Guild Wars 2

Gingelyr.3648:

Eh, I’m actually predicting this one will be resolved fairly reasonably. They’ll take the light version off the gemstore, but not mess with already-purchased copies. Maybe they’ll replace the light version in a few weeks with something else.

Not perfect (sort of a random windfall for the people who bought it already to get some awesome and now super rare armor) but it prevents it from being a long-term problem.

That’s not reasonable at all. Now the people who bought it have the single be all end all version of t3 light human cultural armor, making the original even less prestigious. The only true option is to recall the armor, and refund anyone who purchased it 800 to 1600 gems.

Still no acknowledgement from a dev that this was a major screwup… I think this game has finally jumped the shark. There is just no way to spin this travesty in a good light and I for one will not spend any more real money in the gem store again. Maybe I’ll stick around for a while hogging bandwidth to see if there are any sparks left, but it really doesn’t look hopeful with this blatant display of reckless greed and utter lack of accountability. Sad because the game on its own is amazing, yet they are flushing even the very basic pillars of it down the toilet (race exclusivity of cultural armor should never have had a remote chance of being challenged, yet here we are).

As long as it’s an adept or master trait. They keep ruining new potentially useful traits by making them grandmasters.

You are missing the point Ashen. By putting all these armors in the gem store they are inflating the gold to gem conversion ratio. If they put the armor for sale for gold only, there would be more demand for gold and less for gems, decreasing the gold to gem conversion ratio. But of course we can’t have that because it hurts Anet’s bottom line.

Caffynated.5713:

Vena.8436:

Caffynated.5713:

Between the armor and transmutation stones, you spent more than twice as much for cultural armor than it costs to buy it off the gem store and you don’t even have to play a race with terrible racials to get it.

When does my human get Norn cultural and Snow leopard?

Why would I ever use racial skills?

My armor is not on fire… and I don’t cry whenever something I bought goes on sale.

You’ve obviously never seen snow leopard in WvW. It’ better than ele class elites.

Huge gap closers/escapes and stealth is crazy good.

This. Snow leopard is the biggest slap in the face to all non-norns in this game and should have been nerfed to remove the mobility a year ago. It has a freaking 3000 range dash and stealth, which is far better than fgs. Now the fact that norns get our cultural armor too is just spitting in the face of light armored humans.

Because people kept complaining about too much town clothes and not enough armor in the gem store. Be careful what you wish for (personally I saw this coming all along when people kept foolishly requesting more armor in the gem store).

When Anet releases all cultural armor to all races I will be content. Until then, this is an outrage singling out a single race and armor class to screw over.

Edit: and actually, nobody else post in this thread. You’ll just make anet thinks there are two equal sides to the argument.

Edit2: threads got merged… again. Ignore first edit. God, it’s impossible to tell what’s going on in this monster thread anymore.

Except in this case the Armani jacket looks like crap compared to the normal.

The same day that companies are no longer held accountable by their customers.

How ironic, destroy human cultural armor prestige and buff sylvari cultural armor in the same patch. My only explanation is that Scarlet has somehow transcended the game and is now actually working for Anet.

Hopefully they are disabling it so they can recall the flame kissed armor before too much damage is done.

The only thing Anet can do to redeem themselves at this point is recall the armor and refund anyone whose purchased it already. Period.

They are all reskins. Those armors already existed.

Because medium and heavy only exist to exist. Anet doesn’t expect anyone to buy them. They DO expect all the sylvari, norn, and poor people in the game to buy a formerly exclusive armor (and one of the best looking in the game) with added bells and whistles.

In conclusion: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Doggie.3184:

Dear Anet.

Throwing fire all over an ugly medium armor trenchcoat that I never liked and am very much sick of due to lack of variety and being banned from pants/shirts… isn’t going to make me like it nor spend any money on it. You almost had the right idea though, I’ve often felt like burning all the Trenchcoats myself, but into dust~ not as an effect merger.

Love, Doggie~ meow.

It’s obvious that they spent about half an hour on the medium and heavy sets, and only so they could keep up their trend of releasing gem store armors for all classes at the same time. It’s even more obvious that the light armor is a cash grab meant to sell by the truckload to non-human players who have admired our t3 armor since the beginning of the game (and for good reason), or poor humans who can’t afford the real thing (which is sadly now less impressive than the imposter).

Look again. They gave T3 LIGHT HUMAN CULTURAL ARMOR to all races for less than half the price. Disgraceful.

jazzllanna.1278:

Personally I am ok with being able to get other cultural armors I actually wanted it and posted about it a month or so back. I was thinking more along transmuting it though. I guess it stinks for those that paid over 100 gold and do not get the cool effects though.

Of course you are alright with it if you are another race. You get our kitten armor for half the price plus bells and whistles. On the other hand, I still can’t use any of the awesome norn cultural armors which would fit equally fine on a human.

I guess Anet really wants us all to be norns. First snow leopard form is still overpowered as hell a year later, and now this. But I will never become a norn because their voices are absolutely horrid.

Seriously though, this is the first time that I have ever been REALLY kitten ed off at anet. This is an unexcusable cash grab with no attention given to the consequences. And with how ugly the medium and heavy versions are, it’s obvious that the light version is what they are expecting to sell cartloads of.

God I didn’t even think about that. Now I’m going to have to watch sylvari and norns charading in my cultural armor while theirs is still off limits.

Since you can’t take this back now, you better go all the way and give us humans heavy t3 norn armor. Or give us a new t3 light armor. Or give our t3 an OPTIONAL rainbow glow that will make it not strictly less impressive than this new travesty (and optional because I don’t always want to be emitting particle effects).

Seriously, this is the worst move I’ve seen yet. Thanks for degrading the worth of my cultural armor by making a better version for half the price.

And how come you only screw over the light armor wearers?

The only bright side is now I could feasibly use cultural armor in pvp.

That really wasn’t very fast killing (Necro and Engi can def do faster) and requires landing eruption, which is nearly impossible off point.

Geomancer’s alicrity is probably the most important thing for condi staff though, since eruption is the only worthwhile condition applying skill.

Also, most of the enemies were noob as hell. They willingly chased her around into eruptions for no reason, and that lol auto attack ranger was just bad, tanking an eruption, fire sigil, and basically everything else while doing nothing but 111111.

Ele’s mechanic is worse designed than engi’s, no doubt about it. Engi has access to all kits at any given time, so that you can actually use situational skills as the situation dictates. Ele on the other hand requires you to spam attunement swapping to get heals and boons, regardless of the situation. Hell, for d/d water attunement skills besides cleansing wave barely deserve to exist, since the whole point of water is to get in and out as quickly as possible to maximize your healing per second.

The things that keeps me playing ele are aesthetics, good sustain against non-burst (with one build), easy to land pbaoe, and versatility throughout game modes when playing solo. Our gimmicky mechanic without these things does not stand up well at all however.

He also said it would probably be worth a master trait at 90%… which sadly would be far far more useful than a grandmaster at 85%. Unfortunately the balancing team seems determined to make all our worthwhile traits grandmasters. The only way it could be useful at grandmaster is if we were given access to torment, poison, or a heal in an earth master trait, and even then it’s questionable to go 0/0/30/20/20 over 0/0/20/20/30.

^Exactly this. I don’t know why Anet thinks making grandmaster traits better while nerfing everything else will fix us. That is the exact opposite of the approach they should be taking. As we will stand on Dec 10, we will have 4 incredible, essentially overpowered grandmaster traits (Evasive Arcana, Fresh Air, Diamond Skin, Cleansing Water). The problem is, we will ONLY ever be able to get 2 of them, and if we do choose 2 of them, we are stuck with an adept trait in another line. However, they are nerfing all our adept traits so that our last 10 points are wasted, and additionally forcing us to choose between good traits at the master level when previously we didn’t have to choose (we could take both). Overall this is a diversity killer, especially the water adept nerf where the only useful defensive adept trait is now cantrip mastery. Even with how massively nerfed cantrips are now, I guess Anet wants us to stick with them.

Ele really suffers from “eggs all in one basket syndrome”. All of our power and survivability lies in a couple overpowered traits that are becoming harder and harder to get.

I agree, it is ridiculous. I’m going to have a terrible day when ascended armor is released and I spend a 24 hours trying to sell off all my mats because you can only sell like one stack per 10s after the first 6.

Please just add a captcha for the love of god.

Anierna.6918:

Forget “total stat points,” which factors in useless/almost useless stuff like condi-dmg. What you want is a mix of knights/cavaliers. Why? So you can hit the toughness threshold, above which a burst thief won’t kill you the moment you see him.

As an ele, you’ve got enough condi-removal that the toughness-threshold is what matters in the first 10 secs of a fight, not how much health you have, so spec into toughness rather than vitality.

The other thing that matters in those first 10 secs is how much damage YOU can do, so spec into power/prec/crit dmg. THAT is why you use knights/cavaliers, since both have toughness & power, plus either prec or crit dmg, so you can create a mix of them which optimizes your damage output. Your own damage matters so much because, if you don’t burst your enemy to death ASAP, you’re doomed. A war will out-survive you (healing sig and stuns are OP); a necro will out-survive you (fear’s OP); a thief will out-survive you (stealth’s OP). And of course, even the professions without obviously-broken mechanics will probably still out-survive you, so your only hope is to kill them at the very start of an engagement.

Condition damage is FAR from useless on ele. We get constant burning and whenever we are in earth we are using bleeds as our main damage source (no matter how much you theory craft about attacking only in air, in practice you will always be auto-attacking some of the time in earth). Sigil of geomancy and runes of perplexity, which are easily usable by d/d ele, also benefit from it.

But like I said, the degree to which you value it determines the overall effectiveness of celestial. Also, I’ve yet to test precision sets, but based on calculations already made on celestial I have a feeling precision is the most wasted stat on ele, once you have enough to proc renewing stamina reliably.

And I think the reason you claim you can’t survive anything is because you don’t have healing power. Healing power turns (x/x/x/30/30) ele into the most sustainable class over time. The main weakness ele has always had is weakness to burst (condition and otherwise), due to low hp.

Thanksgiving is occurring later than usual this year, so you aren’t incorrect.

Honestly if they are requiring quartz for precursors, I think that bodes poorly for the item, since it means they will likely add more ways to get it. That said, I luckily decided to buy somewhere between 100 and 200g worth of quartz at 1s… which is child’s play really, unfortunately. Was considering doing up to 500g but my bags are full of cloth and leather.

But I think quartz rose mainly from the new place of power in home instances, and ascended armor speculation.

At the very least they need to make it so that if you use it with a target, period, you get 20s cd. But really, it should have a 20s cd in all cases. Why is there such a double standard where it is not ok for paper ele to disengage, but it is fine for gung ho beefier than a big mac war to do so (and they always had better mobility than ele).

I don’t think anybody can win against stealthy phantasm builds built defensively. They are almost literally impossible to kill 1v1 or even 1v10 if they don’t screw up. If you are built defensively they shouldn’t be able to kill you either though.

I wouldn’t say soldier’s is far better for effective health. You get 458*3 = 1374 points worth of defensive stats from celestial, and 1468 points worth from soldier’s. Furthermore, soldier’s doesn’t provide healing power, which is imo the most important defensive stat in moderate quantities for eles going 20 in water and 30 in arcana. Vitality is in my eyes the least important to stack highly, since eles rely on healing for sustain.

I also feel that the condition damage of celestial puts it on par or better than soldier’s offensively even without fury, and allows you to counter high armor builds more easily.

Cleric’s is another apt comparison, but it definitely is far more defensive (and less offensive) than either soldier’s or celestial, since it’s main stat is healing power and not power. However I think healing power gets less effective in practice at extremely high levels because you will be more easily one shotted and have heals wasted all the time by going past max health, making cleric’s not so great. It might have more of a place mixing and matching pieces.

I did some calculations today to figure out exactly how much more bang for your buck you get with full celestial armor compared to a set like soldier’s which offers pure power and defensive stats. Soldier’s was the most apt comparison I could find because its only offensive stat is power (which as you will see shortly is by far the most effective in increasing DPS, and thus is the stat I normalize by). This comparison uses a level 80 d/d ele with no offensive trait stats as the base. Without further ado:

celestial vs soldiers
amulet 54 54 7%… 126 85 85
ring1 43 43 6% … 103 68 68
ring2 43 43 6%… 103 68 68
acces1 38 38 5% … 91 60 60
acces2 38 38 5% … 91 60 60
back 22 22 3%… 56 35 35
boots 15 15 2% … 34 24 24
gloves 15 15 2% … 34 24 24
pants 30 30 4%… 67 48 48
mantle 15 15 2%… 34 24 24
masque 20 20 3%… 45 32 32
coat 45 45 6%… 101 72 72
dagger1 40 40 5%… 94 67 67
dagger2 40 40 5%… 94 67 67

celestial offensive stat total (pow, prec, crit): 458 458 61%
soldier’s offensive stat total(pow): 1073

I used a spreadsheet (which unfortunately I can’t attach, and am too lazy to upload somewhere else right now) to normalize the celestial damage trinity stats (pow, prec, crit) into power alone. Although you get a lot more raw points (about 1400), because precision and crit damage are a lot worse than power, the equivalent amount of damage you are getting is equivalent to what you would get with:

820 power (no fury), and 937 power (fury). Note celestial performs better with fury.

Defensive stats and condition damage are a lot harder to normalize, and are extremely scenario dependant. Therefore I just added the lump sum of remaining stats to the adjusted offensive stats of both celestial and soldier’s sets.

celestial remaining stat total: 458*4 = 1832
soldier’s remaining stat total: 1468

celestial adjusted total (no fury): 820 + 1832 = 2652
celestial adjusted total (fury): 937 + 1832 = 2769
soldier’s total: 1073 + 1468 = 2541

Conclusion: Based on these calculations, I have determined that even normalizing power stats down for the celestial set, it gives you more bang for your buck than a set like soldier’s, assuming you value defensive stats and condition damage (combined) as much or more than power. For bunker builds, defensive stats are extremely important, and condition damage is always moderately useful for d/d because of burning and churning earth (especially for soloing camps in wvw). In the end, the degree to which you value condition damage is probably the deciding factor for going celestial or not.

You also have no problem proccing crit sigils and renewing stamina with celestial, which is a decent bonus (although you don’t really require the whole set for this benefit).

I’ve been running a mix of condi and celestial, but I’m realizing condition pieces really aren’t optimal for d/d ele. I did some naked tests comparing rabid to soldier amulets against medium golem, and what I found was:

With Rabid: drake’s breath + earth auto kills in 19s
With Soldiers: drake’s breath + air auto kills in 17s

This is already a condition damage friendly test. When you factor in condition cleansing and using fire grab, power gets even more of a boost. I don’t think perplexity’s confusion is enough to change the balance much, but perplexity still has a place in a celestial build since you still get some condition damage, and perplexity just gives so many stacks it’s useful even without condition damage.

For solo, condi build spamming earth auto and signet of fire is great against single target. You also get obsidian flesh and and magnetic wave for great defense, and as always you can switch to water for healing.

I mostly solo’d the new champion toxic wurm in nightmare tower with this setup (zerg came at the end and finished the last 10% hp).

oZii.2864:

For WvW something crossed my mind with runes of the elementalist you can get 45% burning duration just from those runes and the new burning fire trait. With an additional 10% with the new toxic sharpening stones if your hybrid setup or a full condi can get 95% just from 10 points in fire, elementalist runes, toxic focusing crystals, and +40% duration food. Thats not bad at all. There is a +15% burn duration and +70% precision food out there too. If they ever fix sigil of smoldering say hello to perma burning eles.

That’s not bad I must say. Even if you aren’t a condition build burning is strong even in a regular damage setup with the might stacking possible.

Burning condition duration is mostly worthless, because most of our applications of burning already have massive duration (drake’s breath and signet of fire) and will 90% of the time be cleansed without cover conditions long before they expire, or can be reapplied shortly after expiration. It’s much better to take runes of perplexity for an extra cover condition, that also happens to be incredibly strong.

And you can get 40% condition duration just with koi cakes, which is more than enough.

I’m betting there are two reasons:

1. New place of power in home instance is causing people to use 25 quartz daily just because they can.
2. Ascended armor speculation.

Linen has also been skyrocketing, but for some reason wool isn’t, which confuses me. My only guess is WvW is rewarding more wool than ever, and for some reason nobody is getting much linen these days (even though a few months ago linen was far more supplied than wool). Thankfully I’m stocked 50/50 with linen and wool, so either one rising is good for me. But anyways I feel like I missed some recent news about ascended armor but can’t find any.

You scared me for a sec, since the sylvari female run animation is really, really horrible; their arms whip back and forth so fast they look like they’re teleporting. Thankfully I can’t really notice much of a change to the human female animation, and it certainly hasn’t been made into the awful Sylvari one.

Saw the datamined codes for these (and the description of account bound on USE), and all I can say is THANK YOU! I have been waiting over a year for the chance to be able to buy endless mystery tonics on the tp, and it looks like I will finally get my wish!

I can finally take my 3 perm tools out of the mail, without fear of wasting them on a toon that ends up being an alt a year from now.

abiyde.5064:

Jabberwock.9014:

abiyde.5064:

I did the math. From memory, Celestial armor gives 130-145% more stat points than other armors.

Celestial trinkets give 108-110% more.

There is no comparison.

This is nowhere near accurate. If you do calculations with a fixed stat point value for crit damage like 8, trinkets and armor are both around 30% better than non-celestial counterparts. Armor is slightly better (~1.3x) while “earrings” are the worst (~1.27x) if I remember correctly.

You are right that my original post wasn’t accurate. I was working from memory like you were.

However, my conclusions are correct regardless of how you calculate.

If you give crit a value equal to the number of points lost to buy crit on Beserker gear as I did, then the range for armour is 1.39-1.54 (times the number of points that you get for equipping Celestial). Accessories (amulet, ring, accessories and back) are 1.21-1.29. Weapons are 1.19.

If you use your method of assigning crit a value of 8 points, which is about what it costs for all accessories but nowhere near what it costs for crit in armour and weapons, then armour is 1.24-1.35. Accessories are 1.18-.123. Weapons are 1.18.

So it is closer, but armour is better than accessories regardless of how you calculate it.

A few other conclusions for those trying to mix gear.

-If you want crit, get it in your accessories first unless you want to mix in Celestial gear.

-If you are adding Celestial gear, get it in your Chest and Legs first. Helmet depends on whether you use the first method (where it is the best bang for buck) or the second (where it is the worst among armour).

-If you want to maximize crit damage you want
Helm: Celestial
Boots/Gloves/Shoulders: Any crit armour
Coat: Celestial
Leg: Any crit armour
Amulet: Non-Celestial crit armour
Ring: Non-Celestial crit armour
Accessory: Non-Celestial crit armour
Back: Non-Celestial crit armour
Weapon: Celestial

-Here is how many skill points it costs to buy crit (ignoring Celestial)
Helm/Leg: 16 skill points per crit point
Coat: 14.4 skill points per crit point
2-H Weapon: 13.4 skill points per crit point
Boots/Gloves/Shoulders: 12 skill points per crit point
Amulet: 9.45 skill points per crit point
Accessory: 8.57 skill points per crit point
Ring: 8.5 skill points per crit point
Back: 7 skill points per crit point

What you do with this information depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Sorry for not properly communicating this in the first place. I didn’t care to spend much time on the original post.

Of course comparing celestial armor to zerker armor makes celestial armor look really good. This is because zerker armor is really bad. That’s why I use 8 for the amount of stat points crit damage is worth, because that is about what you get with zerker trinkets, which are good. I then compare to the total stat points of normal armor (nothing with crit damage). I never contested the claim that celestial armor is better than trinkets (it is), but it really isn’t a very significant difference as you claimed.

abiyde.5064:

I did the math. From memory, Celestial armor gives 130-145% more stat points than other armors.

Celestial trinkets give 108-110% more.

There is no comparison.

This is nowhere near accurate. If you do calculations with a fixed stat point value for crit damage like 8, trinkets and armor are both around 30% better than non-celestial counterparts. Armor is slightly better (~1.3x) while “earrings” are the worst (~1.27x) if I remember correctly.

I personally feel like it’s important to balance vitality, toughness and healing power. Vitality and toughness together protect you against instant physical burst classes like bs thief. Vitality also helps against burst conditions. Toughness and healing power help you in most standard battles against non-super bursty enemies. Vitality is imo the least important once you reach a good enough threshold to survive most instant bursts in the game (18k health seems to work well for me).

This is why celestial gear is quite good, especially since it gives you enough offense to actually kill enemies.

It looks too much like skyhammer to me. Gonna be a playground for engies knocking people off the cliff at every opportunity.

I was running 0/0/20/20/30, but I’l probably be switching to x/x/x/30/30 again to test out soothing mist and cleansing water. Cleansing water is probably almost as good against conditions as diamond skin, but it doesn’t require you to give up a 2k heal every 10 secs to get. If soothing mist ends up being much worse than soothing disruption however, it will end up a net nerf since you can no longer take soothing disruption, cleansing wave, and cleansing water.

The remaining points will either go in fire or earth. As a condition ele, I don’t know if I would rather have extended burning, earth’s embrace, or cleansing fire. Probably earth’s embrace.

Or it’ll be like halloween skins and they won’t come back, and the remaining supply will be bought out. Although to be fair, I see less room for price growth as there aren’t too many people with that kind of money, and even less sellers who own the item with enough gold to cover the selling fee. In that case there might as well not be any left, and the price might as well be infinite since you’ll never be able to buy another one. In summary, it’s bad to buy to sell for profit, but good to buy to use at this point.

It remains account bound. And I don’t know why anyone would want a big ol sword with unlimited potential quantity over one of the rarest items in game which provides almost 20g worth of value per use (and growing).

I wouldn’t be surprised if this one is off the tp within days. There are some people who profited 100x off of celestial recipes and generosity sigils with nothing else to buy.

Xernth.8561:

The actual problem is base health that is too low. That problem is mitigated by investing in water for hit points and investing in Arcana for vigor, dodge heals and EA for protection. The way to fix the issue if you’re not going to give us more base hit points is to make Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana apply to us as minors somewhere or spread throughout the minors in the various elements low in the trees and give their party effects as the traits.

This is a huge part of the problem. Like it or not, in our current state our survivability is almost entirely based on heals from traits. The reason why eles are still decently survivable is because our water-oriented traits are wildly overpowered compared to what any other elemental traits give us. I am not talking purely of the water line, but also water related traits in the arcana line. Evasive arcana dodge in water is about 10x better than in any other element, and elemental attunement regen is just barely worse than protection from earth. Healing ripple and soothing mist are also insanely better than their other element counterparts. The problem is that due to our hp and armor, we are still not overpowered even with these healing traits… but without them we are more squishy than any other class.

The obvious solution to Evasive Arcana is to reduce its healing and place that healing somewhere lower in other trees. The problem is that healing doesn’t make much sense roleplay-wise anywhere but in the water line, but since the water line is already comparatively overpowered and loaded with heals in the lower traits, it would not be a good idea to put more healing there. Honestly I feel it was a design flaw naming traitlines after elements, and is a core reason why some traitlines are loaded with far better traits than others (because you are forced to load all traits of a certain type into one line). If you could squeeze some healing into arcana minors that would be the best solution I think though.

Treborlavok.3504:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

heres the whole list http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

To be fair that’s not on demand. Which is one of the reasons why cleansing wave is so awesome. It does trigger more often though since you spend more than 0 seconds in water.

I don’t think it’s aoe either actually. Not that I personally care about aoe much.

TimeBomb.3427:

oZii.2864:

TimeBomb.3427:

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

If protection is the argument there is still Elemental Shielding, Glyph of elemental harmony, Earths Embrace, Inscription, Armor of Earth. Still Rune options to get protection or spec boon duration and just go 10 points in for renewing stamina. You only get 1 extra second of protection anyway just going 20 points into Arcana. Protection is important but if it really was that important like you are saying people would always take elemental shielding also but if people have 10 in earth they usually take earths embrace or stone splinters. Or they just go 20 in Air.

Elemental attunement just makes sense if you have 10-30 points in arcana because it augments something you are going to be doing anyway with swapping attunements. If I was forced to choose between renewing stamina and elemental attunement Renewing stamina would always win. I am not forced to choose so I can take both.

Armor of Earth (which doesn’t deserve a 90s CD) is 6.6% protection uptime. For D/D, Elemental Shielding offers potentially ~19.5% protection uptime. Glyph of Elemental Harmony is a 12% protection uptime if it’s used whenever it’s off CD and only when you are in earth, which is almost never the case; not to mention the other two heals are better against anything that isn’t burst damage. The fact of the matter is that Elemental Attunement is vastly superior for protection uptime (@50-60%+). The alternatives to Elemental Attunement are not as good; not to mention EA offers more than just protection. It’s insanely good, and it’s just plain silly to not take it in most builds.

I don’t really think elemental shielding is a good trait for most builds. Most of the time you will get protection on shocking aura, and shocking aura already wards off a great portion of hard hitting (melee) attacks making your protection go to waste. Also earth’s embrace gives you stability and stun break, which are more important since they allow you to ether renew back up. It also usually triggers when you are getting pummeled, which is when you need protection the most.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

I would be much happier if you just changed it to a self cleanse. I am a primarily solo roamer and I rely on having an on demand cleanse for clearing blinds (when channeling churning earth) and immobilize. Soothing mist and cleansing water not only forces me all the way into the water line, but is extremely rng and lowers the skill ceiling by not allowing you to time cleanses. On the other hand I want to try diamond skin, but will be unable to with my build if I have to go 20 in water just for cleansing wave.

I would also like to hear something regarding RTL cooldown

All that said, I am extremely excited to see constant communication from devs in our subforums. Just knowing that you are taking in and considering all our feedback makes me feel a LOT better about where we are going.

Melancholia.8123:

A note: in this discussion I am exempting all staff and focus builds from consideration, staff because I believe it is in a good position as a WvW and PvE specific weapon that is solely intended for group play and focus because it is so clearly in need of a redesign that it is simply irrelevant outside of Fractals.

First off, thanks for this patch preview, it’s a nice gesture to players even though the forums often provide pretty good reasons to ignore us. Second, while I don’t believe you’re going to accomplish your stated goals with this change, I do believe this is a step in the correct direction. Spreading condition management to different trait lines is a good step, as it helps to mitigate some of the notable reasons people spec into water. That said, Arcana is frankly still too much better than the other trait lines for any non staff build, excepting only Fresh Air builds (incidentally, Fresh Air is the best change that’s been made for the Ele since launch, it’s very well designed). This is for two reasons: 1) Arcana makes every attunement better, while much of each attunement line only helps itself. 2) Arcana synergizes with itself much better than the other trait lines, and does so in a way that works with the class as a whole.

The primary Arcana culprits are Renewing Stamina and Evasive Arcana. EA gives you two notable things; a significantly good heal with condition removal and a blast finisher. The blind is situational; the fire blast is entirely incidental. But between those two effects we have probably the single best trait for an Elementalist, and in a line that is best able to use it. Those 30 points to get there give you both boon duration and attunement swap cooldown, meaning that you can heal more often (in most builds healing on attunement as well) and that your blast-finisher might, already good at 3 stacks for 20 seconds, lasts a full 6 seconds longer. The current final part of the trifecta is Elemental Attunement, which provides non-trivial protection, somewhat trivial might, enough swiftness to get us to full uptime, and good regen (that is also condition removal when paired with Water). You get more or less everything; the problem is that it’s not only a jack of all trades line, it is also the master relative to the other trait options. It does everything, and it does it better.

Water is the notable exception. This is due to the fact that other than Piercing Shards there’s almost nothing that benefits you for being in water attunement. You gain all the benefit simply by passing through, which is exactly what the Ele wants; powerful abilities that benefit you for switching through attunements whenever possible. The faster you switch into water the more total healing you get, and there’s no loss to switch out again almost immediately. There’s no forced dead time.

The other trait lines don’t gives you the same benefit. There’s nothing significant that sticks around after you attune out. There’s nothing like Bountiful Power that powers up your attacks no matter the attunement, instead you either get things that effect you only while in that attunement or that only trigger when you’ve applied a condition that’s mostly specific to that attunement. This is admittedly true of Piercing Shards, but compare switching through water, which likely nets you at least 2604 +2x(Healing Power) health, removed conditions, and some regeneration, with switching through any of the other attunements. You drop some fairly unexciting damage and mediocre conditions. The traits don’t add anything exciting, and they don’t emphasize any strengths. The only reason that any of the attunements can add up to anything is the power of the Water rotation; it is the lynchpin of most builds. Again, Fresh Air is the exception; it breaks the mold of the usual Ele by opening up raw damage as a viable possibility, albeit only with Scepter. Without Fresh Air the Elementalist has only one viable option; build to outlast, which forces Water and Arcane for superior healing. Fresh Air lets you build differently.

Excellent post. Healing ripple, evasive arcana, and cleansing wave coupled with attunement cooldown reduction from arcana are the true culprits behind lack of build diversity. If you don’t go 30 in arcana, not only are you missing out on double the heals and condition cleanses with EA, but you also won’t get good enough attunement cooldown to take advantage of healing ripple and cleansing wave. If anet wants to break the stranglehold arcana has on our builds, we need heals and condition cleanses from other lines that don’t rely on attunement cooldown. Reducing global attunement cooldown and giving fire cleanses is a step in the right direction, but healing that doesn’t rely on arcana is desperately needed.