Guild Wars 2

it’s not only staff, there are too many useless weaponskills for ele.
most of the scepter skills (could make a big list here) suck, churning earth sucks, staff is actually one of the better weapons while focus is the best one imo.

all we can do is hope that sword, if that’s our new weapon, will be worthy of a close range damage weapon.

yeah but all you kinda do with this is trying to achieve what fresh air is right now. this might bring you on par with the amount of damage that the build can currently dish out but what fresh air lacks right now is a way to defend yourself.
i would understand that if fresh air was a top build right now but it’s not.

and why do you wish that for ele? i mean, who even cares as long as the build is good? it’s not like shoutbow has any variety in its build, or medi guard, or thief, or mesmer; it’s the same for all the metabuilds but maybe engi.

why do you think arcana will give you that much more dps? the only boon that i won’t have from the arcana line is vigour everything else will come from other traits and from pack runes.

i would not pick the % per boon trait anyway even if i go into arcana. and if i do without going into arcana i will only lose 2% of my damage because of mentioned vigour.

as i said, even that won’t help if you check how mesmers and thieves have been buffed, you need to go into earth to counter them, in fact the counters are very very good.

by going into earth you will reduce every backstab that would hit you for 6k-7k to 5,5k or less without even doing anything. make use of your auras at the right time and you will half it, stay in earth and the thief will maybe not even hit you for 2k.

i won’t say arcana is bad, but not as good as before. now that we’re able to pick 3 lines we will be able to lessen our counters overall while keeping our strengths (or almost all of it).

air:
- superspeed to kite players that want to chase you with swiftness.
- tempest defense, a great counter to overcharged shot and traited steal.
- fresh air, obvious

earth:
- elemental shielding, strong with soothing ice, tempest defense and fire 5.
- reduced earth cooldowns and -duration on soft cc, more cleanse and more invul
- stone heart. previously you went into earth to get the protection to counter bursts a bit, now you go into earth and you will counter almost all of the burst.

water:
- soothing ice, great synergy with cleansing water and elemental shielding, 3s protection every 10s with regen and a condi cleanse
- cleansing wave, your on demand cleanse without having to dodge.
- cleansing water to get the cleanses you need, very good with water 3.

you can overcome the weakness to conditions that many berserker builds have
you can mitigate direct damage burst very well
all you lose is a bit of damage and vigour.

you are talking about a pseud damage increase here, air training and bolt to the heart both fall off and bountiful power won’t make up for this.

arcana is not worth it anymore because of the buffs that thieves and mesmers get, what do you wanna do with 14% more damage and 6s of protection when they will just be able to a). roast you like a chicken or b). outsustain you with the rejuvenation trait. the earth line is way more tempting and even if i lose vigour and a bit of protection i will get -20% damage reduction when 600 or closer, stone heart and the cd on my invul reduced to 40s.

Supreme.3164:

Jekkt.6045:

you take soothing mist in water and cleansing wave, not soothing disruption. you have only one cantrip and even the reduced cd is not worth it if the trait doesn’t increase lf range to 1,2k.

Currently there is no reason whatsoever to take soothing wave on fresh air, because a 465s regen won’t magically increase your survivability if you can’t play zerker in the first place.

ofc there is, you get the regen “for free” as you will get hit in a fight anyway, you already have enough vigour and you can keep your lightning flash for the right moment. after the changes you will even get the frost aura that will trigger elemental attunement.

fresh air will be a quite “tanky” build with decent dps so i’m interested in playing in on the beta servers when they’re gonna let us test it.

you take soothing mist in water and cleansing wave, not soothing disruption. you have only one cantrip and even the reduced cd is not worth it if the trait doesn’t increase lf range to 1,2k.

what i will do is sacrifice sigil of fire most likely and put in an energy one.

yeah adding them to masteries doesn’t sound bad either.

thanks for the posts and for the infos you players provide and one interesting thing i saw was one person suggesting to merge the falling traits with the res traits, this fits in my opinion very well while not removing them but still opening up one trait for other stuff

imo the game should be about adapting but when the game is about rerolling then idk..
seems like we’re going to a less hard state of pre d/d celestial….

pushing ele into the tank role is not the right thing to do, and shoutbow is stronger than an ele in a 1v1, especially with the changes.

what the ele will become is an unkillable sidepoint holder in a meta that is going towards 4 dps and 1 support.

Talking Role
the current role of the elementalist is to support teammembers in skirmishes or teamfights by giving them boons, cleansing conditions, healing them and ccing enemies.

yesterday was shown that the trait elemental attunement will be moved to the grandmaster tier, resulting in the forced choice between it and evasive arcana.

what does this mean for the elementalist’s role and its place in the current meta?

first of all this change will result in 1 less cleanse for the team because you either lose the regeneration on water attunement or the water dodge roll, both reomivng one condition.

furthermore you will either lose your aoe boons or your water heal, both very important in a team fight and will thus cripple the ele’s role.

Concurrence
there are several classes that take on the role of a team supporter, the two strongest (not including ele) beeing shoutbow and altruistic healing shout guard.
both of these specs (correct me if i’m wrong) have been buffed yesterday.

guardian is currently less viable because of the fact that this build can’t accomplish much on its own compared to ele or warrior.

warrior on the other hand is highly demanded and almost every team is running at least one.
the devs told us yesterday that mending will now also become a shout, making it heal for 5751 + 2055 on a 16s cooldown while removing 4 conditions and will therefore outclass healing signet which is on a 392 hp/s.

this change will bring your team additional 2055 heal and a condi cleanse.
i don’t want to complain about warriors here but list the results of yesterday’s proposed changes.

Conseuquences
what will this mean for the elementalist?

the elementalist is now able to pick the full earth line, giving it access to rock solid and stone heart, very strong traits; at least in 1v1 situations.

the changes to elementalist take away his effectiveness in teamfights but increase his strength in a 1v1 fight.
the damage output of an elementalist, compared to an engineer for example, is not that high and fights will generally take too long to bring them to an end before reinforcement arrives due to rotations.

what does the elementalist have over, for example, a shoutbow?

assuming we take evasive arcana over elemental attunement, the elementalist will not be able to give his team protection anymore. with rock solid on the other hand we will be able to give our team 1 stack of stability (2s) every 10s which is quite strong.
stability is generally used to stomp downed enemies. with meditation guards in the meta there is already access to stability and makes this less important even if it’s on a shorter cooldown than the virtue.

the elementalist offers great mobility and a fiery greatsword, let’s not forget this. the question is, is it necessary? is it better than a banner? (again, not attacking warriors, but warriors are in the same role and the ele’s concurrence).
there are also ele’s good soft and hard ccs that we shouldn’t overlook.

Conclusion
Overall the elementalist gets pushed out more and more of the meta, not because the build will be weak but because there is no place for the tanky 1v1 build that celestial d/d is going towards to.

other elementalist builds have not really been buffed either, as the other semi viable build, s/f fresh air, has lost a portion of its damage while gaining more active defense in return. this is nice in a way but then again other berserk predators like the thief have also been buffed in a, in my opinion, disturbing way.

so if the devs read this:
please take another look at the ele changes, i don’t mind if you change d/d to the point where it’s not viable as a support role anymore but if you do that then buff other builds so that they will become viable on a high level. if you can’t to that then keep elemental attunement as a master trait, and not a grandmaster.

you underestimate the value of on demand cleansing, if a ranger stacks 15 bleeds on me and the newest condition is always removed first i can lightning flash to cleanse it.

every smart player will put conditions on you when your water attunement is on cooldown.

Talking Role
the current role of the elementalist is to support teammembers in skirmishes or teamfights by giving them boons, cleansing conditions, healing them and ccing enemies.

yesterday was shown that the trait elemental attunement will be moved to the grandmaster tier, resulting in the forced choice between it and evasive arcana.

what does this mean for the elementalist’s role and its place in the current meta?

first of all this change will result in 1 less cleanse for the team because you either lose the regeneration on water attunement or the water dodge roll, both reomivng one condition.

furthermore you will either lose your aoe boons or your water heal, both very important in a team fight and will thus cripple the ele’s role.

Concurrence
there are several classes that take on the role of a team supporter, the two strongest (not including ele) beeing shoutbow and altruistic healing shout guard.
both of these specs (correct me if i’m wrong) have been buffed yesterday.

guardian is currently less viable because of the fact that this build can’t accomplish much on its own compared to ele or warrior.

warrior on the other hand is highly demanded and almost every team is running at least one.

Conseuquences
what will this mean for the elementalist?

the elementalist is now able to pick the full earth line, giving it access to rock solid and stone heart, very strong traits; at least in 1v1 situations.

the changes to elementalist take away his effectiveness in teamfights but increase his strength in a 1v1 fight.
the damage output of an elementalist, compared to an engineer for example, is not that high and fights will generally take too long to bring them to an end before reinforcement arrives due to rotations.

what does the elementalist have over, for example, a shoutbow?

assuming we take evasive arcana over elemental attunement, the elementalist will not be able to give his team protection anymore. with rock solid on the other hand we will be able to give our team 1 stack of stability (2s) every 10s which is quite strong.
stability is generally used to stomp downed enemies. with meditation guards in the meta there is already access to stability and makes this less important even if it’s on a shorter cooldown than the virtue.

the elementalist offers great mobility and a fiery greatsword, let’s not forget this. the question is, is it necessary? is it better than a banner? (again, not attacking warriors, but warriors are in the same role and the ele’s concurrence).
there are also ele’s good soft and hard ccs that we shouldn’t overlook.

Conclusion
Overall the elementalist gets pushed out more and more of the meta, not because the build will be weak but because there is no place for the tanky 1v1 build that celestial d/d is going towards to.

other elementalist builds have not really been buffed either, as the other semi viable build, s/f fresh air, has lost a portion of its damage while gaining more active defense in return. this is nice in a way but then again other berserk predators like the thief have also been buffed in a, in my opinion, disturbing way.

so if the devs read this:
please take another look at the ele changes, i don’t mind if you change d/d to the point where it’s not viable as a support role anymore but if you do that then buff other builds so that they will become viable on a high level. if you can’t to that then keep elemental attunement as a master trait, and not a grandmaster.

water dodge roll radius is tiny and you won’t have all your allies stacked on one spot, you don’t even want to because they would eat all the aoe cleave.

reduce ele’s cleanses and it will get pushed out of the meta as shoutbow already cleanses better and heals for more.
all that ele has are aoe boons, boons that we will lose now if we decide to go for evasive arcana. all we seem to become is a worse shoutbow.

so if d/d celestial is getting pushed out more and more i want to at least have a viable alternative to that, cleansing wave removing 1 condition + regeneration would help in that case.

discussing if something should become the way it currently is is pointless.
fact is: the trait is too weak and with my suggestion it would be an alternative to non cantrip builds, because cantrip builds will never take cleansing wave over soothing disruption.

how do you give your allies regen without elemental attunement? and how do you cleanse so many conditions? i don’t really get it.

all that my suggestion does is give you regeneration 1,3s earlier than it is now, amount of cleanse will stay exactly the same.

and d/d will take soothing disruption anyway so cleansing wave would be for berserk builds, that equals 2 cleanses when going into water if you take the gm and one when you get critically hit and another one if you play scepter.

why is this a no, you already lose the regen from elem attune vs evasive, so giving that back won’t kill anybody.

what you miss out on soothing ice is that it replaces some of the lost protection from not taking elemental attunement on berserk builds as you want damage (air), cleanse (water) and now the damage mitigation from earth.

you already have the 100% uptime +20% reduction from the earth minor gm so you will go for evasive on d/d.

i agree on minor air, the 3s superspeed is awesome.

fire shield spam is fine imo as the damage has been tuned down anyway and it was always possible to get a high prot uptime with signet aura builds, if you go into fire that’s what you wanna do, problem is just that nobody will go into fire i guess, even if blinding ashes is 3s icd now the rest is just not worth it.

it was 362 hp/s with sentinel amulet i believe and 5 or 6 seconds of condi ommunity.

Jesiah.2457:

zerker warriors always passively regenerate more health from their signet alone than Shadow Rejuv does while in stealth

if you don’t mind losing bountiful theft you can make withdraw a 12s cd heal, it will be considered as trick in the future, healing for as much as the healing signet/s.

other than that you will get the 300hp/s + the regeneration which is also pretty huge if you ask me. don’t underestimate shadow arts.

yeah but the compensate you by giving you the revenant.

grants regeneration for 5s, would be happy with that.

that’s kinda true, most of the time when you take the risk of getting falling damage it’s because you want to chase or disengage.

it would be good if they changed the effects then to recharge skills instead of making watever where you land.

for example: if you take falling damage your movement skills get recharged. on ranger that would be hornet sting, swoosh etc, on guard it would be gs3 and sword 2.

on non mobile classes they have to do something else, thief can keep the stealth, mesmer could get a distortion, necro a portion of life force, ride the lightning for ele, jump shot and rocket boots, etc.

just some brainstorming but it’s interesting.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Executioner

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Close_to_Death

both are 20% more damage under 50% hp.

bolt to the heart either needs to be the same or +30% damage under 33% hp. easy as that.

so it seems everybody is taking falling damage traits because of well… falling damage, and not because of the secondary effects. so how about arenanet reduces the falling damage overall but removes these traits?

as i see nobody taking the traits for the effect, everybody should be happy.

as far as i saw yesterday in the livestream the devs kept all the falling damage traits and i asked myself if anybody uses them?

and what i mean by using them is not just because for fun but because of a real, not niche, purpose. and please don’t argue with jumping puzzles^^

so i wanted to collect infos about their usefulness, because if they’re not, i feel like the devs should replace them with new and more useful traits.

please remain constructive

d/d will not be nerfed, just different.
i couldn’t care less about wvw and pve tbh, stuff is very unbalanced there anyway.

but it’s the same thing with hambow, hambow gets nerfed while shoutbow is meta, fresh air (dmg) gets nerfed while d/d is meta.

do the devs even know what builds are popular?

it’s kinda a buff for condi signet builds and you can go for fire earth and water/arcana now.

but hey you get the +100% condi duration gm trait, most creative trait ever^^

when they said necro will get the 2nd biggest overhaul i was kinda interested but what they showed was pretty disappointing. nothing is set in stone though so maybe now is the time to give all your feedback (maybe best in the necro forum) and hope that the gee guy will listen.

another factor is how good the elite specialisation will be.

you will go 06660 with fresh air with maybe energy sigil instead of fire to make up for the vigour.

shielding in earth, reduced earth cooldown for 40s cd invul and the no crit trait.
the minor gm trait is a perm 20% damage reduction, with stone heart it makes up for elemental attunement pretty well.

soothing ice in water, cleansing wave and either cleansing water (scep 3 in water gives regen) or the new 2% dmg per boon trait depending on how many boons you have with this build.

one with air (is 3s now instead of 1s) which will be huge for kiting, tempest defense which is a counter burst and very good against sleight of hand steal, and fresh air ofc.

the build will lose damage, that’s for sure, but gains a lot more survivability. idk if i like it or not, will have to test.

on stream it was 4s but they said they will reduce it.

soothing ice is 10s ICD but they will reduce the duration of the frost aura (to around 1s i guess).

they also removed air training (+10% in air) and added +150 ferocity (10% crit dmg) to aeromancer training. but 100% a +10%dmg increase is better than a 100% +10%critdmg increase :/. you also won’t be taking this over tempest defense so without this and bolt to the heart the build will suffer from damage loss which the water gm won’t be able to make up for either.

no, feline grace gives vigour now which is 120% and another trait that makes it 140%.

Malchior.5042:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

You guys realise that since specialisations make you go fully in each trait line then the rank of the trait does not matter anymore? When you spec into air you get access to all traits at once, regardless of master or grand master rank, and if you don’t spec into air then you are completely denied access to these traits. Ranks are cosmetic now.

Exactly this.

The purpose of the ranks of traits is just to create compelling decisions when making your build.

You can take Bolt to the Heart, but you lose the ability to be in Air attunement as often for your single-target burst damage, so you have to find it elsewhere.

You can take Fresh Air, but you lose the large spike damage from Bolt to the Heart, so while you continue to have your sustained Air Attunement, you must look elsewhere for a high damage source, or make use of some of the new strengths of Air.

Some builds will be reduced in power. Some builds will increase in power.

It’s all about making interesting and compelling choices when crafting a build, so a single build can’t have “everything.” By having choices, the existence of skill, counter-play, preference, and synergy is created.

what you dont seem to get is that right now you can pick bolt to the heart + fresh air, afterwards you can’t because both of them will be grandmasters.

problem is bolt to the heart is 33% thresh and executioner is 50%. makes no sense to me.

also vigour is 120% endurance regeneration down from 150% so i think fresh air builds will switch arcana out now going for 6 in air 6 in water and 6 in earth to get the lost protection back.

bolt to the heart confirmed to be grandmaster now.
elemental attunement will also be a grandmaster.

this stuff is not really in favour of berserk eles. very disappointed.

ugh, that means the build wil get a damage nerf…

reworking traits is cool but if it hasn’t been merged with fresh air it will be useless sadly.

maybe, but it’s still a bit strange that an adept trait makes it all the way to a grandmaster trait. they better give it a good change because if bolt to the heart and fresh air will be seperate grandmasters it will nerf berserk eles.

just noticed this after looking at the icons of the new trait system. all to the right in the air line there is this icon with a heart and a lightning strike… bolt to the heart?

Deal more damage when your foe’s health drops below the threshold.
Damage Damage increase: 20%
Health threshold: 33%

now the questin is why an adept trait has become a grandmaster trait :S

!https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1aa49HeroPanel_ScreenshotSkillEquip4.jpg!

questions:

Traitline Restricitions:

- how will you work around builds that currently spec into more than 3 traitlines?
guardian for example.

- Why are we not able anymore to use master traits in grandmaster slots and adept traits in master slots? What were the reasons for this decision?

Removal of Traitline stats:

- How will the new stats be distributed on the different amulets?

- Certain low base health classes spec into certain lines just because of the vitality, how will they get the points now, or will all the amulets provide vitality?

- Celestial builds will lose a lot of stats, including boon duration, how will you compensate them? As i see people being opposed to giving the amulet more stats.

- Have you thought about letting the players choose which stats they would like?
Similar to traiting into lines you could let players choose what stats they want in
+100 steps.

would be nice if you could answer a few (preferably all :P) of them.

looking forward to the stream

because traps are so useful on the classes that have access to them, really looking forward.

maybe all amulets if they dont add +300 stats to them

BlackBeard.2873:

Jekkt.6045:

0/0/6/6/6
elemental shielding, rock solid, diamond skin/stone heart or even the glyph grandmaster
armor of earth switched for glyph of elemental power

welcome to the (possible) new meta

It will come down to stone-heart ele vs. fresh-air d/d ele vs. tempest (specialization) ele. All keeping water/arcana most likely.

stone heart kinda counters fresh air.. no crit no air. gonna be interesting.
can’t speak for the specialisation because sadly… arenanet is still silent about most of the stuff…

i see earth eles more cut for the teamfight role while air is more for small scale fights. maybe we will finally see variety in ele builds.

0/0/6/6/6
elemental shielding, rock solid, diamond skin/stone heart or even the glyph grandmaster
armor of earth switched for glyph of elemental power

welcome to the (possible) new meta

Nate.3927:

Jekkt.6045:

Crey.5263:

Jekkt.6045:

would be nice if we could at least choose the stat points but as it seems they will just be put on armor instead which will again limit variety because i assume that power gear will have more power on it then, and not vitality.

i’m not saying the trait rework is all bad but this just caught my eye and i would, as a game dev, not make the same decision and limit the traits (and also the stats).

If you want vitality…the vitality gear will also be more powerful…

right now when you play something like fresh air berserk ele you take the 4 points in water because of the +2k hitpoints, playing fresh air with vitality armor would not be what i want. especially in PvP where you have no armor to mix and match to begin with.

I’m making an assumption here because I don’t actually know if this is true or not. But I thought trait lines currently don’t give stats anyway in sPvP? All stats come from amulets and whatnot?

For PvE and WvW, you don’t have to wear full sets of armor you know that right? If you mix zerk pieces with valkyrie pieces you’ll get less precision, but more vitality etc. Stat diversity is still perfectly possible. You will be getting more zerk stats from your zerk armor pieces, so switching some out for Valk or others can bring your overall stats to the same as what you currently have.

nope, traitlines give the same amount of stats in PvP as in PvE/WvW.

armor mixing is true for PvE/WvW but i have concerns for PvP. even though the berserk amulet gives vitality already i don’t think that they will put additional 200 points on it. with ele’s already low base health this isn’t such good news if it’s gonna turn out like this.
so let’s hope that arenanet will figure something out.

just wanted to throw this in: it’s actually possible that with the removal of trait stats celestial classes will overall be nerfed as i don’t think that they will give celestial higher stats, or at least equally high stats for the loss of (in ele’s case) 100 condi damage and 100 toughness, 300 vit and 300 healing power and 30% boon duration.

so 18k hp 2300 armor d/d ele’s might be a thing of the past.

Crey.5263:

Jekkt.6045:

would be nice if we could at least choose the stat points but as it seems they will just be put on armor instead which will again limit variety because i assume that power gear will have more power on it then, and not vitality.

i’m not saying the trait rework is all bad but this just caught my eye and i would, as a game dev, not make the same decision and limit the traits (and also the stats).

If you want vitality…the vitality gear will also be more powerful…

right now when you play something like fresh air berserk ele you take the 4 points in water because of the +2k hitpoints, playing fresh air with vitality armor would not be what i want. especially in PvP where you have no armor to mix and match to begin with.