Guild Wars 2

Fade.1743:

Between Dagger and Focus, we’ve got a wide variety of offhand skills. However, we lack real melee cleave. Lightning Whip is fine, but that’s all we have outside of conjures. And even then, it’s not really that good of a melee cleave.

Our main-hands (at least from a PvE point of view) are quite…lacking. D/F is a great build; however, it requires the rest of your team to do their job in order to pull off the rotation. And in PvE it’s only really used for 3 abilities, Fire 3 for fire field, water 3 for blast finisher, and Lightning Whip. I know it’s much more versatile in PvP and WvW, but the majority of the players are in PvE so that should be taken into consideration.

Scepter…really is not that great. It’s great for might stacking, but D/F can compete with it without worrying about someone picking up your second lightning hammer. Great for burst, but only speed-running really focuses on burst and Staff does that super well.

I’m not really going to comment on Staff. Mostly because even if Tempest SUCKS for PvE, the standard staff build is getting a buff in the specializations. So the playstyle can stay the same…if not become better.

As for Tempest, I hope for Sword. Mostly because I want to be a battle-mage. As for traits, while I think traps would work, I’d hope for mantras. Mostly because we have enough long range AE abilities. What we need is some ranged single target. And mantras could…say…have different effects depending on which attunement they were cast in like glyphs. However, unlike glyphs, you can “store” the effect. So say we have a condition mantra. If you cast it in earth, it stores the ability to make your target bleed. Swap to air (which has no bleeds at all) and use the mantra. Now we’ve got access to conditions no matter what spec we’re in.

Mantras? Definitely not. Too long of a cast time and mesmers would have a fit the size of Texas if they made them instacast or shorter casts. Deceptions/Tricks on the other hand would fit in great with the main hand sword as it could give elementalists access to much needed mobility/evades to pull off a true melee weapon.

Id say between… $2000 – $2500 since release. Maybe more, I’d have to check bank statements.

Jaetara.4075:

I couldn’t imagine elementalist a light armor user with such a low health, as a close range class, daggers I think is as close as it could get. So if it is indeed sword I just hope skills will have some range…

There is nothing wrong with being in melee with light armor and low health, that is what your 20 weapon skills and traits are for. If the Tempest has pure melee cleave as what it offers, so long as the burst/mobility is there, it won’t make a difference. Thieves have it the same, while not as bad, and do just fine because their burst is meaningful and have a plethora of escapes.

underwater spear is the tempest specialization. We’re too OP on land and no one knows how to balance ele, so give them a specialization that no one will actually use!

/sarcasm

Tachenon.5270:

What about any specializations that come along after HoT is released? How will they be implemented/made available? As freebies? Via the gemstore? Part of some new Living World chapter? Will we have to have HoT for them?

Most likely they will be just added to anyone who has HoT, just as the new specializations are now. So yes, you will have to buy the expansion for them.

This is an expansion so the only thing that will be included for non-expansion players will be things that affect the base game. Anything new and added will be for the current game which is Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Neko.9021:

Camping a single attunement already works in PvE. Stay in Fire Attunement and spam Lava Font to do massive AoE damage.

The talk against it is mainly how boring it is to some people, but in terms of how well it works in PvE, it’s already very good.

No one is saying it isn’t effective at this time, just that we (whoever agrees with my PoV) believe that it shouldn’t be promoted or effective.

Inb4 ele gets underwater weapon as specialization weapon.

4 minutes to explain a build for WvW… then goes on to show it against a supply camp supervisor… while only using Air with other people there.

Clickbait for views is clickbait.

Very very against any camping of any sort. I think that it removes all of the identity of the Guild Wars 2 elementalist and I would love it if people stopped asking for it and that the devs would remove/rework the traits that allow it.

My 0.2c

Kodiak.3281:

The biggest issue when you get down to Comparisons is the fact that Revenant at this time is lacking full gear selections and full trait lines. For example there’s no Power line at this time nor the direct damage focused Legend.

That said I found it very comfortable to play and found a lot of cross over from Elementalist game play. For example using the Road Utility and then Hammer 5 -> Hammer 3 to blast two stacks of AOE Swiftness for getting around. The hammer also does very well during events for tagging with large, spammable AOEs with the Shockwave and the naturally piercing attacks. Depending on what else they have for Utilities (there’s 2 more legends and then an elite legend left) they could be a familiar alternative for a Staff Elementalist but an unlikely replacement.

Mace/Axe was very condi oriented and had a great feel for smaller encounters. Axe abilities were pretty amazing, but Mace was fairly slow and felt it.

Interesting, thanks for the review. So there seems like there’s no burst weapon (or at least not one released) for the revenant.

Mattmatt.4962:

Am i the only one around here thinking that earth water arcane , written in stone heavy signet (heal, earth and air at least) build would be huge ?

Cause yeah, i dont think that earth stone and diamond skin are good trait

Nope, I’ve been looking at a Written in Stone build myself. I personally view Diamond Skin and Stone Heart as poor traits that have limited use based on some scenarios whereas a WiS build could be a better all around alternative.

Not getting crit is nice, but when you eventually leave Earth, it’s gone and the low health threshold of Diamond Skin always made me shy away from it.

Mikkel.8427:

It’s memorial day. I think we can all safely assume that most (if not all) of the staff had the day off.

Not everyone is American, nor aware of memorial day.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Raif.9507:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Ascended for pvp…

I would post a Dave Mustaine .gif where he does that facepalm again but I cba…

He might be talking about WvW you know… there IS PvP there despite people claiming there isn’t.

He said PvP, and with PvP you mean sPvP.

Anyways, there’s no “best” armor cause it’s all about playstyle.

Going to the forums and ask what’s the “best” armor is … Well I’ll stop here, not in a mood of getting banned (again)

PvP is PvP, not necessarily sPvP. Case in point, he meant WvW. As for b"best" armor, I agree with you on that.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Ascended for pvp…

I would post a Dave Mustaine .gif where he does that facepalm again but I cba…

He might be talking about WvW you know… there IS PvP there despite people claiming there isn’t.

And yes OP – Wup Wup is the celestial stats for ascended.

Mono attunement build… shudder. At least you’re trying something different, that I can at least appreciate, but your opponents in all the fights are… terrible is being nice.

Are you fearing mobs out of melee range? Are you messing with the location/placement of bosses by using fear? If so, it might not be the necro class that’s an issue for you.

I personally don’t care what class people bring so long as they don’t use knockbacks./fears willy nilly and make the mob run around all over the place. Meta is only desired when you want speed runs… even then my guild and I barely care.

Find better people to run with.

Genoxy.8109:

Wanze.8410:

They had an overwolf app challenge a couple of weeks back:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/submit-your-entry-in-the-overwolf-guild-wars-2-app-challenge/

IF you check the video, there was also one submitted for using game pads for gw2, so you might want to check it out.

This overwolf is not very good, and g2k dev kit works really bad, trully i cant play, only can use left stick as mouse, I tryed to rebind keys, but it looks like i cant change it. I really dont want third-party software controller support for gw2, cause of problems like this, also I think this game is also could be good at xboxone and ps4, but we would test the gameplay with controller on pc now

Mind elaborating what isn’t good? And what was not good about the G2K dev kit? Any feedback you can give would be great. I can pass it on to the developers and let them know what they need to fix =)

tetrodoxin.2134:

I kinda feel like they made this change in preparation for the new elite spec… maybe that one includes something to substitude either elemental attunement or evasive arcana (in a different fashion, of course). A fifth attunement seems very unlikely to me (too many new skills), I’m expecting a powerful on-attunement-swap effect of some sort (expanding the current mechanics like for Guardians) as part of the elite spec. So yeah, maybe wait for the Tempest announcement to make a final judgement on this topic. I’m pretty sure anet is aware of this issue.

Maybe EA + EA in combination with the potential new on-swap effect the Tempest has turned out too powerful, who knows. We’ll see!

Then all thatmeans is pigeon hole into Arcana+Water+Tempets. That’s as bad as what they’re doing now.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Raif.9507:

So… any updates yet from OP?

What do you expect from the OP? All he can do is submit the report and pay that someone other than karl sees it.

Probably the same thing he posted in the necro forum. A heads up that he submitted something and a small view of what he did submit, nothing more. I don’t expect him/her to do any more than that.

So… any updates yet from OP?

BlackBeard.2873:

Raif.9507:

Tempest could be all blinks style thief. That might be a good answer for a highly mobile DPS.

If they just tried to make it like an s/x thief, it will just end up being a BAD rendition of s/x thief with less overall mobility (Anet won’t let anyone touch thieve’s role as top-dog in map mobility), less support (no stealth to share, and sharing boons/heals on a dps spec isn’t that great), and less control due to the attunement system being restrictive while the initiative system is empowering.

I do agree, but I’m trying to see the silver lining somewhere.

Jski.6180:

I guess shouts is a no go for Tempest so i guess now its going to be stances or deceptions (war or thf sub). Both could work out though i do not think they would give tempest the ability to stealth but they would give it the ability to be super mobile. The war parts would make it more of a tank dps. So i am saying Tempest may not be support at all.

Tempest could be all blinks style thief. That might be a good answer for a highly mobile DPS.

Shiki.7148:

Illuminati.3089:

We already know Trahearne and Jory are gonna be using GS as a necro.
and We know Rytlock is the first revenant.
Who is the dragonhunter? Dear Logan? If so, he has to follow dragonhunter lore and hate all things related to the dragon including sylvari.
I guess Kasmeer is going to be the new tempest.
Is countess Anise going to be a chronomancer?
So many speculations

Only that Traheanre is more of a Guardian than a Necro in later parts of the story. Marjory is correct though. I’d say Kasmeer -> Chronomancer rather than Countess Anise, cause we really only see her in non-combat-scenarios while Kasmeer is around all the time (and could have gotten the idea for wells from Jory). Also I have a hard time seeing Countess Anise running around in the Maguuma jungle…

No idea on Tempest.

Dragonhunter… Propably Braham. Druid… maybe Rox? Warrior spec, no idea, since the “prime target”, Rytlok, is now Revenant.

I doubt Taimi gets anything cause all she uses is that Golem of hers.

Engi Spec : Also not the foggiest.

And Revenant elite has to be Rytlok even though he just became one, because according to lore he is the first one so there shouldn’t be another one to take that spot.

And I also have 0 clues on thief.

Trahearne only becomes more “guardian-like” due to Caladbolg having it’s own set of skills that for some reason look guardian like to people. He is a necromancer though, and not a guardian.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

Water GM trait: Deep Aura: Froze Aura you apply on yourself have also chance to deep freeze if struck by meele.
Arcana GM trait: When struck by cc trigger random cantrip.

Idea for elite: 1000 Trident’ Iskander – you summon wave of tridents in direction and around you for dmg/deep freeze.

You really really should just edit your posts instead of posting a new one every time. Just saying.

Nice video… but all I could think while watching was this: Why does your game look so awesome.

And your headset mic was funny XD

While I do appreciate seeing someone passionate about the Elementalist, I am firmly against any form of promoting attunement camping or creating things like “Fire ele” or “Water ele”. I personally see it as removing the complexity from the class in it’s entirety and removing the very base mechanics of how the class is meant to function.

A change like this would lead (and is currently with the fire staff PvE build) to be boring in my eyes. Thief has Initiative to manage, Mesmers have Clones to manage, Warrior has Adrenaline to manage (lol). With attunement camping you have…. nothing. In this playstyle you don’t want to swap attunements, you don’t want to do anything save 1/2/3 in fire, there’s nothing added there’s no active gameplay and no added mechanic. It’s boring and bland (glad you enjoy it but) I would hate to see developers put more effort in emphasizing attunement camping.

The elementalist is one of the few “complex” (grain of salt please) classes this game has as far as mechanics. I don’t want to see it changed to be a less complex class.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Except you’re (apparently) under the misconception that GW2 and WoW (and MMO’s style WoW) are designed with the same holy trinity concept in mind when creating instances. They’re not, GW2 PvE content isn’t created with a tank/healer/DPS party in mind at all. Therefore, since the content isn’t created to have it, nor are players abilities geared towards it at all (read: no direct heals, no taunts), a zerker meta is created from just knowing what to do. This is “seeming” to change with the introduction of the first ever taunt mechanic in GW2 with the Revenant.

This game requires you not to have heals or tankiness but to know when to dodge/block/blind/teleport away from. If I can mititgate all the damage a boss does by just dodging everything I no longer need any toughness or a high health pool or damage mitigation, I need damage to end the encounter as fast as I can. The more I am adept at the game, the less I need defensive stats in PvE.

Going on a limb and saying Cele? Besides Fresh Air, what else did you run? Looks like it’s similar to my own build.

Either way, not bad.

I don’t know if I agree with the Fresh Air part mainly due to losing some modifiers and Bolt to the Heart. I think that roaming in WvW will highly hinge on what Tempest brings to the table.

And the whole Air #5 to Burning Speed is so overused, so predictable that I don’t really count it as a burst option mainly due to how easily it can be avoided by a decent player. Along with the loss of boons, I think that mindset about roaming is optimistic at best. If we thought LB rangers were a problem before, with the buffs to them engaging/disengaging them will be even harder especially since the easiest disengage denial is just dodge RTL. I’ll wait patiently and see (and hope) that they’ll do something to change this. I also doubt Scepter will be used more mainly because of damage modifier loss and the loss of sustained damage (the little it had) to keep any form of pressure between burst phases.

I agree with the rest of your assessment though.

Supreme.3164:

The buff to celestial got nothing to do with what ele is now, it has always been a combination of very powerful traits all packed in a single build, something which I believe has been addressed, by bringing EA to GM and removing boon duration and healing power, making d/d (finally) that much weaker but still viable nevertheless

It has very much to do with the buff to celestial. While you’re right, the combination of Earth/Water/Arcane has many powerful synergies and traits, it still has been pushed out of the meta many times. See the original Sword/Dagger boon stealing Thieves or the Sword/Pistol stun builds when they first had that insane evades (long long time ago) as an example of being pushed out of the meta.

Previously, you would have run Clerics/Soldiers for point holding (same spec) or Valkyerie to do a more roaming damage sort of spec (and it was extremely weak in that respect comparatively). With the buff to Celestial the tank build gained a lot of damage and lost some survivability but the tools and utility it has from traits let it overcome that. The result of the Celestial buff made a very tanky/healy elementalist who can dish out enough damage to pressure points. Without that buff to Celestial, you wouldn’t see D/D ele in the meta because none of those other amulets gave you that mix of survivability + damage that the Celestial amulet did. With Clerics/Soldiers you were a complete tank with no damage (and a worse one than the at the time Guardian point holder or shoutbow) and with Valkyrie you did decent damage with a little survivability but did less than other damage dealers. Celestial with the buff let you do all of it together

Moving EAttunement to GM to compete with EvArcana removes all of 1 blast finisher and 1 AoE heal in return for AoE stability + 20% DR + an Earth GM. You lose some party wide support in return for possible clutch stability and some self DR & immunity. It’s a trade off, not one that’s even in either direction but it’s there. With the Cele ele being oushed out of the meta already by shoutbow and the incoming buffs to Warriors that we’ve seen already, it’s unsure if the tank ele will survive. Especially with the nerf to Cele amulet.

It’s early to tell, true. Hopefully that reveal was a “first pass” and maybe they’ll release a second showing of the numbers/traits and hopefully reworked some of it. I have very little hope that’s the truth though.

Sadrien.3470:

Well, for starters there are some very powerful ( by appearances ) aura builds. you can still maintain your high protection uptime on the meta spec equivalent, you were already extremely strong, need I list more? This is in terms of cele d/d and d/f meta. I am disappointed by lack of care for zerker s/f or s/d builds though.

And this is exactly what bothers me, I pretty much only like playing burst builds especially for elementalist because it always required comboing a few abilities instead of just pressing 2 and none of these changes help, mostly just hinder, with the removal of damage modifiers.

My lack of faith is based upon years of watching the class balance team struggle to balance the class with gear and seeing it swing from useless to very overpowered since release. The ups and downs of the class clearly show that it’s an extremely difficult class to balance because it has so many varied skills and utilities and the slightest change can shoot the class up or down very fast. I mean, just buffing the Cele amulet was enough to make the previous D/D build a meta standard, imagine what would have happened if they tweaked some numbers alongside of that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Raif.9507:

And the fact you think One with Air is a decent trait meant for any elementalist to take… means I’m done with this conversation. Clearly you either have not PvP’d in WvW or in sPvP in the current meta or IDK what. If it’s the opposite, then I apologize, but we will disagree endlessly.

I have never said that the current version of One with Air is decent.

It’s also hard to argue while taking the current meta into account, when the meta is at risk of changing completely with the celestial nerfs, trait changes, elite specs and new game modes. We don’t know what kind of new builds will emerge and dominate the meta, nor which builds will be the best to counterplay those.

We’re talking only about possibilities here. With fresh air builds changing their role, arcana builds losing one trait, and other trait lines getting buffed, we have no idea how eles will fit the new meta, but we do have enough information to know that new builds might come out of it.

neither the current, nor the proposed One with Air is any talent any elementalist should ever take. The amount of swiftness you have makes it irrelevant. Without access to swiftness.. maybe but it’s too plentiful in the game to make it worth anything.

DiogoSilva.7089:

@Raif,

I agree that fresh air builds will lose their burst potential. Air training was “changed” from +10% damage to +150 ferocity. That’s 10% extra damage for criticals only, which is certainly a damage nerf. However, it now comes with air cooldown reduction for free. In addition to that, One with Air’s superspeed duration was doubled, and that trait always worked best with Fresh Air. Those changes are very clear at telling us one thing: Anet intends to move Fresh Air builds away from its cheesy instant-bursting, and more into super-mobile, utility builds. New fresh air builds will be uncatchable when they can maintain 66% superspeed duration, with swiftness inbetween.

It’s also worth noting that Final Shielding fits a burst build well. It gives to the squishy ele that much-needed window to execute its combo before it gets killed, and if the opponent tries to rush in, arcane shield will then contribute to the burst rotation itself.

For alternative burst builds, we will have to check out if we can get something out of non-arcana sets. You can probably make a cantrip burst build with fire-earth-water, where you’ll have plenty of self-cleansing, self-mightstacking, blind, decent amount of other boons and defense from earth to sustain yourself, while rolling berserker amulet. Alternatively, air over earth or fire will give us a deadly CC-burst rotation, but then cooldowns will be our enemy. You’ll only be able to rely on lightning flash, earthquake and updraft every 40 seconds or so. Nonetheless, it’s still be a buffed version of its current, unviable version.

But to be honest, I don’t think burst builds will ever work with the base elementalist profession. Eles are designed as jack-of-all-trades, so making a bust build out of them will be very hard to achieve without giving them overpowered defense/ sustain. Anet probably acknowledges this. For a burst ele to ever work, it’ll need not only the tools for bursting (which it already does), but strong, innate defense to justify using berserker gear, without having that defense strong enough to make bruiser/ bunker builds overpowered (aka, not having it stack much with defensive stats). Anet can’t simply do that with the current ele’s skillset.

But there’s always hope for the Tempest elite spec. With a MH Sword and an aggressive, stormy name, perhaps Anet will give us an ele that is designed both for offensive use as well as having enough baseline sustain to survive at melee range (which is to say: to survive at any range) and thus execute its burst sequence without being instant-killed.

How wanna bet that’s what the Tempest will be about?

Final Shielding does NOT work for a burst ele. You will get killed before that trait even goes off. That 25% window where it activates is tiny, it’s 2500 HP at minimum which is a simple auto attack for many classes that run zerker.

And the fact you think One with Air is a decent trait meant for any elementalist to take… means I’m done with this conversation. Clearly you either have not PvP’d in WvW or in sPvP in the current meta or IDK what. If it’s the opposite, then I apologize, but we will disagree endlessly.

Laraley.7695:

Raif.9507:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Just to offer an example, here’s a possible build for air-earth-water:

Zephyr’s Boon (party-wide fury and swiftness);
Tempest Defense (party-wide fury, swiftness, protection and shocking aura when CC’d);
Lightning Rod (applies weakness to those who attack you under S.Aura, and to two of your weapon skills);
Elemental Shielding (party-wide protection);
Rock Solid (party-wide stability);
Stone Heart/ Diamond Skin;
Soothing Ice (free frost aura);
Cleansing Wave (party-wide cleansing);
Powerful Aura;

I’m not promising that this build will overtake the old one, but I see a lot of potential in it.

For current d/d celestial bruisers, 3-sec blind spamming with fire-water-arcana might become a thing, and make up for the loss of evasive arcana.

And if we still take a look at more selfish builds, fire-earth-water cantrip traits will offer endless condition cleansing, vigor, regen, might and blind, decent protection/ stability, and probably make ether renewal/ churning earth a thing.

I’ll try 1 more time. Tank/bruiser elementalists will be (relatively) unaffected by the changes. You will go Earth/Water/Arcana and retain most of your former power minus the extra heal/blast finisher due to losing EvArcana. In return you’re getting Rock Solid + 20% DR + one extra GM. It’s not a terrible trade off and the build will be “OK”.

All the burst builds will not be so lucky (not that they are viable ATM anyway). The extra blast finisher + heal was very powerful for getting those might stacks and heal. Now personally, I haven’t taken EvArcana in years, always stopped at 4 in Arcana just for EA. Now, in this new patch these Fresh Air builds lost their teeth (can’t have Bolt to the Heart together with Fresh Air and Air Training is gone) and will now lose 1 of their defensive options. If speccing into Arcana, these burst builds have 1 useless trait as none of those traits are of any use to them.

• Elemental Contingency – You don’t want to get hit as a burst build, you’re running a zerker amulet (or want to) and you can’t afford to be hit to proc this.
• Revive trait – Enough said. If you’re reviving as a burst ele, you better be sure nothing is around you. On top of that, not a very useful proc.
• Final Shielding – Could be good, but most burst specs go from 25% -> 0% right through that Arcane Shield. I’ve had experiences of going from 50%+ to downed before that shield even came up.

These builds have gimmicky burst at best and were not very strong (read: at all)in the current meta.

Now to top this all off: EAttunement isn’t game changing. It isn’t build defining, it’s telling you to use your class mechanic. A GM that is game changing is Fresh Air or Powerful Aura. THose change how you play. The way EAttunement is right now, makes more sense to make it baseline as it’s just telling you to use your class mechanic. If it were to be made solo baseline with a group version that is powerful, that would be game changing. It makes your class mechanic affect EVERYONE and buff your party. This helps those burst builds retain their survivability as the protection/swiftness/regen are baseline (short versions, not the same length as now) and makes that choice that Karl Mclain wants. Do you go EAttunement:Group as a buff bot with auras or do you take something more selfish as a tank and go Diamond Skin or Stone Heart and Evasive Arcana to be that point holder?

And I’m going to say this once again: It’s not about playing a spec with a lot survability and less team support. That’s exactly what’s happening. Ele is losing a team support and that’s exactly why people will choose to play something different. Being a tank doesn’t really give you as much as having someone who is able to survive on point, heal allies, give out boons, ress, banner…Shoutbow will be way more useful than an ele who is not crittable in earth and has 20% dmg reduction in 900 range.

I don’t know why you’re stating that at me, because I agree with you completely. Ele will be edged out of the meta exactly due to that. The build will be “OK” means that its more or less ok, but let’s be real here, the only thing it’s losing is Evasive Arcana, which isn’t a huge deal. I still know that it will be edged out as Shoutbow is already arguably better.

Ele will lose both that tanky spot, and will be further away from the damage spot.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Just to offer an example, here’s a possible build for air-earth-water:

Zephyr’s Boon (party-wide fury and swiftness);
Tempest Defense (party-wide fury, swiftness, protection and shocking aura when CC’d);
Lightning Rod (applies weakness to those who attack you under S.Aura, and to two of your weapon skills);
Elemental Shielding (party-wide protection);
Rock Solid (party-wide stability);
Stone Heart/ Diamond Skin;
Soothing Ice (free frost aura);
Cleansing Wave (party-wide cleansing);
Powerful Aura;

I’m not promising that this build will overtake the old one, but I see a lot of potential in it.

For current d/d celestial bruisers, 3-sec blind spamming with fire-water-arcana might become a thing, and make up for the loss of evasive arcana.

And if we still take a look at more selfish builds, fire-earth-water cantrip traits will offer endless condition cleansing, vigor, regen, might and blind, decent protection/ stability, and probably make ether renewal/ churning earth a thing.

I’ll try 1 more time. Tank/bruiser elementalists will be (relatively) unaffected by the changes. You will go Earth/Water/Arcana and retain most of your former power minus the extra heal/blast finisher due to losing EvArcana. In return you’re getting Rock Solid + 20% DR + one extra GM. It’s not a terrible trade off and the build will be “OK”.

All the burst builds will not be so lucky (not that they are viable ATM anyway). The extra blast finisher + heal was very powerful for getting those might stacks and heal. Now personally, I haven’t taken EvArcana in years, always stopped at 4 in Arcana just for EA. Now, in this new patch these Fresh Air builds lost their teeth (can’t have Bolt to the Heart together with Fresh Air and Air Training is gone) and will now lose 1 of their defensive options. If speccing into Arcana, these burst builds have 1 useless trait as none of those traits are of any use to them.

• Elemental Contingency – You don’t want to get hit as a burst build, you’re running a zerker amulet (or want to) and you can’t afford to be hit to proc this.
• Revive trait – Enough said. If you’re reviving as a burst ele, you better be sure nothing is around you. On top of that, not a very useful proc.
• Final Shielding – Could be good, but most burst specs go from 25% -> 0% right through that Arcane Shield. I’ve had experiences of going from 50%+ to downed before that shield even came up.

These builds have gimmicky burst at best and were not very strong (read: at all)in the current meta.

Now to top this all off: EAttunement isn’t game changing. It isn’t build defining, it’s telling you to use your class mechanic. A GM that is game changing is Fresh Air or Powerful Aura. THose change how you play. The way EAttunement is right now, makes more sense to make it baseline as it’s just telling you to use your class mechanic. If it were to be made solo baseline with a group version that is powerful, that would be game changing. It makes your class mechanic affect EVERYONE and buff your party. This helps those burst builds retain their survivability as the protection/swiftness/regen are baseline (short versions, not the same length as now) and makes that choice that Karl Mclain wants. Do you go EAttunement:Group as a buff bot with auras or do you take something more selfish as a tank and go Diamond Skin or Stone Heart and Evasive Arcana to be that point holder?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Laraley.7695:

Again, people need to realize the situation ele is in at the moment.

Now d/d ele is a viable semi-tanky build for its support for allies. However, ele is competing with shoutbow who already does a better job. The only reason ele is still used in teams is exactly the protection, which soutbow cannot give (yet).

No one cares about the selfish defensive traits ele will get, because that’s not why dd ele is viable at the moment. There’s literally no reason to take a selfish dd ele on your team, it offers absolutely nothing.

Aurashare builds have a lot of potential. You’ll be able to offer fury, (swiftness), protection and stun/ chill/ 10% damage reduction a lot more often, with the changes in air and water traits. That’s free frost auras, shock auras, weakness and damage. If we scrap air for arcana, that will translate to less offensive support for more protection and regen (EA) or for evasive arcana.

The old builds with massive cleansing will lose evasive arcana, but they’ll have enough protection (with EA + elemental contigency) to scrap the 10 points in earth for “selfish” aura prot, which will allow them to invest on, say, fire for massive fury or blind support.

The selfish grandmaster traits in earth are just a bonus, but let’s also not forget that we’ll get rock solid out of it.

So your answer to being stuck in Arcana/Water/Earth is to… remain in Arcana/Water/Earth and tank up? Great.

WTB burst/damage elementalist spec that is viable in PvP.

Disappointment piled upon let down due to the direction the trait changes that were revealed are taking. Played this class from release and nothing good has ever been given to it since then, I don’t see it changing now.

The lower I get my expectations the better. That way if it is anything interesting, I can be mildly pleased.

DiogoSilva.7089:

rotten.9753:

There’s also a regen that removes 1 additional condition while swapping to water.

No matter how good that effect is, you don’t absolutely need it to make the entire profession viable.

The reason why elementalists baseline defense is broken, is because we are the squishiest profession in the game while lacking active defenses that are not driven by stats. While mesmers and thieves have plenty of stealth, extra health/ armor, and free evasion, which allow them to go berserker without worrying about it, elementalists rely on defensive stats to power up their defenses (healing power for heals, toughness+vitality for auras). This means that, in order for an offensively-traited ele to ever be viable, a defensively-traited ele will need to be overpowered. And, in order to nerf a defensively-traited ele, they’ll have to make an offensively-traited ele unviable.

That is when Elemental Attunement comes with its near perma-protection effect. It pretty much defines how viable the elementalist is, because every single ele build is balanced around the assumption that they’ll have almost perma 33% damage reduction.

Elementalist doesn’t needs EA baseline. No one cares about 1 stack of might and swiftness, and although regen and cleansing are fine, they’re fine as trait effects. What everyone wants is protection, or alternatively, another form of innate defense.

With stone heart/ diamond skin becoming free, with earth gaining free 20% damage reduction from melee bursts, with air punishing squishy bursts much harder than before, and with fire gaining free auras and blinds every 3 seconds, elementalists will finally get what they need the most and what EA usually offers the most: higher innate defense in other trait lines.

If those effects are strong enough or not, only time will tell.

Air does not punish squishies more, it will do less. No Air Training and you now have to pick between Fresh Air and Bolt to the Heart.

And yes, I picked up EAttunement for more than just the protection, because protection by itself isn’t enough to overcome the shortcomings of elementalists defenses. The regen also is very important as is the swiftness, but let’s just ignore those too shall we? I mean, it’s not like the scaling of damage done or heals or any of that isn’t done with the assumption that we have easy access to said boons. It should become core (solo version, not the current version and with less duration on said boons) because it is core to how the class plays. An ele with no boons does nothing. The issue with Cele ele is the amulet, not the spec. Take that amulet away and you have nothing but a utility ele. Exactly as it was before.

And as mentioned above, you take away EAttunement from a damage ele, they better be bringing some serious damage to the table which they won’t. Elementalist is viable right now due to a few reasons:

• EAttunement giving party wide buffs
• Cele amulet allowing for a good amount of damage + tankyness

Take the first away and you will have no reason to bring a damage style ele (not that anyone brings that anyway) and no reason to bring an elementalist who wants to do some tanking on point because, well other classes do it better if you’re not supporting your team as shoutbow does. Earth traits are good and all, for you, but are terrible for your team and a damage style ele will not want to really take that as you need to spec in other areas to actually do damage but will have no built in defenses as that’s SUPPOSED to be the boons you generate (protection and regen and swiftness).

No boons, no defenses. Your defenses are supposed to be those boons, but you have to spec to get them. Thief has stealth (not a “defense” per se, but is a defensive trait), Mesmer has clones, Guardian has Aegis, regen and built in blinds, Warrior is just a brick wall and so on. Elementalists have no baked in defenses because the answer is supposed to be boons.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Raif.9507:

Tempest defense + Lightning rod require getting CC’d and then hit No thanks.

Edited due to no coffee.

It also blows them out and weakens them, while you gain protection and fury. That’s a massive window of opportunity for you to unload your burst on the poor squishy, before going back to earth and gaining 20% damage reduction and immunity from critical hits. You can then go fire for a lot of blind and fire auras, or water for aura-sharing and frost auras, or arcana for EA and elemental contigency.

Again, this still requires getting hit, something a 10K light armor target that has little defenses does not want. Also, I don’t believe that the new Earth thing for 20% damage reduction requires being in Earth for it to work.

Take a 5K hit to gain a stun (Shocking Aura doesn’t blow out, so that’s a no unless you’re talking about using Air 5 on dagger) to enable Lightning rod from Tempest Defense to get a lightning strike from Lightning rod? No thanks. And on top of that, the immunity from critical hits would be gone pretty much instantly on a burst ele as you just need to lose 1K worth of health to negate it’s affect. Even a non-crit auto can clear that out easy.

The other synergy you’re talking about if we’re mentioning Lightning Rod is decent, but the cooldown on Air 5 is long and it’s the most used set up fpr burst ever since the beginning of D/D ele being a thing so every player worth his/her salt will just wait out that blowout and make you blow your load. Your only source of a short cooldown stun is Tempest Defense + shocking aura from the dagger mainhand and the other stuns rotating them through but half of those require getting hit (Shocking Aura). This combo is great for a tanky/bruiser elementalist who can take a few hits though.

For a burst playstyle, better to not get hit at all, hence things like Vigor or Switftness is key for those kinds of builds. Don’t get hit, wait for your moment then unload.

Tempest defense + Lightning rod require getting CC’d and then hit No thanks.

Edited due to no coffee.

In my opinion, Elemental Attunement isn’t gameplay changing, it’s adding an incentive to use the base mechanic of the class. Something that is gameplay changing is Fresh Air. It demands you focus heavily on your Air attunement and depend on it for damage, swapping to it every 5 seconds.

Elemental Attunement is core to the way the class plays (PvE fire camping builds excluded) in WvW and sPvP. In both game modes you are constantly swapping and this incentivizes it even more. The major power of the trait is it’s AoE nature in those game modes as your’re generating team wide boons for everyone leading to a more support oriented style of gameplay. This could be an issue as a burst elementalist or a DPS oriented one is now doing 2 roles, support and damage.

A baseline version would help the elementalist keep the power from Elemental Attunement which it needs to be competitive as it’s balanced in the mindset that it has access to said boons. Creating a talent which converts this boon generation to AoE would seperate the real power of the talent into 2 different mechanics. You now have a choice, do you want to be an AoE boon generating elementalist and give up damage or do you now spec into other trees for more damage?

So is there any news from the OP on what the report looks like/if they sent it in? I know he put a preview of his necro report up.

Kodiak.3281:

The problem with this mentality is not everyone does use it. I haven’t used Elemental Attunement in over a month. In fact I’d have zero points in Arcane if it wasn’t for Blasting Staff in most cases.

As for the Logic…he probably had someone somewhere tell him to nerf D/D Celestial Elementalists and this was the decision he came up with. Honestly when you think about it….kinda the logical move. If you were going to nerf Elemental Attunement and make a worse version of it, you pretty much have Elemental Contingency. Swap the two, call it a day, and move on to your next brilliant decision: Make the Guardian specialization a Ranger.

Except… that requires getting hit… something no DPS elementalist wants. And to be perfectly honest, I can’t think of a single PvP build that doesn’t use it that’s worth anything.

The only thing making Celestial ele “OP” as the masses call it is Celestial. It wasn’t even in the meta till the amulet itself was buffed. This is overboard, just like RTL.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Raif.9507:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Raif.9507:

The fact that staying in one attunement is a viable way to play the class makes me sad.

It is only viable in PvE. And only if your group is at least decently efficient. And only because PvE is designed with a philosophy that is completely different from the rest of the game: your opponents do not move dynamically. For this reason, absurdities like the power of staff fire camping can sadly exist.

I know, but it makes me so sad. The class isn’t difficult, it’s not the “piano blah blah blah” it’s simply keeping track of cooldowns. Even the fact that PvE is geared that way makes me sad. The whole fun of elementalist (in my eyes) is the comboing, the weaving of attunements.

I also do think that conjure builds are gimmicky in my eyes (powerful, but gimmicky), but that’s another topic.

So you are asking for DF
You are right my friend, this is the only build that is worthy of true elementalists. Unfortunately it has been nerfed and HoT may nerf it even more.
But I believe that aang DF can save the world.

I personally use D/D, but D/F is also fun. I hope you’re right. Or at least that Tempest can save us.

OT: EAttunement for all, just solo, shorter duration boons with GM making it AoE and more boons.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Raif.9507:

The fact that staying in one attunement is a viable way to play the class makes me sad.

It is only viable in PvE. And only if your group is at least decently efficient. And only because PvE is designed with a philosophy that is completely different from the rest of the game: your opponents do not move dynamically. For this reason, absurdities like the power of staff fire camping can sadly exist.

I know, but it makes me so sad. The class isn’t difficult, it’s not the “piano blah blah blah” it’s simply keeping track of cooldowns. Even the fact that PvE is geared that way makes me sad. The whole fun of elementalist (in my eyes) is the comboing, the weaving of attunements.

I also do think that conjure builds are gimmicky in my eyes (powerful, but gimmicky), but that’s another topic.

lLobo.7960:

EAtt is not borderline to Ele, is borderline to Eles that constant att swap (and therefore keep the buffs active).

The fact that staying in one attunement is a viable way to play the class makes me sad. Sitting in Fire and using 1/2/3 is just such a waste of other abilities especially since the entire class is balanced around having all these abilities. It’s why they all have such long cooldowns.

It should be baseline, comepletely. A solo version only as you should be rewarded for swapping attunements and using the class mechanic, not completely ignoring it.

Xillllix.3485:

If you watch the video where they announce the epic Evasive Arcana/Elemental Attunement nerf it’s like they know it’s a terrible idea but decided to go with it anyway.

It’s because they don’t understand what it does to the class. They are TRYING to lessen the need for Arcane, but are just doing the opposite. They just don’t know how to balance the ele without making it either super weak or super powerful.

Or at least it’s what I’m telling myself.

FrownyClown.8402:

the only thing im sad for that ppl seem to have not noticed is we wont get the benefits from increased boon duration anymore.

Noticed, but there’s nothing we can do about it since it’s removed from the trait lines. I dearly hope that SOME of that loss will be baked into the elementalists stats, but i’m not optimistic.

tboneking.2531:

Apparently not, actually…. XD

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/932/537/71b.jpg

Lettuce.2945:

Try actually dueling without elemental attunement on a zerker amulet running standard 00266. It really IS A L2P issue. As for your comment, “If i win now, it doesn’t change with patch”. Yes it does, I get way more tankier in patch. If you honestly can’t see that now, then ele really isn’t the class for you.

I’ve been running without evasive arcana and EA for a long time. I haven’t specced 30 into Arcana since Fresh Air was introduced and I’ve been playing elementalist since the betas through high and low times. Right now (and for quite a while before) I’ve been using a Fresh Air/Fire/earth (sometimes getting 2 into Arcana for the perma vigor) build and Scepter Dagger for roaming in WvW. Your L2P arguments are empty, I have no hard times playing the class and do quite well.

For your retort of getting tankier? You also lose a large chunk of damage in return for getting tankier. That is the major problem with elementalist in PvP. There are no real viable burst builds, it’s tank up or go Cele D/D. Also, I;d suggest you learn to read a little better. What I said was “Even if you win now, it DOESN’T mean you’ll win after the patch”. There is major power creep while elementalist is staying the same or getting weaker as far as damage is concerned.

I do not care one bit for PvE, as far as I’m concerned everything is viable there. Everything I talk about is from a PvP/WvW perspective. And to be perfectly honest, dueling means little or nothing in roaming for WvW where stats are higher, damage is higher and the element of surprise and being outnumbered actually comes into play. In team PvP 1v1 means very little unless you’re bunkering on a point to hold it until you can get someone to help or attacking a different point to put pressure on it, something other classes will do better now (and have been doing better).

This incoming patch is introducing a lot of power creep for other classes and you cannot base balancing concerns on 1v1’s in the mists. With these changes we remain in the same relative spot, where the meta will demand a tank or Cele elementalist, and that is even questionable with shout bow warriors creeping slowly over the area that elemenalists are strong in. You do well in duels? Great. Show me a competitive high level zerker elementalist build that will last long enough to make an impact in team sPvP. Roaming in WvW is a numbers game, and who gets the drop, but even now a zerker elementalist who gets jumped by anyone is at an immediate disadvantage and versus other burst builds most likely won’t survive very long into that encounter. Besides bursting down targets who are unaware (or underleveled or just bad) most elementalist zerker builds are easy to kill once the burst is done, wasted or evaded.