Guild Wars 2

Phaeton.9582:

All the ele signets are just plain bad. Once skills and traits are smoothed in the other areas, it would be great to see a complete overhaul in this department.

How about people comment on the likes and dislikes of the current signets, so we can pinpoint which ones are hindering signet builds and which ones might work?

• Signet of Restoration:
  Passive: Fine, once reverted in PvP.
  Active: Fine.
• Signet of Water:
  Passive: The only condition cleanse currently. Very lacking. Wouldn’t mind if it was replaced. Something related to healing/condi cure/vitality/chill would be appropriate.
  Active: Strange and lackluster currently. Definitely needs to be changed. Instant or 1/4 cast condi cleanse would be appropriate.
• Signet of Earth:
  Passive: Fine.
  Active: Ok, but should be increased to 4 seconds. Overhaul works too.
• Signet of Fire:
  Passive: Good. Helpful when creating builds (with Written in Stone), as you are very limited when making builds, due to lack of amulet stat variation/customization.
  Active: Meh. The short CD of the skill is good, something that should remain. The active should be changed however.
• Signet of Air:
  Passive: Good.
  Active: Fine, although it should be PBAoE when triggered.

Overall I like the CD of the signets, which grants good synergy with Fire’s Embrace, although it should be adept. The shorter CD of the utility, the less powerful it’ll be.

MonMalthias.4763:

Fire Aura’s effect in general should be made stronger. I would rather Fire Aura’s mechanic be that for every enemy Burned, a condition is Cleansed, ICD 1 second, maximum 3-5 conditions. In this way, Fire Aura becomes a deterrent towards autoattacks applying crit-proc conditions, which is what overwhelms Elementalist cleansing capability at the moment (Incendiary Powder being one of the main culprits).

Sounds like a decent idea. However, it will affect every other class able to produce fire auras as well. Not sure how much that would change the meta scene for other professions.

MonMalthias.4763:

To specifically address Signet’s lack of condition clear, I do feel that Signet of Water should be made more active. Perhaps one of these:

• Cleanse a condition when you dodge and heal a small amount (ICD: 10 seconds). If you successfully dodge an attack, cleanse an additional condition.
• Cleanse a condition and heal a small amount when you dodge. (ICD: 10 seconds) (less of a skill floor and therefore should not scale as high. Still a straight buff to Signet of Water.)
• Cleanse a condition when you dodge (ICD: 5 seconds) (This is pre-nerf ele level and possibly too strong)
  • This would tie Signet condition clear proc control to the dodge mechanic. Most importantly it is to serve as a replacement for Evasive Arcana/Cleansing Wave, which is a bare minimum for Signet of Water to be competitive.
  • Unlike most other Signet passives, this one does have a counterplayable weakness, which is Immobilise. Good for the game, possibly bad for the Elementalist.

I did previously think about a 129 base healing at the end of each dodge, similar to guardian. However, I thought it be too much, combined with Signet of Restoration and Evasive Arcana, plus heals from skills.

Having the active be a condition cleanse with an additional effect appeals more to me, as you can control it without the need for a stopwatch. The higher the ICD, the harder it will be for players to know when to use it without any visual representation. A simple 10 ICD that isn’t bound to an attunement can be hard to keep track of in prolonged fights and would likely frustrate people, much like the current Cleansing Water + Soothing Disruption + Elemental Attunement and what other sources of regen there might be thrown into the mix.

MonMalthias.4763:

The Signet of Water active, as well as the Fire active should also be re-examined. A utility slot for…Condition application is quite underwhelming.

• Signet of Water should create a 3 second Ice Field that cleanses 1 condition after 2 seconds. Foes passing through the Field are Chilled for 1 second every second, so it has dual purpose. Also blastable for Frost Armour.
• Signet of Fire should create a 3 second Fire Field that Burns foes for 1 second every second.
  Overall the aim should be to not only make the Signets a stat buff but also to make the actives more compelling.

I like several of your ideas, the ice field especially. So you’re saying the solution would be..

1. Fire auras: When hit, you lose a condition (ICD: 1 second). Partially takes care of condition issues in melee, mainly re-applying conditions for foes. It does not help in any way against ranged attacks. Not likely to be implemented, as other professions are bound to this as well.
2. Signet of Water: Can cleanse rarely, much like the current passive cleanses 1 condition every 10 seconds, but on command, potentially with a bonus cleanse/heal on evades. This I don’t see helping out much, admittedly. ICD is a bother in most cases, I mentioned why earlier.
   It should however be a signet that allows you to cleanse conditions to a greater extent than it does currently. Ice field + condition cleanse would likely not go well with the devs, as it becomes a very strong 24 (traited) second combo field. Even an ice field alone might be doubtful.
3. Signets actives should be more compelling. I agree. Several of them could use work.

My original ideas were an attempt to address condition cleanses and lack of aura build options. Both of which would hoist the sails for signet builds, imo. It makes it a bit confusing looking at your suggestions (some of which I like), because the overall goal is blurry. By that I mean synergy between ideas to address the main issues signet builds has, from a somewhat realistic pov. I don’t believe fire auras will see the changes you propose, as it isn’t only ele related but could tip the scale for other professions, so I take that idea out of the equation. Suddenly, when looking at your other ideas, I find that condition cleansing problems still would exist, especially if you aren’t going for Evasive Arcana.

My bad if I made the explanation look muddled and confusing. I hope it makes sense to you, though.

Grimreaper.5370:

reflected projectiles with auras, would you want it? What if it increased stun duration by 1 second?

I wouldn’t want it with either of those. It baffles me that Anet builds something around a mechanic that we barely have access to, instead of making it part of a basic ele mechanic.

Like producing 180/240 radius AoE weakness everytime you switch to air. This you can control and you can place yourself strategically for good effect. Sadly, such a trait would force us into 30 arcane for quicker attunement swaps. When will they replace intelligence with something else and make attunement recharge rate 10 seconds.. Got a little sidetracked.

Lightning Rod and Tempest Defense should indeed be merged. They can even remove the 20% damage bonus, as it rarely is of use, unless you do a Lightning Flash Earthquake combo. Pointless.

It’s like giving a necro a 20% damage boost whenever they immobilize someone.

The problem with these GM traits is that they often don’t play to the classes strengths, or are lackluster and pointless, perhaps because the devs fear making them too strong and totally lose sight of what they’re actually doing.

I find it rediculous. It affects everything on the ele and almost nothing on the thief. Attunement recharge rate should not be affected, unless Anet wishes to change it to affect every professions weapon swap CD.

That, and it needs to affect thieves and their initiative accumulation.

The fire auras and adept minor will be much more useful with the new burn/blindness grandmaster trait on the horizon though. I understand that retaliation would be universally good and fits into the power traitline, but I doubt we’ll be given it beyond the new arcane grandmaster trait.

Not sure which I’d prefer.

capnkewl.5019:

People are obviously playing the game wrong, I still see more hambow warriors and minion mancers than either of these specs.

What does that have to do with something being overly strong? Because there are more warriors than engineers (and thieves? not sure) doesn’t suddenly make it less of a problem once you encounter it.

Player: “Oh no, a pistol whip thief.. wait. It’s not a problem, because there are more warriors than pistol whip thieves out there”. Logic 1000000000+

If a new player understands what the actives and passives of a signet does, it shouldn’t be confusing. If they understand what Written in Stone does, it definitely shouldn’t.

I don’t think that adding random triggered effects help in any way. The more you’re in control of a skill the better you can utilize it, and use actual skill instead of luck, the latter not being good in PvP, nor elsewhere imho.

Like Signet of Earth grants extra toughness, perhaps the passive could grant extra vitality, as you most likely would go 30 earth and be on the low-health side of things.

Maskah.1486:

While they have said these are tentative they might actually change some of these traits. I feel that Blinding Ashes is a bit off the mark when you consider how many traits you have to invest to get it and compare it to other GM traits in that line. Here are my suggestions and they are not big changes, but enough to make them worth the trait points.

Blinding Ashes - As it stands this trait has very little use in big fights and is only good for 1v1 (unless a warrior is traited to ignore blinds) and somewhat in boss fights.

Suggestion 1 - Make it an AOE blind centered on the first target that triggered the blind first.

Suggestion 2 - Can only affect a target once every 5 seconds.

Personally I think suggestion 2 is the most balanced approach.

I’m hoping it works like this:
Use single target burning = Single target blindness.
Use AoE burning = AoE blindness.

Pistol Whip shouldn’t stun, and not daze either. One second of cripple seems more realistic.

Glad you agree. I did post it there.

The current passive condition removal is too random and won’t help you when it matters, especially in such a condition heavy meta. Making it a PBAoE would not require you to have a target, which can waste some effect of your skill, much like Signet of Air, when jumped and not being able to target anyone in time.

With all these changes, you could spec for aura sharing easier without giving up everything and be useless. You can spec selfish for sustain and condition removal with x/x/30/30/x – x/x/30/20/20 (bunker) – 10/0/30/30/0 (anti condi aura bunker) – 30/0/30/10/0 (aura blindness fun) – 10/10/30/10/10 (celestial goodness with auras), 0/0/30/10/30 (condi fun with decent condi removal) etc.

I believe these changes would be sufficiently effective without being useless or OP, and allow signets to gain a foothold in PvP with individual roaming builds, bursty builds, bunker builds and support, being useful with every weapon set, depending on your setup.

TL:DR: Signets needs condition removal and better synergy with traits to become effective and viable. Sorry, but you need to read some of the wall of text to see what I mean.

Seems like a shame to leave them behind, when they could add more builds to the ele repetoire. There should be ways to increase their usefulness, ways to create synergy like you see with Cantrips.

Current issues with signet builds, is probably the severe lack of condition removal and survivability. As arcane and water offer you survival, there are limits to what you can spend your traits on, when delving 30 in earth. If you wish for aura synergy, you must spend 20 points in fire, which leaves you with little for arcane and water traits that are life saving and necessary if you wish to survive; condi/celestial specs demand time to take someone down (slow condi/baby bursts), time signet builds doesn’t grant you.

While there are skills to support signet builds, they aren’t currently making it viable.

Traits that support signets:

• Signet Mastery: Cooldown reduction on signets: 20%.
  A must have for a signet build.

• Written in Stone: Maintain signet passives at all times.
  Something you’d want to have, a must have in my book.

• Shard of Ice: Vulnerability x3 for 8 seconds.
  This trait won’t do you much good, as signets and earth appeal to condition or celestial builds and 3% won’t make a significant change. Appears to be an unnused trait.

• Arcane Energy: Endurance gain: 25.
  Potentially usefull, except the fact that it lies in master arcane. If you go this deep, you’d pick Elemental Attunement. A quarter of energy is nothing when you have energy sigil + Renewing Stamina. I have never seen anyone use this trait.

There is better synergy to be found, but it has its costs.
With 20 points in fire, you get:

• Fire’s Embrace: Using a signet creates a fire aura.
  If this trait is used, three traits are unlocked to create synergy

1. Zephyr’s Boon: Fury and swiftness for 5 seconds.

If not using Signet of Fire, fury has more value. Swiftness is good, but you’ll likely be using Signet of Air for the stunbreak, AoE blindness and 25% speed increase, and with Written in Stone is doesn’t become a necessity.

2. Elemental Shielding: Protection for 3 seconds.

Important if you can’t afford 20 points in arcane for elemental attunement. The duration is short though. Taking this will leave you without Rock Solid.

3. Powerful Auras: Share auras with up to five allies.

Useful, but you’ll have to sacrifice Written in Stone, which in itself is problematic.

My suggestions to improve signet builds.

• Fire’s Embrace: Moved to adept.
  This would allow you to spend 10 points in defensive traitlines and allow a variety of builds without sacrificing everything (Written in Stone mainly). This is a very important change.

• Soothing Disruption: Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor: 6 seconds. Signets grant you vigor: 6 seconds.

This suggestion would grant signets needed vigor without the need to go into arcane, should you want to head for 30 water. This would also benefit you if you toss one cantrip in the mix for mobility, extra cleansing/burning, invulnerability or stability/protection.

• Shard of Ice: Signets of Restoration and Signet of Water cure 2 conditions when used.

Signets severely lack condition removal tools, especially condition removal on command. This, with my suggestion to Signet of Water (below) would make more of an impact without forcing you deep into water, allowing for build diversity.

• Signet of Water:
  Passive: Cures a condition every 10 seconds.
  Active: Chills your foes and cures a condition.
  Cast time: Instant (Like Signet of Air)
  Damage: 211
  Chilled: 3 seconds.
  Radius: 240

This change would allow you to escape horrible situations like being immobilized and jumped, while chilling nearby attackers briefly. Such an effect would lessen the need for cantrips and make you focus on signets, which a signet build should.

Continued below..

The current passive condition removal is too random and won’t help you when it matters, especially in such a condition heavy meta. Making it an PBAoE would not require you to have a target, which can waste some effect of your skill, much like Signet of Air, when jumped and not being able to target anyone in time.

With all these changes, you could spec for aura sharing easier without giving up everything and be useless. You can spec selfish for sustain and condition removal with x/x/30/30/x – x/x/30/20/20 (bunker) – 10/0/30/30/0 (anti condi aura bunker) – 30/0/30/10/0 (aura blindness fun) – 10/10/30/10/10 (celestial goodness with auras), 0/0/30/10/30 (condi fun with decent condi removal) etc.

I believe these changes would be sufficiently effective without being useless or OP, and allow signets to gain a foothold in PvP with individual roaming builds, bursty builds, bunker builds and support, being useful with every weapon set, depending on your setup.

TL:DR: Signets needs condition removal and better synergy with traits to become effective and viable. Sorry, but you need to read some of the wall of text to see what I mean.

Seems like a shame to leave them behind, when they could add more builds to the ele repetoire. There should be ways to increase their usefulness, ways to create synergy like you see with Cantrips.

Current issues with signet builds, is probably the severe lack of condition removal and survivability. As arcane and water offer you survival, there are limits to what you can spend your traits on, when delving 30 in earth. If you wish for aura synergy, you must spend 20 points in fire, which leaves you with little for arcane and water traits that are life saving and necessary if you wish to survive; condi/celestial specs demand time to take someone down (slow condi/baby bursts), time signet builds doesn’t grant you.

While there are skills to support signet builds, they aren’t currently making it viable.

Traits that support signets:

• Signet Mastery: Cooldown reduction on signets: 20%.
  A must have for a signet build.

• Written in Stone: Maintain signet passives at all times.
  Something you’d want to have, a must have in my book.

• Shard of Ice: Vulnerability x3 for 8 seconds.
  This trait won’t do you much good, as signets and earth appeal to condition or celestial builds and 3% won’t make a significant change. Appears to be an unnused trait.

• Arcane Energy: Endurance gain: 25.
  Potentially usefull, except the fact that it lies in master arcane. If you go this deep, you’d pick Elemental Attunement. A quarter of energy is nothing when you have energy sigil + Renewing Stamina. I have never seen anyone use this trait.

There is better synergy to be found, but it has its costs.
With 20 points in fire, you get:

• Fire’s Embrace: Using a signet creates a fire aura.
  If this trait is used, three traits are unlocked to create synergy

1. Zephyr’s Boon: Fury and swiftness for 5 seconds.

If not using Signet of Fire, fury has more value. Swiftness is good, but you’ll likely be using Signet of Air for the stunbreak, AoE blindness and 25% speed increase, and with Written in Stone is doesn’t become a necessity.

2. Elemental Shielding: Protection for 3 seconds.

Important if you can’t afford 20 points in arcane for elemental attunement. The duration is short though. Taking this will leave you without Rock Solid.

3. Powerful Auras: Share auras with up to five allies.

Useful, but you’ll have to sacrifice Written in Stone, which in itself is problematic.

My suggestions to improve signet builds.

• Fire’s Embrace: Moved to adept.
  This would allow you to spend 10 points in defensive traitlines and allow a variety of builds without sacrificing everything (Written in Stone mainly). This is a very important change.

• Soothing Disruption: Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor: 6 seconds. Signets grant you vigor: 6 seconds.

This suggestion would grant signets needed vigor without the need to go into arcane, should you want to head for 30 water. This would also benefit you if you toss one cantrip in the mix for mobility, extra cleansing/burning, invulnerability or stability/protection.

• Shard of Ice: Signets of Restoration and Signet of Water cure 2 conditions when used.

Signets severely lack condition removal tools, especially condition removal on command. This, with my suggestion to Signet of Water (below) would make more of an impact without forcing you deep into water, allowing for build diversity.

• Signet of Water:
  Passive: Cures a condition every 10 seconds.
  Active: Chills your foes and removes a condition.
  Cast time: Instant (Like Signet of Air)
  Damage: 211
  Chilled: 3 seconds.
  Radius: 240

This change would allow you to escape horrible situations like being immobilized and jumped, while chilling nearby attackers briefly. Such an effect would lessen the need for cantrips and make you focus on signets, which a signet build should.

- Continued.

Leuca.5732:

Blinding Ashes- I have a feeling they have skills like Glyph of Elemental Power in mind with a trait like this; the problem is that GoEP will still be a garbage excuse for a stunbreaker.

GoEP is horrible. I tested it not long ago. The 25% randomness feels a lot more like 10%.

You forgot Fire’s Embrace and signet auramancer builds that will start to look more appealing, especially with S/F.

I’m 100% sure it won’t affect Burning Speed.

Why would it affect Burning Speed? It doesn’t say so and Burning Speed isn’t OP when used with teleport.

Only Fiery Rush. Hopefully people won’t stack in corners when doing PvE anymore. They should remove walls and corners for people to use Fiery Rush on instead.

Only if you hit them at the same time I would imagine. I wonder if you apply a 12 secs burn to someone if it re-applies blindness after 5 secs, or you need to apply it again.

I think it depends on the skills used. A Flame Burst would hit up to five people with it, I would think. If you go Drake’s Breath on people, it will likely trigger at the first person you hit then go on ICD.

But yeah, I wonder if it’s 5 ICD per target, or per usage.

On a sidenote. The blindness will be good against hammer characters, as they have slow attacks. Other than that, it’s not going to be a show stopper I believe. Let’s wait and see.

You won’t achieve perma blindness, because an ele swaps between attunements. It will help their survivability a bit, but at the same time cost them defenses.

• Ele attacks are generally rather slow
• The longer an ele stays in fire, the sooner you win
• ICD is 5 secs

Your hysteria is uncalled for in this case, OP. Actually, it sounds less threatning than a thief and its blinds, but we won’t know until we test it.

The immune to crit thing. Meh. It will be alright to ward off some attacks, but you can’t stay in earth, lest you have a deathwish. It is there to take off the edge of attacks when in trouble only.

I think you’re imagining an ele staying in earth indefinitely while blinding all the time. That will not happen, and it won’t be a viable strategy. Nothing to fear here.

Amulet suggestion:
How about making the amulet and jewel each share the same capacity of stats (50% each, instead of 90/10 ratio), so more variations can be achieved? Currently the amulet is determining too much, some amulets only work properly for specific classes.

If the amulet and jewel have 50% of the stats each, it would open up for build diversity. WvW and PvE has it, but not SPvP. It’s the easy alternative to the combinations of jewelry and armor you get in WvW/PvE.

30 fire and 30 arcane I am thinking. EA dodge in fire for AoE blindness, dodge in air for AoE blindness. Then with S/F you could potentially be doing well.

The Game Slayer.7632:

I actually have been theory crafting and I’ve thought of a 30fire-30earth build to try out.

What I’m actually going to love about stone heart is it’s ability to resist condi specs by not letting them proc condis on criticals. This is huge. (as well as the damage reduction)

With 30 trait points and attunement to earth, you have gained a cat-load of defense. Moderate resistance to condis and extreme resistance to damage. I think with this trait eles can make a come-back into the meta.

It’d be lacking in the healing/arcane/condi cleanse department though. Are you thinking condi build?

Looking at these mainly from an SPvP perspective. These were my first thoughts.

• Blinding Ashes [Fire]: Blind foes for 5 secs when you burn them. Cooldown: 5 secs.

Potentially good. Going this deep into fire means a lack of defensive traits and it’s on a 5 secs ICD which means you need to ready your stopwatch when using burn skills. I doubt it will be enough to make a difference. Perhaps 2 secs ICD, depending on how it fares. The concept is good.

• Lightning Rod [Air]: Interrupting an enemy causes them to be struck by a damaging lightning bolt that leaves them weakened (5 secs).

Who do they think we are? Mesmers? Elementalists aren’t proficient at interrupting, you could say we SUCK at it, and the skills that actually has a chance of interrupting are on a long CDs, so this trait is horribly misplaced and pointless.

Here is a list of surface interrupt skills. Let’s see what we have on our main weapons.

Daze – Focus x1
Fear – None
Knockdown – Dagger offhand x1
Launch – Dagger offhand x1
Push/push – Tornado
Stun – Dagger mainhand x1, staff x1

The interrupt that is most guaranteed for us is Shocking Aura, as opponents will actively attacking and almost guaranteed to be interrupted. Being integrated with Tempest Defense I likely wouldn’t use it. Is that worth a grandmaster trait that grants you 5 secs of weakness, when you have Lightning Touch ready every 10 secs lasting for just as long and much more easily applied? However it does have a lightning bolt attached, but how often will it trigger? Not often with our interrupts. Terrible trait.

• Stone heart [Earth]: You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth.

Sounds useful, when you stick to earth attunement. How often do you really do that when swapping constantly? It has potential, especially with Elemental Attunement’s protection for decreased damage. However you need to go 30 in earth for it, leaving you weakened in other aspects. Diamond Skin worked in all attunements, this will likely not even be usable with Lingering Elements. Not sure about this one yet.

• Aquatic Benevolence [Water]: Your healing to other allies (not self) is increased by 25%.

With Cleansing Water unnerfed, how much will it be used? No clue. But I can see it bringing good healing to party members using staff and blast finishers. I will stick with Cleansing Water most likely.

• Elemental Contingency [Arcane]: Gain a boon when you are struck, based on your current attunement. Cooldown: 10 seconds. Fire: 3.5 secs of retaliation; Air: 5 secs of fury; Earth: 2.5 secs of protection; Water: 3 secs of vigor.

The arcane traitline will remain mandatory after the patch. Will this trait replace EA? My crystal ball says no, but who knows.

My favorite is Blinding Ashes admittedly. What do you think about these traits and how will they affect builds and PvP? Discuss.

So, 35 mins until it starts, eh? EH?

Ether Renewal ftw!

What will it be replacing you think? Auras? Perhaps Grandmaster minor…

I got a few questions.

• How will you gain them? Grinding rank points, achievements, chests with currency or something else?
• Will the traits be equally easy to obtain in hotjoin, soloQ and TPvP, meaning not one of these “playstyles” will have an advantage at gaining them?

PvP Builds

• Staff – DPS & Team Support

I play/ed this quite a lot, and sometimes with barbarian’s jewel and different traits and utilities (all cantrip) for more survivability. PvP is generally manageable and if you play your cards right, you won’t go down easily. The build is primarily dps, but offers great support also. Close combat with 2x Frost Aura combo, which will bestow around 14-15 seconds of protection to your allies with EA, plus 10% extra reduction from Frost Auras, though they will not last as long. Stability will also help you stay on your feet and perform your tasks, granting help to your team mates when it gets hairy, not to name water fields and so on.

The dps is a mixture. Primarily burst damage, as staff doesn’t cater to many condition skills. While it isn’t a glass cannon build, you can generate much damage using Meteor Shower + Tornado for the more important fights. NB. While you can breeze through your opponents and send them flying, you can force them to eat all the damage you can muster.
Let them stay outside the natural radius (white circle) of your tornado and spam 1 for 1000-2000 damage lightning bolts (chain), while critting with your meteors. The lightning bolts will reach further out than you might imagine. You can test it on dummies first to get a feeling for it.

My rotation from Meteor Shower (usually)

1. Cast Meteor Shower.
2. Shift into earth for protection and stability so you will complete casting it.
3. Activate Magnetic Aura to reflect potential artillery (it triggers protection as well).
4. As it’s finished, immediately activate Tornado.
5. Swap to air for fury before Tornado activates (or water if you think you’ll need the regen).
6. Swoop towards thy foe and spam 1 for chain lightning damage when in reach.

This is the option for most damage from the two skills, although you can manage to squeeze in an Arcane Wave before Tornado is activated too, but perhaps it’s better saved for your water/ice fields.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWhMM6cW4wlBr0AARhLmMUIyIlH7MjNA-TkAg0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

• S/F – DPS & Control

Currently used build. It does good damage, has good CC, grants you a rather strong defense and very decent condition cleansing. While this build uses Elemental Surge, you’ll have to get used to using your arcane utilities in a way that will prevent incoming damage, such as blind, chill and immobilize while actively doing damage. When used correctly, when you time your skills and utilities well, you will be hard to take down and can dish out quite a lot of damage + CC.

The Glyph provides you with a big burst heal with very helpful boons to boot. The water elemental is best used as you will find joy in blasting through the ice combo fields for Frost Auras, making you very chilly and unpleasant.

The biggest downside by far, is the lack of mobility you would get from Lightning Flash and Ride the Lightning. There is enough swiftness using GoEH however. Your access to condition removal is limited, but not lacking, Ether Renewal is always an alternative, but I feel you give your opponent too much time to recover using it. I haven’t had too much trouble against conditions, as you can heal 2 condis every 10 secs by water swapping, remove a condi when crit (depends on Cleansing Water ICD), timing it with GoEH in water and use Magnetic Wave every 25 secs for 3x condi removal.

Overall a challenging but funny build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJArdhUMaZ2zwkBd0AA5BMmwioQFlHxMTNA-ToAA0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+YSA

Mr. Roy, I have a few questions regarding unlockable traits.

• How will you gain them? Grinding rank points, achievements, chests with currency or something else?
• Will the traits be similarly easy to obtain in hotjoin, soloQ and TPvP?
• Do you unlock traits for each of your characters, or accountwise?

On a sidenote, I don’t dislike the idea, but it does sound like grinding. In PvE, fine. Instant PvP? Bad idea, as you won’t start off evenly with everyone else, which was proudly announced by Anet members in the past.
I am slightly concerned that they will force you to play tpvp for chests with currency for the traits. Thinking of grinding grinds my gears. ^^

It was my mistake, mate, sorry. Hopefully they will shed some light on what they’ll toss at us in the april update in 11 or so hours, or whenever the Ready Up thing is being transmitted.

So, we’ll get a look at all the fourty new traits? That plus map.. I am very excited.

Alright, thanks for the quick reply!

Vash Past.4385:

Malcastus:
I’m not sure you’re really getting me on this post.
Please don’t hijack my thread.

I wasn’t attempting to hijack anything. As I haven’t played GW1 I got the idea that you might be after deathmatch (chaotic battle royal) so I voiced my oppinion. Seems like we misunderstood each other. ^^

I’d prefer a game type like capture the flag: pull for starters or something along those lines. Deathmatch sounds fun (hotjoin with no points), but something that you can also can play in soloQ and TPvP would be better imho. I doubt there would be TPvP deathmatch games, but perhaps I am wrong. ^^

Drafigo.4690:

I saw the same thing last night Malcastus. Depending on the class I always get top states and bonuses and was noticing last night that I was getting the same results as you. Sure seems to be a bug or maybe as intended. Would be sweet to get a response from a Dev!

I hope it’s a tooltip bug.

Alora.6841:

I never get any Rankpoints for participation.

I didn’t mean participation, sorry. I edited the post.

I have noticed that at the end of a hotjoin game, you gain 500 rank points and get bonuses for your various efforts like top player, resses, point captures etc. However, I would fx get 500 for winning and 2x 10 bonus points, but the total would amass to 510 instead of 520. When gaining 3x 15 bonus points the total would be 515 instead of 545.

I tested it something like 25+ times and I never gained all the rank points I was entitled to.
Is it a tooltip bug or what is going on?

http://i.imgur.com/Rj0V9s1.jpg

Dodging while immobilized doesn’t make sense. However immobilized should be looked at. Dimishing returns when stacking with three stacks max, or no stacking.

That would make Elemental Attunement even more important, not that it’s possible as it’s basically mandatory in PvP. Basing a traits effectiveness on a single arcana trait is a bad move. EA needs to be removed, but that’s another story..

Lalangamena.3694:

i strongly disagree, because they are extremely weak,
chills are way too short to have any impact on a dungeon or fractal fight, immobilize is single target and bosses practically immune to it due to defiant and unshakable.

if anything should be done, is that immobilize and chilled should be extended
( actually doubled in the basic duration) to be meaningful.

also, what is this “prevalent condi meta” you are talking about?
nobody want conditions in their dungeon, you cant even use them in ANet latest event ( the knights…) half of the fight.

also, there are many wrong things in this game, one of them is sPvP balance forcing itself and hindering the rest of the game.

I think OP is talking about SPvP, not PvE. In PvE they are fine, sure. PvP is a whole other monster.

Cerberus: I can talk about glory boosters, because OP highlights it. Instead of trying to hijack this thread, make your own.

Fearedbystuff: While their approach isn’t commendable, the removal of boosters seems like the least of problems. They are being removed whether you like it or not and yes, it’s ok. If you forgot to use them, it’s your own fault. I had 60+ when they mentioned removing them. If people are hoarding them, chances they’ll ever be used aren’t likely, because saving them gives you..? Right, no value. The point is that everyone got plenty of chances to boost their glory gain. They are boosters, not items. Yes, I know how people react to their upcoming actions, no need for Dr. Phil’ing this needlessly.

You got plenty of chances to use your boosters. If you did, jolly good. If not, your own problem for forgetting/hoarding.

They should compensate people, to be fair, but the boosters are different than mats (the principle is the same, yes, but this isn’t ethics class), which the removal of I find in bad taste like so many of their practices or lack thereof these days.

Point being, they are changing things. Bad? Potentially good if the changes grants us better things. Debatable. Losing mats and such in this way isn’t optimal, but that’s what they are doing regardless, yet people seem to focus on boosters. It’s just silly to complain about boosters of all things, and especially silly if people saved/forgot using them and now remember they existed.

P.S. Five lines is a wall of text to you? Jeez.

TL;DR: A response of sorts why whining about boosters is silly. Bonus patar familias, own fault for not using boosters, bla. bla. etc. etc.

Good idea. Down with Geomancer’s Freedom and move Obsidian Focus up to master tier and redo it.

• Obsidian Focus (master trait)
  Gain vitality based on your toughness. 10%

The immobilize stacking is too much, I agree. It would be alright if stability and/or stun breakers would cancel it. Since that is not the case, they should revert it. Way too strong currently.

Chill should be changed slightly.

• Chill
  Reduces movement speed by 33% and skill recharge by 66%. Stacks in duration. (doesn’t affect elementalist attunement recharge rate)

It’s like Crippled on steroids and makes it seem pitiful in comparison. Which of the two sound severely movement hampering, Crippled or Chilled?

Let Crippled be the main movement reducing condition and Chilled be second in that category I say. Yay or nay?

Be glad that you got more than you needed and didn’t have to spend all your mats on crafting them. If you had enough glory boosters to keep your glory boosted all this time, they worked as intended and there is no reason to complain.

These complaints might persuade the devs to potetially release new boosters that only last for 10 mins, instead of an hour, to prevent a forum ruckus fest.

Pretty sure the devs are facepalming this very moment.

• DEV 1: Come see this.. you won’t believe it! HURRY!
• DEV 2: What is it? ((dashes to co-workers computer))
• DEV 1: They’re complaining that we made glory gain easy and now want a refund.. ! Can you believe it? ((laughs wildly and facepalms))
• DEV 2: ((Pushes buttons on cell phone while facepalming))
• DEV 1: Who’re you texting? ((hand slides down face, tearing off a bit of skin))
• DEV 2: Everyone in the SPvP department.. wait! I will text everyone I know!

• A few hours pass, as the PvP department is busy with Ready Up livestream

• PvP DEV: ((Rushes to DEV 1+2’s office with a hand on the mouth, an infant facepalm, as the realization needs to take place before the facepalming can commence))
  Are you serious? ((Noticing DEV 1+2, the PvP DEV’s eyes widen in horror))
• DEV 1+2: ((Both with skinless faces and palms, laughing hysterically and incoherently yelling ‘GLOOOORRRRrrrr’))

Today: Devs 1+2 have been admitted to an insane asylum in Wisconsin. The entire SPvP dev team has been outfitted with mittens and latex masks to prevent any further harm. This is probably why the big PvP patch has been delayed.

OP, what you’re writing implies that you’ve gotten your glory boosted all this time and have spare ones to boot. If you have, you need not complain about abundance.

Be glad that you got more than you needed and didn’t have to spend all your mats on crafting them.

Are people complaining because they actually crafted a daftly amount of boosters at once and can’t use them all?

I suggest that soon to be removed PvP materials and boosters can be handed in at the new glory vendor for glory points, for people to use on outfits etc.