

about the same here :P

Sunshine.5014:

That’s a permanent 200 more offensive stats in combat, just from the 4 pieces bonus*, without counting any other benefits it gives.

25 stacks of might gives a big stats boost to any class/build. That’s 875 power and 875 condition damage at the same time. No rune should allow people to get that much benefit by just equipping a rune set.

As an ele I’d say offensive stats are exactly what we needed to compensate for our lack of defensive base-stats – so basically it’s those runes (among some un-nerfs of other stuff that made D/D viable again) that brought ele back to the screen. I think that ele is in a pretty good spot atm … not as overpowered as it was 1,5 years ago and not underpowered as before the last patch.

However, those runes are available to everybody. They may not be as good for other classes as for the ele and there is a slight counter to them (boon-stripping), but the simple fact that everybody uses them makes clear, that they’re overpowered. A nerf would be a pretty hard hit for eles once again but seems to be necessary.
However overall balance seems to be pretty much ok atm with some exceptions. Never touch a running system

I tried a similar build to yours a while ago that was based on high chill uptime. It didn’t really work for me. It was surprisingly weak in team-fights and also didn’t bring enough damage or support to be on par with other builds.
Another problem is that eles usually lack conditions to cover up the conditions they want to keep on the target so your chill will often be easily cleansed. You only have some burn, bleed and vulnerability mainly from autoattacks that are otherwise terribly weak.

design a hilarious OP class? hmm …

new elite for ele: “You turn into a Warrior for 20s; 180s CD”
Maybe lower duration so that it’s not too OP.

Hmm, ele isn’t what it used to be in terms of survival and zerg-trolling. RTL-nerf (increased CD) took most of the fun from D/D ele in WvW so I stopped solo-roaming (and WvW in general).
In PvP however it has always been my favorite class, because of the things you already mentioned.
D/D even recieved some buffs in the last patch – or let’s say reverted nerfs – that made it playable again in PvP. Though the last few months where quite hard for eles in PvP I never stopped playing it because it’s the only class I’m having fun with – regardless of success or effectivity.
So if you enjoyed playing ele, I think you’ll still have fun with it, even though you’ll maybe get steamrolled by certain cheese-builds cough warrior cough

Romek.4201:

plz dont play this EU SoloQ – thx

very true. People are way too stupid to understand how staff-supporters are utilized and how they work.

CCs should be effective but strong spells should also have high CDs. As mentioned before eles’ CCs have reasonable CDs. They’re good for interrupting rezzing/stomping or buildung up pressure on the enemy but they can’t be used for perma CC and you always have to look out for stability so that you don’t waste a valuable 40s CD. On the contrary playing a warrior you don’t really care if your spells actually hit or not. When they hit it’s fine, when not you can try again in 6-10s anyways so why care about what the enemy is doing?
Something like a DR on the different types of CC would be very reasonable and defuse some of the lamest builds out there …

But in addition stabilty/stunbreaks would have to be removed from the game or be made very rare (like armor of earth from ele with its high CD). CCs as well as a stunbreaks should be something exclusive and game-changing (“skillshots”) and not something that can be spammed at will.

As it is now or as some people here propose (increase stability uptime) we only get power-creep. It is already extremely boring to fight against all these bunkers that are immune to CC/damage/conditions half of the time …

+1 for this idea. The current scoreboard doesn’t say anything about the performance of the players.
At least total damage/healing done/taken and decaps/captures as well as deaths/finishers/resses would be very interesting to see. Since there is already a combat log displaying damage done/taken I think it wouldn’t be difficult to sum it up and show it on the scoreboard. Same goes for healing. Decaps/captures are already displayed more or less.

But I think something like this will never be implemented because it would display the large imbalance between classes. It’s the same reason why there is no damage-meter in PvE.

Locuz.2651:

An obvious example is capping homepoints with almost the entire team.

I don’t think that this is caused by players that don’t know how to play conquest. They just want to get as many points as possible and capping close is an efficient way to get easy points. The problem is that the game rewards this unstrategic behaviour. Killing people in the middle of nowhere grants you the same amount of points as decapping a point – but is way more interesting than standing around on a circle on the ground waiting for it to be captured.

If things like rezzing allies or defending points would grant more points then more people would do these things.

However, I think that this is a problem mainly seen in hotjoin, so I wouldn’t care too much about it. Hotjoin, as already mentioned, is a place for farming rank (lulz), PvErs farming achievements/doing dailys or testing builds and stuff.
If you want to avoid these problems you have to play s/tPvP. People there usually have at least a bit of strategic understanding and also read the chat and watch/ping the map.

ceol.9175:

This is a very common complaint that the devs seem to not really care too much about. They think it’s more important for you to be thrown into a match, even if there’s a huge discrepancy between you and the people you face, guaranteeing a loss.

Sadly this seems to be true.
If there’s something more important than class-balance it would be good team balance. I don’t have the faintest idea how mmr is calculated here but exciting games with a close ending and long team-fights are very rare. Ranks aren’t shown anymore obviously to cover up the crappy team-compilations where a lvl1 and a lvl60 player gets matched against two lvl30 players but you’ll still instantly notice when you have newbies in your team. (I know that rank usually isn’t meaningful but a lvl1 player obviously can’t be good at playing PvP and will harm the team way more than a lvl60 player benefits it)

I’m also playing other mmorpgs and there’s nothing more frustrating than getting teamed up against obviously better players or playing together with people who have no idea what they’re doing. I don’t even care about OP or UP classes – as long as they’re as good as I am (in terms of mmr) I can win against them.

These crappy team-compilations in addition to afkers or 4v5 kills the fun way more than OP classes so I’d love to see something done here.
Maybe they should remove hotjoin so you have a larger pool of differently skilled players to pick from. Maybe even put s/tPvP together and only match premades against soloQers when they would be waiting for too long to find other solo-players with simliar MMR.
Good example would be LoL. Intelligent MMR, different leagues, premades are usually matched against premades and you can even pick a role before joining a team.

Nothing has changed basically. The builds are still the same. Only real buffs are the reversion of our restoration signet and the water GM trait nerf in addition to the evasion on burning speed.
And I don’t think that the new GM traits make that much of a difference. Bunkers can bunker a little bit better and healers may now be viable in WvW and pug-arena but those traits aren’t used for offensive/balanced builds.

As for me it feels quite the same. D/D is a little bit stronger due to burning speed being an opener now that doesn’t leave you half dead because of random AoE when engaging a fight. Staff was fun even before the patch and S/D fresh air is still the same too.

The GCD and the randomness of the blind on AoE-spells kills this trait. I’ve always pointed out that blinds need to be timed very well (Scepter Air-3 is perfect ). So a random blind will often just negate a single autohit and would therefore be a complete waste.
It’s impossible to track the inner CD and therefore you often don’t get your blind when you need it (when you activate cleansing fire just for the blind for example).

Imho using a scepter and running a Fresh-Air-build will provide better blinds. It may not be available that often but you can use it for specific attacks which is way more important than the CD.
Once again Anet seems to not have thought this one through …

Overall I think that the patch didn’t change anything for eles. Only noteworthy good change is Burning Speed and maybe Stone Heart (haven’t tried it out yet) but I think it will fail like Diamond Skin just because it forces you to stay in earth and this isn’t how you play an elementalist.

such masochism
very ele
wow

I play ele since release, also played in top100 soloQ. I barely play alts so I guess I’m fairly experienced with my ele at 2000h+ played time.

So let’s see. Every good ele I’ve met in quite some time uses ER. And at least one trait in water and/or evasive arcana to get rid of conditions. Some also trait 30 into water just for condition-removal (this was common even before the duumfire-patch) or they use runes for condi-removal or shortened condi-duration.
Anet even implemented new traits for condition removal like Burning Fire or Diamond Skin. The latter is for sure the strongest indicator (even Anet seems to realise it) that eles extremely suffer from conditions and that they need a build that focuses on getting rid of them.

@Team-Compositions: 40% condition-builds is extremely much when you consider that not all classes have viable condi-specs (and therefore are forced to run a power-build – whereas basically all classes have acces to good power-builds) and that there’s usually at least one bunker(guardian) that doesn’t fokus on damage anyway in each team. Considering the last point it’s already 50% of all DDs that run conditions.

In my eyes condition-builds should be rare and exclusive to certain classes. If that’d be the case people wouldn’t use that much condi-removal/condi-hate and a nekro could still own even if the conditions weren’t as overpowered as they’re atm. That was my idea behind nerfing it in general.
Whatever … this won’t happen so we can stop discussing about it

oh, and @WvW: I don’t see WvW as real PvP. May be my personal opinion but running around in groups of 50+ and spamming AoE has nothing to do with PvP. And of course in a huge zerg people don’t use conditions too much because they don’t stack. In a 50-100 player zerg a handfull of condi-builds are enough to unleash a kittenload of conditions to a large amount of targets.

When you look at it this way I’d say warriors have overall way better survivability (and also damage if you want) than eles and yet they get a better heal. So it is more than fair to compare the heals and judging based on your argumentation eles should even have a much stronger heal than warriors. Yet, it is vice-versa.

And I already wrote about Rock Solid, I am actually running a build including this trait … I guess people aren’t reading my posts properly.

lorndarken.3702:

funny how most of the complaints come from people who dont even realize they have more ways to remove conditions then they do to apply them .

Funny how classes like ele have to revolve every build around condition-removal just to survive. That’s not how a game should be.

I’d propose to tone down conditions in general as well as condition-cleansing. This way there wouldn’t be such a strong need for those heavy condi-cleanse orientated builds but conditions would still be viable.

Also, I don’t see how you can compare two different skills on two different profession which have different settings.

I was solely talking about HPS, therefore I think it’s ok to compare different spells on different classes.

Arcane Brilliance heals for 273 HP/s when 5 enamies are hit, so slightly above Ether Renewal.

so you get the point. Like Arcane Brilliance ER can in theory be better than other ele-heals in terms of HPS without taking other things into consideration (like already mentioned that you would have to heal 1/4 of the time and that it can be interrupted for example).

I still think that the main reason why people are running ER is its condi-cleanse, not its HPS.

Nevertheless this is offtopic… Like stated in my first post I think ER is quite fine as it is (though I’d love to see a talent like Obsidian Focus that gives stability on chanels or something like that).

huge healing

nope not really. You usually don’t get all ticks from the spell and you should also keep in mind that it’s a very obvious 4s-chanel. During that time you can do nothing and the heal can easily be outdamaged (if not interrupted) during that time. (15s CD and 4s cast-time = 1/4 of your time running around trying to heal when kept on CD … not really efficient playstyle, yet necessary to stay alive. Ask again why eles are struggeling atm …) Running berserker you usually just “negate” the incoming damage while chaneling and in the end you will have the same amount of health as before the chanel – just with conditions cleansed.
If it wasn’t for the ele’s vulnerability against conditions I’d never use this spell for it’s “good heal” that even requires a specific build to work. Signet would be the way to go for eles without this stupid condi-meta.
Compared to warriors’ healing signet ER is nothing but a weak spell.

For sure it’s bothersome when ER gets interrupted but it’s your job to prohibit that. You can spec into earth for stability, CC the enemy or outrange him with movement spells. You can also flash away while channeling, etc.

So overall this spell fits eles perfectly – high risk, mediocre reward.

I still like Mbelchs suggestion though. Reverting the change of mistform might also be a good start.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The jokes is on you because there is a buff to rtl coming on May.

nice try

jihm.2315:

a way to punish fotm rerollers?
i support.

+1

People constantly complain about fotm-players without skill that steamroll over others just because of broken/bugged class-mechanics or traits/spells, yet you guys want to keep rerolling without any restriction? Seriously this would be one of the best changes ever made to PvP in terms of class-variety and balance.

Blinding Ashes: The trait itself may not be that bad but who specs 30 into fire in PvP unless you want to die within a split second? Blinds won’t help you because you will just randomly die in AoE even when you’re not fucused. Blinds usually also need perfect timing to be usefull which is hard to achieve via the 10s CD and the fact that your access to burns will drop nearly to 0 when switching out of fire. Fire in general is not attractive for PvP because of bad adept and master traits so who speccs 30 into it anyway?

Lightning Rod: Eles have effective interrupts with low CD that can be timed well? No, they don’t have – so why would I ever pick this trait – especially when I can have Fresh Air instead that’s giving me both more burst and sustained damage? Also the best trait this would synergize with is Tempest Defense which is a GM-trait in the same attunement…

Stone heart: Another one of those futile attempts to make eles playable just like Diamond Skin. You won’t deal damage in earth and when you try to stay as long as possible in earth you’re restricting yourself because you don’t use all your attunements efficient and therefore won’t get the full potential out of the ele. May be nice against thieves or warriors but still those classes can put permanent pressure on you so you’d propably will have to stay in earth all of the time to feel a difference. This also doesn’t help you against conditions and even non-crits will hurt you a lot as an ele. Additionally there’s 300 useless condi-damage from the earth-traitline which is just a waste of stats (especially when you consider that eles have the worst base-stats in the game with its low vita and toughness).

Aquatic Benevolence: I always liked the idea to make support more viable but unless the game doesn’t need support it will be useless to pick traits like these. Eles are the ones that are the squishiest on the battlefield. They’re the ones that get focused first – healing to others will help nobody. I also think that scaling with healing-power would in general have to be increased to make traits like these a viable pick.

Elemental Contingency:This trait is way worse than Elemental Attunement … why the heck is this a GM-trait? Random-proccs are bad btw. This is the most underwhelming trait compared to the others.

Once again the traits seem to go somehow in the right direction and I think they’re partly meant to adress the eles lack of survivability but they won’t help at all. They’re like Diamond Skin that nobody uses or the new heal that nobody uses or Burning Fire that nobody uses. They’re way too underhwelming and situational to make a difference.
I think I won’t even come back to try out those new traits… Builds won’t change because there are other traits that are so heavily needed for making ele playable in PvP. Still some of them seem to be in a good spot compared to other classes’ new traits.

I’m a bit confused by the Q/A-sticky and I get different answers ingame so I’ll ask again just to be sure: Will already earned glory and pvp materials be removed or is it just impossible to gain any additional glory after the patch?
If they’re removed – what’s the best way to spend it?

Thanks in advance for answering

Nothing new I’d say. I’m running the trait with staff in solo-Q. Finishing enemies and chaneling ER or Meteor-Shower will never be a problem again

I lolled at that Ring of Acrophobia. After implementing such a ring they will continue to make maps like skyhammer and sell same rings for each map to get moar money

Wintel.4873:

it dared to be different from WoW in huge ways and absolutely succeeded.

Don’t get me wrong, holy trinity is one of the best concepts ever with a big list of strengths…but it also has some weaknesses, nothing is perfect. I got tired of it and wanted something different, so here I am playing GW2.

hmm, to be honest I got bored by GW2 PvE after about a year (living story is only temporary content and after missing one or two chapters I also stopped doing these). And there’s not much you can do besides that. I’ve seen all dungeons and I have full exotic/ascended gear (armor is only exotic because I don’t want to grind hours for gear I won’t use much because I don’t do PvE anymore), 100% map-completion etc. Dungeons aren’t challenging and you don’t get gear there so there isn’t really a motivation to do them. All that is left is WvW (I don’t like it because it’s just zerging and spamming AoE) and PvP – which is the only thing that I’m doing now.
Due to the lack of the trinity it’s also rather boring to play other classes because they’re all kinda the same (damage-dealers …)

On the contrary I play WoW since about 6 years and never really got bored. I have many different characters which are all unique in their role and playstyle which can’t really be said about classes in gw2. Doing dungeons in WoW with two different classes is a complete different experience whereas doing a dungeon in GW2 with let’s say an ele and a warrior is practically the same.

what nerf?

RTL for mobility, Updraft and Earthquake+Immob for reliable CC/decapping, Frostaura and Cleansing Wave go without saying

Damage-spells are not really needed but you can still win 1v1 against GCs so they aren’t useless (like Focus fire spells). Focus is better against ranged enemies with swirling winds and magnetic wave but overall I have better experience with Dagger.

Mainhand Dagger is also better for bunkering than Scepter.
Burning Speed will be evasion, Frozen burst combo-finisher and Cone of Cold little heal. Lightning Touch for weakness and Shocking Aura for additional CC, Ring of Earth and Magnetic Grasp for even more control.

Scepter has phoenix to cleanse a condition and give vigor, water trident for heal and two blinds (one beeing extremely unreliable) + a little toughness.

CMstorm.8679:

possible additions:
-Increases duration of auras by 2 seconds

you stole that one from my thread

I had the same idea but I haven’t had time to try it yet. Boon-duration-runes may be fine too.
D/D (or S/D for air aa-chanel) with 0|10|20|10|30 not sure though if I the lack of 15 water hurts too much.

I never really understood this change. And I also don’t understand the implementation of torment and now the crit-damage change or the change of sigills. Nobody demanded them (maybe except that you can place two sigills on a 2h) and there was/is absoluteley no need for those changes. These are fundamental interventions into game balance and they show that either the game was far from beeing balanced after release or that we’re moving more and more away from a balanced state.

can I find a transcript of the changes somewhere?

and of course the signet-buff (or let’s say bring it back to pre-nerf efficiency)

Marcos.3690:

Ele will still be eaten by condis

It has been like this since release. Trap-rangers and condi-engis for example have always been hard enemies for us.

Graendall.4765:

It won’t matter with the current meta.1vs1 maybe but i would never take out Ether renewal from my bar.Saved me thousands of times.Conditions will reck you without it.

I think so too. Even before the nerf of the signet I was already using ER because I had a hard time against condi-engis and trap-rangers.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caster

Why don’t we just make all classes the same? Everybody should play warrior so there is no flame anymore. Everyone will be happy right?

Engineers can have a self-rezz when downed, necros win every 1v1 downed-duell and warrior-downed-state isn’t that bad too because they can also win many downed-state duells or they can rezz team-mates etc. Also keep in mind that ele, thief and mesmers are the 3 most squishy classes and maybe teams should be punished a little bit by their downed-state when they focus these classes first. Stability usually also has to be built for via utilities or or traits – people sacrifice other things for stability in order to be good stompers. And on the other hand there are also boon-strips to prevent stability-stomping.
I agree though that downed-state should be removed entirely in PvP or altered. Not the downed-spells but the mechanic that every player gets rezzed when an enemy player dies. This is utterly stupid and random.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Ele-Utility-skills-are-a-letdown/first#post3478859

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Mbelch.9028:

Glad to see this thread.

Conditions. They are the bane of elementalists. I can’t tell you the last time I lost a direct damage duel. But the time I lost a condition damage duel was recent. We have enough clears, but we virtually have to devote ourselves to clearing conditions.

I literally have 30 points invested just so I don’t have to worry as much about hybrid condi builds. And against bomb engineers, why even try as a d/d ele?

ether renewal? .. no? … “DEY RUPT MER ETHER.”
Oh, I use rock solid, just saying.

Ether Renewal is good for condition clearing but not for healing. Even if you have stability opponents simply burst you while channeling because they know you can’t dodge. Meaning ether renewal heals for pretty much nothing in those 3,5 seconds.

That’s why I suggested to either add a damage-reduction to ether-renewal or do this via trait (Obsidian Focus is too weak to make a difference).

drkn.3429:

The profession mechanic should have something to offer.

That’s what I’m saying since about half a year. Eles don’t even have 20 spells when substract the useless autohits and also consider the lack of F-spells that any other class has. That’s why I think traits like the 15P traits or elemental attunement should be included in our attunement-swap so that we get at least a little benefit from our “mechanic” that is nothing but a weapon-swap.

Another thing is that 20 spells aren’t really a benefit … it’s a handicap. Where some classes have a spell with 6s CD eles have 2 spells with 12s. Not much difference when it comes to efficiency but the high attunement-swap-CD makes it much more difficult for eles to time their spells and those spells also don’t compensate the lack of “oh-kitten-F-buttons”. Also traits like CD-reduction affect only 1/4 of our spells whereas on other classes these traits usually affect 1/2 (or even more depending on weapon-sets) of them (and often give other boni in addition). Maybe let those -20% CD on attunement-x-spells also reduce attunement-recharge rate?

mas.7401:

Ele is in an amazing place right now.

either stop trolling or bring some arguments …

well though I agree with the OP I think it’s too late to completely overhaul the game. Anyways here’s some advise or wishes ^^ maybe for future-addons:

• tone down #6 heals (CDs should be >60s) or completely remove them on certain classes; increase scaling of weapon-spell heals. Heals should be an ace in your sleeve once in a fight, not part of your “standard-rotation” -> this ensures that some classes (like thief or old D/D ele) can’t quit combat anytime they want (very frequently) and reset the fight by outranging or hiding from enemies via stealth, heal up and engage combat again with full HP. In addition this would make supporter more important
• restrict certain boons to certain classes or very distinct builds (regeneration only for ele/guard, fury only warrior, might only engi, etc.) -> promotes build/class-variety
• same goes for conditions: restrict certain conditions to certain classes (confusion only for mesmer, weakness only for guard, bleed only thief warrior and necro, burn only ele and necro, vulnerability only for ranger etc.)
• give classes more distinct roles, don’t try to enable all playstyles for all classes. When I choose a class I want to have a defined role and stand out in that role. Why create 8 professions when every class can do everything anyways?
• create more skillshots -> high risk and high reward. CCs and some conditions should be stronger (like a 5-6s stun) but also have a long CD. Burst-spells (like meteor shower, skullcrack, backstab) should have high CDs too but also hit like a truck when they actually hit something -> would promote more coordinated play, people will have to time and combine their offensive spells to kill an enemy (this is already possible but not necessary due to low CDs)
• balance defensive spells (and dodges) based on those strong skillshots (defensive spells should always have larger CDs than offensive spells to avoid endless duels → things like perma-vigor or perma-dodge-thiefs are extremely boring)
• tone down autohits – make classes more reliant on landing their spells
• also avoid spam of mediocre spells by higher CDs to enforce intelligent gameplay and …
• … introduce a (in combat slow recharging) resource like mana/energy/etc. for every class -> gives builds and gameplay more depth and punishes players for spamming skills and wasting their resource
• don’t let every class be effective at both melee and ranged combat at the same time just by switching weapons – ranged classes should be punished when in melee range but be rewarded when they can avoid melee combat. (same goes for melee-classes vice versa)
• don’t add too much passive traits like healing signet, regeneration, immunity etc. they’re boring and let people “outplay” others not by skill but by those passives winning the game for them.
• reduce the inequality of stats between the classes (warriors having 1000P worth of attributes more than eles) – compensate low defensive stats with higher offensive stats
• remove or alter downstate in PvP. At least make it harder to revive allies (remove the mechanic that revives all players once an enemy is finished).

>Access what roles should exist over all the professions<
In order to give all classes viable builds in every role you mentioned you would have to give all classes the same type of spells. Every class would need strong movement spells, strong heals, strong burst, etc. But why create 8 different professions when everybody is basically able to do the same – and also will do the same based on the current meta. Sounds rather boring.

A distinct role for each class is something that should exist in every mmo at some degree. Because it’s something that makes classes unique and makes every class viable because it’s the only one that can fit this specific role. If you want a roamer you pick a thief. If you want a defender you pick a guardian. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be. When every class can do everything there will always be one class that can do it best – and others will be tossed aside, just like it’s the case with eles, that stand out in no role.

>If you place any dps build vs a bunker using two players with the same skill level the dps build is going to win, and why is that?<
are you sure that you’re talking about gw2?

I kinda agree with the rest of your post though (survivability and condition-bunkers)

There should be a trait that makes all auras stun-breakers (including the proccs from traits). Maybe increase the CD and/or remove the damage-gain to balance it. Alternatively the bonus-damage should work on all kinds of CC. This would be usefull.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I main an Elementalist, I am the strongest Elementalist and I have NEVER lost a duel against another Elementlist.

stopped reading here

I made a complete analysis of utility-spells: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Ele-Utility-skills-are-a-letdown/first#post3478859

and traits: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Elementalist-Complete-Trait-Analysis/first#post3480929

feel free to contribute or bump ^^

lolwut dude over the last months I suggested or was thinking about more than half of your ideas (literally exactly the same) in several threads can you read my mind?

+ kittening 1

[…]

Arcane:
Our best and therefore most popular traitline. It offers both offensive and defensive traits. Traits aren’t restricted to special conditions like attunements or weaponset so they boost the ele regardless of build and weapon-choice. Some of these traits make eles viable in PvP in the first place.

• 5-Arcane Fury: Nice one, good synergy with the boon-duration from arcana.
• 15-Lingering Elements: Make it work with all traits not only minors or rework it. When speccing into arcana you’ll have at best 2 minors in your build anyways so Lingering Elements will only work with 1 or 2 of these depending on your build. In addition fire and earth minors are bad so I’d never put 15P into arcana for this trait.
• 25-Arcane Precision: Would need a drastic increase of the procc-chance (50%?) to be worth a grandmaster-minor.

• I-Arcane Mastery: Same as equivalents in other traitlines with the difference that arcane-spells are actually good. So this trait is kinda usefull. Still boring design though.
• II-Renewing Stamina: Though some classes have this as a 5P minor trait it’s still one of our best traits. Good synergy with arcana’s boon-duration.
• III-Final Shielding: Not bad, could use a further decrease of its CD. Very often this trait gets bypassed by high crits though (25% ele-HP is usually only ~4k HP) and then it won’t procc. Something has to be done about that.
• IV-Vigorous Scepter: Worse than Renewing Stamina (especially because scepter is usually used in glassy builds). Would never pick this one instead of the better alternative.
• V-Blasting Staff: Perfect.
• VI-Windborne Dagger: Now that it works outfight it’s fine, I guess.
• VII-Arcane Retribution: Random procc for a mediocre spell. No thanks.
• VIII-Elemental Attunement: best. trait. ever. This is THE trait that makes eles viable in PvP. Very good synergy with arcana-traitline because of boon-duration.
• IX-Arcane Resurrection: Should be in adept-tier. Used it a couple of times in WvW but now that it competes with Elemental Attunement I’d never pick it.
• X-Arcane Energy: Never really used it so I guess it has no use. Now also overshadowed by Elemental Attunement.
• XI-Evasive Arcana: Genious, nothing more to say.
• XII-Elemental Surge: Good idea but not worth a grandmaster-trait, especially not when you can use Evasive Arcana instead.

[…]

Water:
Not only good but even necessary for PvP. Includes some of our best traits and even for PvE there are some nice ones.

• 5-Soothing Mist: Perfectly Fine.
• 15-Healing Ripple: Perfectly Fine.
• 25-Bountiful Power: Also fine, still can’t understand the nerf from 2% to 1% though.

• I-Arcane Abatement: Standard-spell. Solid for WvW. Wouldn’t use it but there are some players that really like it so it’s fine.
• II-Shard of Ice: Good synergy with lightning-hammer-build but nothing overwhelming. 3 Stacks of Vulnerability for 8s every ~20s isn’t that good (especially when compared to some weapon-spells that apply 10 stacks for a longer period or even some ele-spells that apply weakness)
• III-Cantrip Mastery: Since cantrips are very strong, this is a nice trait. Should also lower the CD of traits like Burning Fire or Earth’s Embrace.
• IV-Piercing Shards: Perfect for LH-Build. Would love if it worked with Lingering Elements.
• V-Soothing Wave: Good for bunkers but inferior to Cantrip Mastery. Still good synergy with Cleansing Water so it seems fine for and adept-trait.
• VI-Vital Striking: Solid for PvE and also PvP.
• VII-Stop, Drop, and Roll: Meh … not worth a master-trait. Maybe let dodges remove a random-condition without any further restrictions.
• VIII-Aquamancer’s Alacrity: The same as the equivalents in other elements. Usually not worth it and boring design. Make it more interesting.
• IX-Soothing Disruption: Perfect. (Revert the nerfs pls)
• X-Cleansing Wave: Also good. Wouldn’t change it.
• XI-Cleansing Water: Good idea and good synergy but once again I’d like to see the nerfs reverted. Especially with that condi-spam everywhere.
• XII-Powerful Aura: Could use a little boost. Maybe make it increase the duration of all auras by 1-2s?

[…]

[…]

Earth:
Some good defensive traits here but in general there aren’t any viable condition-builds for eles so many traits and the condition-damage you gain from it are useless.

• 5-Stone Flesh: Nice minor-trait, even more now that it works with Lingering Elements.
• 15-Earthen Blast: Same as the equivalent in fire. Could use a boost in damage or maybe replace the cripple with a 1-2s root – that’s something I’d invest 15P for. Would enable a lot of funny combos.
• 25-Enduring Damage: I don’t get how a guardian with very good defense benefits from low endurance while squishy eles that have to dodge permanently to survive need a full endurance bar for this trait. Make it vice versa so we get damage when endurance isn’t full. Traits shouldn’t handicap but help you.

• I-Obsidian Focus: Compared to the Equivalent in Air this is nowhere as good. There are also way better alternatives in Adept-Tier. Maybe remove the toughness and add a direct decrease of incoming damage by about 20%. Would boost Ether Renewal a lot and therefore help squishy eles to mitigate burst (for example from thieves). Ether-Renewal can be easily disrupted so it’s high risk – high reward and not OP.
• II-Signet Mastery: Same as the Glyph-equivalent. Signets are bad and this trait is kinda boring.
• III-Earth’s Embrace: Perfect. Would love to see a decrease of the CD to 60s (I’d also like to see this on Armor of Earth itself) but this still is a very good trait.
• IV-Serrated Stones: Would be nice if there were viable condi-builds for eles – but there are none.
• V-Elemental Shielding: Nice for Aurashare. Maybe increase duration by 1-2s or rework it so that it makes auras stun-breaker (genious synergy with Tempest Defense).
• VI-Stone Splinters: Nice trait for both PvE and PvP – especially with D/D but any weaponset can profit from that.
• VII-Strength of Stone: See Serrated Stones.
• VIII-Rock Solid: I love this trait for PvP. Perfectly fine.
• IX-Geomancer’s Freedom: Bad for a master-trait. Either boost the decrease to about 66% or make the trait remove those conditions when you attune to earth. (Same thing I proposed for “One With Air”).
• X-Geomancer’s Alacrity: Useless in PvE, and in PvP only usefull maybe with focus. Boring design. Add something to it to make it more interesting.
• XI-Diamond Skin: Very bad design. It’s all or nothing. Useless against most classes and team-fights due to low threshhold (meaning that it’s useless 90% of the time) and seriously OP and boring against pure condition-classes. Please rework this trait to something similar like the engi-trait.
• XII-Written in Stone: Signets are bad, so is this trait. The passives aren’t worth a grandmaster-trait. May change with some severe signet-buffs.

[…]

[…]

Air:
Because of Fresh Air it’s viable in PvP to invest up to 30P here. There are also some good traits for PvE but the range of viable traits is pretty small.

• 5-Zephyr’s Speed: Meh. Doesn’t stack with other traits. Perma-Swiftness is easy to obtain in PvE and WvW and there are better traits like Windborne Dagger or Signet of Air if you really want more movement-speed.
• 15-Electric Discharge: Perfect trait. Good synergy with Fresh Air and air-traitline in general.
• 25-Weak Spot: Not that bad in PvE (again good synergy with the traitline it’s in), nothing I’d invest 25P for in PvP though. Could use a boost in duration (maybe one or two seconds longer).

• I-Zephyr’s Boon: Pretty solid trait for D/D and Aurashare-Builds. But since Aurashare isn’t really a viable build this trait could use a little boost (maybe add 2 might-stacks or something) to make this build better.
• II-Zephyr’s Focus: Would only trait this when running a Scepter Fresh-Air Build (Air AA) + Ether Renewal. Pretty weak on other weaponsets. Inferior to Renewing Stamina in Arcana in my opinion.
• III-Quick Glyphs: Glyphs are bad; the only spell making this trait worth would be the heal-glyph. But traiting this only for the heal is a waste of trait-points since there are better alternatives.
• IV-One With Air: Would need a dramatic increase in duration (up to ~3s) to be usefull. Maybe rework it so you loose all movement-impairing conditions when attuning to air. Would help squishy eles a lot since roots and chill are cryptonite for eles.
• V-Soothing Winds: There are way better alternatives. Heal-spells all have a very low scaling in GW2 so I doubt that you’ll notice +/- 100 healing power. When you spec into Air you’re very squishy … a little healing-power won’t ever safe you – you’ll need active defenses like auras to survive when running zerker.
• VI-Bolt to the Heart: Very good trait for both PvE and PvP. Sadly the only real good adept-trait.
• VII-Arcane Lightning: Don’t really know what to think about that. For PvE there aren’t any alternatives so you have to take it but that alone doesn’t make it a good trait. At least make it stack in duration. Or maybe increase the increase to 15%.
• VIII-Inscription: If glyphs themselves would be good spells this trait would be in a good place.
• IX-Aeromancer’s Alacrity: Would only use this with dagger-offhand in PvP. Useless in PvE and in general boring design. It only lowers the CD of 1/5 of our spells (not counting utilities) so it’s way worse then equivalents on other classes.
• X-Air Training: Only good for Fresh-Air builds – useless everywhere else. Maybe rework it so that it doesn’t only work in Air but maybe when the target is more then 600 range away from you.
• XI-Tempest Defense: Flawed design. The bonus-damage only works on shocking-aura-stun and Earthquake. These are spells with high CD so you will almost never profit from the bonus-damage. It only enables cheese-builds like oneshot-instant-burst-eles that combine arcane-spells with earthquake lightning flash and Scepter-Instant-Casts. When the aura proccs you’re disabled so then you can’t benefit from the bonus-damge either.
• XII-Fresh Air: Ingenious trait – eredicates both the problem of high attunement-recharge and low sustained damage. I’d like to see something like this for all attunements.

[…]