Going below 20 Arcana is not really optimal, but I guess you can forgo EA if you’re not really looking to be competitive. My first question would be what it is about the trait that you don’t like, because it’s such an amazing multi-tasker.
That aside, I’d also have at least 15 in Water to give yourself some sustain. From there it really depends on what you’re going for. What are you aiming to do with the build?
First off, the skills used do a lot of damage on their own. The combination of all those 4 things makes the combo a very potent one. If people got used to seeing it, yes they will instantly know how to counter it but if you make them waste all that stuff before you try to land such a combo, it’s just glorious.
Sure you need 4 skills but it was a fun combo for me to land.
They don’t individually do a lot of damage sans CE, meaning if they “waste” stuff to avoid CE and succesfully do so, you didn’t really gain anything because unless you went from Fire into Earth, you’ve wasted 3 finishers, two of which actually contribute better to fast spikes than the slow one you’re trying to pull off. Again, burning your Grandmaster trait slot for nothing but some extra immobilize is not even close to being optimal.
CE’s cast time will forever make it somewhat useless unless they make the damage OP or turn it into a channeled effect skill.
When I saw the real Jon Peters typing in the in-game chat during beta, his typing style was nothing like that. I’m going to remain skeptical here.
I can totally see what you mean. In the screen shot it’s quite apparent he is typing left handed…
In terms of grammar/punctuation, that chat just didn’t look like how I remember. You’ve never had a situation where you thought a person was somebody else because their sentence structure changed? At any rate, he’s clarified so we don’t have much more to discuss.
On my Necromancer, I simply wait for the buff to go away then use all my conditions at once and laugh.
Dogged March does not work against all conditions, like the ones your complaining about above.
On my Necromancer, I simply wait for Empathic Bond to proc and then use all my conditions at once and laugh.
Why even do that? You simply epidemic the pet.
Quiet you; he’s not looking for logiks
Your speaking in opposites.
I have to worry about poison being on me ALL the time, meanwhile for you I can get poison off and keep it off in the small time frame to get the full effect, rather then always worry about it.
Exactly. Poison has to be on you ALL the time to truly negate your healing significantly.
On my Necromancer, I simply wait for the buff to go away then use all my conditions at once and laugh.
Dogged March does not work against all conditions, like the ones your complaining about above.
On my Necromancer, I simply wait for Empathic Bond to proc and then use all my conditions at once and laugh.
Which makes it worse against things like poison. Which we can’t simply dodge to remove.
Ranger has Traited Signet of the Wild, which is 8 seconds of you and your pet having Invulnerability. Warrior has worse Condition Removal then Rangers do actually, ours has a chance to be effected by the following.
Ranger attacks have evades built right in, the Greatsword’s Autoattack is far superior to Shield Block.
1. Aegis.
2. Blind.
3. Block.
4. Invulnerability.
5. Evade.
6. Miss.Yours is passive, it removes conditions every 10 seconds regardless of situation or position, you could be dodging like a monkey and it still removes them.
No, it actually means Healing Signet is LESS vulnerable to poison than Troll Unguent, because you don’t have to worry about timing your condition removal with activation of your skill; you simply have to get rid of poison as much as possible, which isn’t really that difficult, especially with Berserker Stance and Cleansing Ire. The fact that Empathic Bond transfers conditions to the pet means that the damage is merely being diverted; it is not being negated like with other forms of condition removal. In this case the damage is going to your pet, meaning that’s ANOTHER factor you’ve failed to account for in your healing calculations. If your pet takes poison, it’s having your healing on it reduced, giving it a higher chance to die in combat if you don’t have at least 15 Beastmastery to reduce the swap cd to 15, and even then it’s shaky in a big group fight. If your pet goes down, Empathic bond is gone until you swap, only your pet swap recharge is then increased to 60/48 seconds when traited respectively.
Signet of the Wild is 8 seconds of Stability and a bit more damage, not Invulnerability. It must also be traited at 30 Marksmanship to get the effect on more than just your pet, decreasing your ability to spec into toughness/healing power.
Please don’t bring up the Ranger’s Greatsword; its damage is pathetic and the evade is tied to actually landing your attacks, meaning it’s vulnerable to the same things as Cleansing Ire, only more so because you need to land two attacks to get the evasion.
But but you can just dodge then use it! You have 50% Endurance Regeneration and high up time of Vigor!
You also get protection and regeneration too!
So if you’re really joking, what is the point of this thread?
That’s assuming you’re not getting hit hard by conditions, which in most cases if you’ve popped that heal, you’re being hit with conditions and need to outheal the damage.
“Just keep poison up”, its almost impossible to do so in this meta because of how much condition cleanse has been prioritized.
The heals need looked at. I will start pulling arguments to this forum.
I remember seeing somewhere that the Warrior’s Healing Signet was vulnerable to poison because it ticked over time. Where is that person right now? Unless this thread is sarcastic and I’m just not getting it over the internet.
Probably whining on the warrior forums and trying to get us nerfed.
Oh, wait..
Learn to use Poison.
HS is Fine.
You can completely counter Empathic bond by waiting for it to remove a few conditions and then covering your poison with your other conditions. Evasive Purity shouldn’t have even been an example with a 10 second CD and the frequency of poison application.
I’m just waiting for you to tell us you were just kidding.
That’s assuming you’re not getting hit hard by conditions, which in most cases if you’ve popped that heal, you’re being hit with conditions and need to outheal the damage.
“Just keep poison up”, its almost impossible to do so in this meta because of how much condition cleanse has been prioritized.
The heals need looked at. I will start pulling arguments to this forum.
I remember seeing somewhere that the Warrior’s Healing Signet was vulnerable to poison because it ticked over time. Where is that person right now? Unless this thread is sarcastic and I’m just not getting it over the internet.
Funny thing about Churning Earth, as a none Ele player, I figured out how to land it without using Lightning Flash.
I have to thank the Ele that used Scepter/Focus on me. He enlightened my gameplay quite a bit.
Magnetic Grasp, Churning Earth, Arcane skills (blast and Wave) + Elemental Surge = 5 second immob enough to land CE on a single player.
That seems rather inefficient to land one skill. The fact that Elemental Surge is good only for its Earth effect that is tied to skills with a relatively long CD means that as soon as a person figures out what you are doing, you are not going to land CE anymore. If many other skills required this type of coordination to land, I could see your example as being viable, but that’s simply not the case. I also see a problem with you prefacing your example with “I figured out how to land it without using Lightning Flash”, and then proceeding to state that you burn a Grandmaster trait, a weapon skill that has a potential leap finisher and two utilities.
When I saw the real Jon Peters typing in the in-game chat during beta, his typing style was nothing like that. I’m going to remain skeptical here.
I’m honestly just annoyed that if I happen to come across a warrior now that I have to dodge 3-6 stuns/ccs on relatively short cd while he/she regens through my damage. The fact that their damage can scale up off of their cc makes it even worse. If that kind of stun lock combo took a long time to recharge, or was more for the control aspect of combat, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it. Builds like that highlight the problem with necessitating so much stunbreak and condition removal.
Yeah, I agree. Churning Earth is really neat. Not easy to pull off against skilled opponents, but with strategy and planning, it works wonders. One of the more entertaining skills to be sure.
Neat does not mean efficient. I’m just not really seeing how its cast time can be justified. The skill is telegraphed before you even start casting because you have to enter Earth Attunement. It’s the equivalent of watching for Burning Speed when the ele enters Fire, only the skill has 3 seconds of sitting-duck mode, meaning you MUST burn at least 1-2 other skills for it to even have a chance of hitting. Counterplay is fine, but your opponent should be making a quick decision to either get out of there or stun/cc you, not wail on you for 3 seconds and then dodge. Sure, you can pop shocking aura, but this at best creates a stalemate situation for a few seconds, and if your foe has stability up you lose again.
If you don’t turn off auto attack, you will fail with sword.
dreztina
^^ So much QQ, but doesn’t offer any solutions…
CRY HARDER.I’m going to assume that Anet has more access to their own games metrics than you do. Therefore, you are ignorant.
dreztina is pointing out the fact that the game is pretty much parallel to where it was balance-wise months ago; it’s a different meta but has just as many balance problems (if not more)
It would take a vast wall of text to really dig into methods of fixing what’s currently broken while at the same time bringing subpar options into play, but please, do indulge us since it’s so easy. The fact that we can point out that this situation exists is actually part of the solution, as it can be taken as a lesson learned, hopefully.
That means Skull Crack will CC the SPIRITS instead of you for example.
Skull Crack would have been wasted if you accidentally hit the spirits before; I’m not sure what your point is if you were originally addressing what I was saying.
I kind of like the dagger/focus weapon set for this reason. Swirling Winds/Obsidian Flesh are so Avatar-esque.
How so? Buffed? Wut
It’s not so much a buff as it is a double edged sword. In one situation, if something unfortunately goes wrong and somebody nukes all of your spirits right after they are summoned, your recharge is going to be considerably shorter than with their previous function. So in one way it could help you, but this will punish those rangers who mindlessly run in expecting everything to just fall into place.
In our previous function the pet would be resummoned and would be up for the 10 or so seconds it took for someone to AE them down again. Now any class will simply AE them all down in about 2 seconds and they’ll be gone for 30 seconds.
They’re about on part with every other pet in the game now. And by that I mean worthless. It’s fine though… we’re one step closer to have a 7 class game like ANet apparently wants.
In PvP? Spirits avoid damage surprisingly well if you have any field awareness. Their base health wasn’t even decreased; they are only going to die faster now if people intentionally CC them, which should be rewarded behavior.
How so? Buffed? Wut
It’s not so much a buff as it is a double edged sword. In one situation, if something unfortunately goes wrong and somebody nukes all of your spirits right after they are summoned, your recharge is going to be considerably shorter than with their previous function. So in one way it could help you, but this will punish those rangers who mindlessly run in expecting everything to just fall into place.
… condition warrior …
Yeah ….
That’s all I had to read. No class in the game should lose against a condition warrior, especially not the ele.
Actually when played correctly a condi warrior can almost burst you with bleeds. Most of them are bad though.
I agree to an extent. I wouldn’t give position 90%, but it is very important in any engagement. I really wish we could have more pet management, but apparently that would be too difficult for many players so we are all stuck with quite a bit of garbage pets with static stats. We are way off target with the post topic (I’m just watching the gw2pvptv twitch stream while talking on the forum, which I suggest everyone watch). I’d like to see what other people think about something like this happening, but nobody wants to apparently.
Well yeah, but I have to agree with them to a point. The build is incredibly easy for the results you can achieve and I don’t like playing like that. I don’t want to see it die either, but something should be done to make it just as rewarding, yet harder to play (in essence a nerf, but more or less a skill floor drop).
Ya 90% is a bit of an exaggeration haha. I still think it’s spirit health that’s the issue. They body block too well. Just my opinion.
The problem is more that their movement is not affected properly by being in combat. Try outplaying a spirit ranger with a melee build by going for sun/storm spirits first; they run too fast for you to hit them reliably without keeping them snared constantly. Conversely, on a ranged build the ranger has merely to adjust his/her position slightly for the spirits to zoom into position for body blocking. The fact that Spirit of Nature can then regenerate all of them adds to the problem. Spirits in GW1 didn’t heal/regenerate each other for a very good reason.
Anet made a mistake. They decreased the length and yet increased the CD. They should have chosen either, not both. Also mistform heal and vigor was essential.
Mistform heal was not essential before stun/fear locking and condi meta came into being.
Or just reduce the cast time to 1.5 seconds. If anybody is slow enough to get hit after not only knowing you are in earth attunement but watching you stand still to cast; they deserve to get blown up. This is one of the few skills that is extremely well-telegraphed yet doesn’t blow up your screen with flashing lights.
Please (everybody) stop trying to justify a 3 second cast-time skill; it’s going to remain non-viable in fast paced play until that happens since it will never gain the ability to move while casting.
I’m guessing he’s referring to the new Fresh Air trait. It’s a step backwards since Ele is probably the best class in terms of well telegraphed attacks that require CC to really combo together.
Fresh Air is COMPLETELY instant burst.
The Fresh Air burst that I’m aware of involves chaining Earthquake into an arcane/air spike, and it’s telegraphed before the spike even starts. Of course, I could be completely out of the loop and the build is run differently.
Or, better yet, simply emphasize the color glow of the hand which swings while casting (Chillblains and Putrid have this but are barely noticable/distinguishable)
Make it similar to Heals or Moa/Mass Invis which are readable even on Asuras most times.Countless number of games against Necros and 400+ games on Necro and I only just now noticed they had this “hidden” feature.
You can make the casting as distinct as you want; until the cast time or the skill effect time is increased, this problem will never be solved. Fears and condition spikes that cast instantly (or almost instantly) are terrible for a game where telegraphing is so important.
Mesmer GS and ele burst is basically impossible to avoid. Also standing 1200 away spamming gs is hardly skill based, difficult or risky as a mesmer. The only thing shutting it down is OP condi spam and brokenly OP s/d thief. The ele burst is pretty much undodgable and is aoe. Again its bad atm just because s/d thief just owns them and condi spam owns them. It doesn’t change that the damage is way too high. 1 shotting people isnt a good thing.
I’m just wondering what part of mesmer/ele burst is unavoidable? What builds are you specifically referring to?
Simply change requirements for acquiring next rank, and make it so that a match must complete to 500 points for any rank/glory accumulated to be applied to your account. I don’t particularly enjoy TPvP with the state of things and would enjoy being rewarded for just playing how I like.
From a balance perspective, I think it’s crucial that if there is no public testing of changes before they go live, that the team communicate possible changes with the playerbase before all the work goes into implementing them. We simply cannot have a repeat of what happened with this meta if the game is to continue in any competitive manner, especially when it is not the team’s intention to make such reeling changes to the game.
2. Glory/Rank can no longer be gained from hotjoin and Custom Arenas. Only Team and Solo Arenas.
Why do you care where people get glory/rank? PvP is PvP; that I get most of my rank from hot join rather than tournaments says nothing about my skill/validity as a player.
In condition meta: Ether Renewl
When duelling a non condition build: signet (because having 20 seconds of protection all the time is ridiculous).How do you get 20 second protection?
Combination of Written in Stone+Fire’s Embrace+Elemental Shielding+boon duration increase. Each of your 4 signets will grant you 3 seconds+increase of protection. Then you have potential auras from your weapon skills and combo finishers. Unfortunately, this build falls off hard in higher level play due to its inefficient condition removal and lack of stunbreakers if you don’t bring Signet of Air, but it probably has some use in PvE.
This game’s aoe and targeting mechanics will never be precise enough to encourage truly skilled play, so I don’t know why they’re bothering with this Esports nonsense.
I think he’s contemplating 30 water or 30 fire.
Aura share can be good, it also carries over buffs gained though aura traits (e.g. Zephers boon). However auras granted through blast finisher will not.Personally I don’t think investing heavily in fire is a good idea, though I am 20 there myself.
Surprisingly enough, direct from the wiki:
Guild Wars 2 WikiThis trait also grants fury and swiftness to allies in two situations:
The elementalist also uses Powerful Aura and/or
The elementalist triggers Frost Armor on the allies by combining a blast finisher with an ice field.
However, it will NOT grant boons when an ally uses a leap finisher to acquire Flame Shield; the elementalist must be the source of the finisher, though not necessarily the field.
I did say Dagger 5 and focus 4 or 5, as in put dagger 5 on focus 4 or 5 and put the respective skill on dagger 5. Dagger getting a ranged interrupt (comet) or a ranged chill (gale) would be interesting.
I think it’s mind-boggling that some weapon can do everything whereas others have such a funnel niche. Just look at focus and off dagger here on the elementalist.
My apologies, I misread that part. However, I don’t think adding more ranged skills to a set that’s supposed to be melee is doing well with keeping weapon themes, especially with the variety of gap closers we have. It also has no need for an additional chill with Frozen Burst and Frost Aura available. The focus skills only need to be buffed to really be on par with /d imo; they aren’t inherently useless and have potential.
Interesting ideas, but I think the idea behind the focus is to be a ‘shield’ kind of skill with no mobility. As you can already see / know there is no mobility, not even swiftness and /d owns this field.
The only changes I think would be really good would be to swap dagger water 5 and focus water 4 or 5, revert the RTL cool down and reduce the cd on Fire Shield (fire 5) or greatly extend its duration. Daggers ability to be mobile, tank and do damage is a bit over the top, moving the tank/bunker across to the focus would be a good change in my opinion.
Adding on to your stun suggestion for Comet (water 5), would be cool to stun on interrupt, since this skill is rarely used to interrupt (note the non instant [though much better then release] fall of the comet). I also like Leuca’s suggestion to stun chilled foes.
Swapping the water skills between /d and /f puts the majority of auras on the d/f set, leaving s/d without any defensive aura options and giving d/f a huge boost that could borderline OP. Focus is defensive enough to not need the extra heal, which is why it’s on the dagger. The problem is that some of its skills just don’t have any oomph to them i.e. Fire Shield and Freezing Gust. These skills simply need to have their effects improved. You could make Water Magic extremely viable by making Freezing Gust hit up to 2 additional foes near your target (about the aoe size of Comet) and allowing my aforementioned change to Comet to be imlemented. Because this combo would be telegraphed before it even starts by attuning to water, your opponents would have ample time to either get ready to stun break or be ready to dodge Freezing Gust/Comet. Even if they don’t dodge it, you must properly hit both skills to get maximum effect, so it’s not a one-hit wonder.
I think it’s mind-boggling that some of the skills in this game are so dull when others have myriad uses.
As long as rangers and necros are dominating the meta with spam I will never not condone a 10 sec CC that can be avoided
Maybe when there is less spam I will agree
“But Mesmers spam clones and shatters and win”
To hit max damage two shatters involving summoning 6 clones and majority of the skills on both weapon sets that’s easily dogeable. your argument is invalid.
I had a feeling something like that was going to appear in your post. xD
Why did you say dodge was the only counter play then? You just said dodge doesn’t encompass blocks and invulns so you’re basically saying there’s more counter play to it besides dodging, which contradicts your original statement.
This is sounding more like there’s a ton of counter play to this skill even though its nor what you originally stated. On top of that it sounds like semantics are increasingly important as the discussion goes on, especially when we are using precise terms.
I’m going back and reading my initial post and loling at myself. I would say don’t discuss anything with me when I haven’t slept, but then we’d come across a similar problem of you not knowing when I’ve done so. I do apologize for that and will concede that I wasn’t making any sense.
My whole problem with Moa is its combination of being toxic in a small fight setting while being largely ineffective in a team fight setting. It just seems like they added the skill for fun and then threw in some numbers that really didn’t take into account the fact that you have very little access to counterplay options once it’s landed. I guess some people could say that’s the point with it being an elite skill, but I don’t really think that’s justification. Skills should have fun (and at least marginally effective) counterplay even after you’ve landed them.
Unless you have heavy dps, you should just get away from that kind of fight. Those mesmers literally build to 1v1 people who can’t kill their phantasms quickly enough to get at the player. They don’t have to actually attack you because their phantasms do all the damage and are on relatively short cooldowns, so they spend all their time running/avoiding damage. Now, if you attack a phantasm and see it’s going down relatively quickly, you should commit, melt the phantasms as soon as they finish their attacks, and then pound the mesmer’s brain in until they summon the next round. Rinse and repeat.
I think people need to stop putting blast finishers into everything and come up with more original forms of utility for unique skills. This isn’t directed at you persay, as you only suggested one, but I’ve seen soooo many suggestions that involve blast finishers and to be frank it’s not what the ele (or game in general) needs.
The focus is a defense/control weapon. This doesn’t mean it can’t do damage; the damage just needs to be applied through defensive measures. Flame Wall could have a very high coefficient and still not be overpowered because it is still just a line, and serves more as a deterrent than an actual dps source like Ring of Fire. I’ve stated my wishes for Flame Shield in multiple threads, but I guess anywhere I can put this out there I will: I think eles should have a unique Flame Shield that is different from the leap finisher in that it applies a retaliation-like effect while it is active with a moderate damage coefficient. It’s not an inherently offensive effect, nor is it spammable, but it allows the focus user to punish people who commit to burst damage by switching to Fire rather than Earth. The animation is clear enough that anybody paying attention would know to either halt their attack for a few seconds or not start to begin with.
Without completely changing the Water skills, you could vastly improve its utility/crowd control by increasing the damage on Freezing Gust, while allowing Comet to stun chilled foes. Comet should also do a bit more damage. I think Anet’s gotten into a habit of thinking that Water Magic skills shouldn’t do significant damage, but I think that it should be weapon appropriate; and the focus doesn’t have any healing properties like the dagger.
Why not do both? Use blast finishers in your Frozen Ground (or that of your Ice Elemental summons) to create Frost Auras.
I believe he is referring to the trait Powerful Auras, but you’ve pointed out another example of why combo fields are generally sufficient.
Considering semantics and exact meaning is extremely important I would say yes, especially when you’re using a game specific term in a general sense.
Now I understand that you expected me to know that by dodge you didn’t mean just the in-game dodge. You meant blinding, obstructing, blocking, invulnerability, one-of-sight blocking, out-distancing, and of course dodging.
That’s the same as me using the term swiftness to talk about quickness and then getting annoyed with you when you assumed I meant the in game swiftness instead of just using attacks swiftly.
Your newest post contradicts your statement though. Your statement about the lack of counter play sounds silly now. It made more sense when it sounded like you said dodge was the only counter play, but now that I’ve listed 7 off the top of my head it sounds more like a L2P issue. Unless you genuinely mean that the 7+ counter plays to this skill are not viable even with skilled players.
It’s not really equivalent. Avoidance is a different in-combat tactic compared to blocking/invuln, which are not as readily available to certain professions. Your approach completely changes when you are dodging/LoS/outrange, because more often than not these actions interrupt your damage more so than blind/blocking/invuln, with exceptions being given to extremely long skills like shield stance, but even those can be terminated on command.
You’ve listed 7 off the top of your head that apply to every single-packet skill in the game that isn’t unblockable or that cleanses conditions upon activation. By that logic all of those skills have viable counterplay, but there are plenty more factors to consider even with other one-hit application skills; Moa lacks these other factors aside from the 5th skill and its recharge as an elite skill.
That’s extremely easy for me to read. Everyone I PvP with would have no problem dodging or interrupting it because of the animation.
Alone, yes, it is quite easy to read. Nobody is denying that. What you aren’t mentioning is stealth and the various other particle effects that can remove its visibility completely or obstruct it to the point that it blends in with every other purple sparkly thing around the mesmer.
Edit: I don’t think the skill is overpowered, but I also don’t think it’s healthy for the game.
(edited by Leuca.5732)
Dodging isn’t the only counter play. As was mentioned earlier its a telegraphed skill that is not difficult to interrupt and you can LoS obstruct or you can blind the Mesmer. Dodging is just one of the several counter plays, not the only one.
Dodging is avoiding the skill itself. Obstructing is the same concept only harder to pull off if there is nothing nearby, blinding is again, just a way of avoiding the skill. Is this really turning into a semantics argument? You can do that with any skill in the game; its landed effect however is toxic to fair gameplay.
The OP didn’t even say the skill was OP. He just said it was frustrating.
And I would agree with the OP in that regard. The only counterplay this skill really has is the ability to dodge it, but if there are many visual effects surrounding the mesmer, even that’s difficult. It’s not fun when somebody uses it and it lands, because once that’s occurred you have no real options; moa form doesn’t do significant damage to anything unless you are specced for berserker stats, and it has no other utility besides 5. It’s really just a terribly designed skill that has no place in this game imo.
well you can do both because its not like we have any combo fields in our utilities its all weapon based. Its not like its one or the other
That wasn’t his question though; I think he’s aware that combo fields will exist whether or not he brings Powerful Auras.
and guardian is viable ?
They are more versatile and effective in a team setting right now, if that’s what you’re asking, especially if you are trying to get into PvP.
It’s meant to be used offensively. .
Its relatively useless in PvE because mobs don’t flee from CE very well. Its not great anywhere else either, because that means to land one of your hardest hitting weapon skills you have to combo it with a utility skill.
This kind of restriction and hamstringing isn’t seen on any other class in the game. Utility skills are supposed to bring utility and augment the class abilities, not be depended upon to make use of your primary weapon skills.
A good fix would be to switch LF and RtL. Make LF the number four skill on offhand dagger, remove the damage component, and give it an AoE blind, while lowering the CD to 30 seconds to keep it in line with CE. RtL can become a utility skill, give it damage equivalent to say Arcane Blast, keep the odd dual CD if they must, and make it break stuns. I would also make RtL do damage to anyone it hits in the path, and do AoE damage at the end.
That way, you channel CE, switch to Air and LF to the target. Makes for a much more organic and smooth playstyle. RtL as a stunbreaking gap closer/opener makes much more sense as a utility skill, adding damage as its not a teleport like Blink.
This is a really interesting idea, but it further pigeonholes eles into d/d. Both RtL and LF need QoL adjustments, but putting our only true blink on an offhand weapon gives it way too much for the other sets to be viable without over-buffing their own utility. A better idea (in my opinion) would be to give RtL and LF the changes they need (mainly CD and the stunbreak revert) and to reduce the casting time on CE. It’s still really obviously telegraphed, as an ele must first attune to earth to even use it in the first place; giving opponents a warning before casting even starts. (there should be a thread touching on how elementalist skills are pre-telegraphed because of our attunement animations) The only time this doesn’t apply is with ambush CE burst, but cutting the cast time in half isn’t going to change that drastically.
Elementalist should in theory be somewhat viable, but the current state of the meta makes it inferior in pretty much any category, since it’s a jack of most trades and master of none, whereas other professions are masters of some with moderate ability in others.
Combo fields because they don’t require investing 30 into Water Magic, giving you a plethora of options without any investment but picking a weapon.