Core Elementalists problem is that it is impossible to compete with the weaver and tempest lines.

In reference to CMCs tea-time with Teapot, he said (paraphrased) that the best way to make core specs viable is to have 3 really good core traitlines so that taking an e-spec requires losing one of those traitlines.

This is impossible with elementalist for two layers of reasons, but before we get to that let's lay some foundation to agree upon: Any build in the game will generally have one of two purposes, Damage or Support. Damage can be split into Condi or Power, and support can technically be split into boon or healing/cleanses, but it comes down to those two things. Thusly a core elementalist would want to take three traitlines that augment one of those things better than weaver or tempest can.

The first layer is that the traitlines themselves make that impossible.

On the damage side of things Weaver is absolutely loaded with damage increasing potential for both conditions AND power. Multiple % increases to flat damage or condi damage/duration, alongside one of the largest crit chance increases in the game. A third core traitline generally only competes on a single of these three fronts, much less matching all three of them. The condition side is a bit weaker, there is theoretically potential for core to make some headway with three condi traitlines, but in PvE the power aspects of weaver are always going to be preferred to the extra utility earth or arcane might add to a condi damage dealer so it's just in PvP situations. We haven't even gotten to the second layer.

Likewise with support, the hallmark of elementalist supporting is their auras. Queue in tempest adding boatloads of additions to aura applying capabilities and allowing you to heal on aura application and it leaves you wondering how a core elementalist could even support. Throw in the fact tempest actually gives the elementalist utilities that can effect allies in a meaningful way and you're left with the issue that any core line that could be made to compete with tempest would really just replace one of the other two lines and make the tempest line overpowered.

Bringing in shouts adds the second layer. Elementalist somewhat in its support abilities and absolutely in its damage builds is about layering as many skills/effects as possible at once. What helps do this? Having more skills/effects. Why would you play a core condi damage dealer when you can go weaver and get dual skills to apply even more conditions, and stances that can cast while doing it to add even more damage? Why would you play power core if you can gain ginormous power mods and extra damage skills to hit with during your ticking AoEs? Or tempest can sit there and cast overloads, its big damage skills or support skills, then more overloads. You opt to make a core support elementalist, and your best support utilities are... offensive weapons you can drop for your teammates? Yeah give me shouts any day.

I could recommend fixes all day, but I'm of the opinion that it is better to identify problems and why they are problems and let the team do their job rather than try to pigeon hole the creativity. For the sake of discussion though, I'd like to hear if you think I am missing the mark or not, OR theorycraft a core elementalist build with some fixes you think would make it viable but doesn't make weaver/tempest stronger.

Ele is my least played class (I only really play Auramancer in WvW), but I've seen a lot of talk about this in this section of the forums, and I was wondering what if Core Ele's "thing" became centred around conjured weapons? With long cooldowns and such, you rarely see them used. What if they gave Core Ele an F5 ability that made those utilities not suck?

Just remove a equal wepon gained and an equal utitly set from the elite spec. It would fix a lot of the power creep for all classes. I would also like to see a full trait line removed as well but that maybe too much to balance things out right (making the core classes into there own elite spec. say arcane line for ele).

Removing of an F5 or added an F5 would not be enofe on its own unless the F5 is some how the most important thing about the core classes.

So tempest will lose offhand foce or dagger and it will lose the "support" utility of signets (not realty a support chose but there is no support utility for the ele core class atm). Weaver would lose main hand scpter or dagger and its self support line of cantrips.

As for the trait lines that effected the utility i would some how add that to the new set maybe shouts give out a passive boon from the signet trait and stance give reg/vigor (no cdr for any new utitly done in this way).

Lets keep in mind these are elite specialization so they should be filling a very set roll not simply getting more then the core class. The core classes should be able to do more effects but not as well.

I don't think it's so much the traitlines as the weapons : Weaver has some crit chance , a brief 10% damage bonus while single attuned (or 10% condition damage while using condi weaver) , and +120 attributes but you could offset that with three offensive traitlines (fire/air/arcane/water after changes ; earth is for condi mainly). Tempest only has a short 7% damage bonus after overload. Sword is really strong (the only way to reasonably output burn regularly due to the internal cooldown on Burning Precision and Arcane Precision without resorting to overloads) and so is warhorn against non moving targets.

Staff is only truly useful for support after nerfs to meteor shower and lava font, so you're really looking at mainhand dagger and scepter (which is underwhelming without overloads and warhorn).

Maybe warhorn offensive capabilities (lightning orb / wildfire) should be lowered if tempest is supposed to be a support spec. You'd still have overload air/fire/earth.

I think sword weaver is fine if kept in its current situation (in all modes) since it's more difficult to pull off and higher risk running in melee. The sword Master's Fortitude trait blunts the lower health pool even if it isn't part of the PvE builds. Even so, it is left behind soulbeast in a damage role. Of course, melee range should really do more sustained damage than scepter at 900 range, which should do more sustained damage than staff at 1200 range.

Ultimately maybe some 2020-era emphasis on mainhand scepter without the crutch of warhorn or overloads is needed. Everything on other professions has been getting powercreep for PvE and scepter was underwhelming even before HoT due to the delays on the attacks (whether it is Dragon's Tooth, Shatterstone, Hurl which is more for condi than power, Lightning Strike should really cleave in PvE with 130 radius probably, etc) or outright no real damage (Dust Devil does less than auto yet has no bleeding).

With core ele you'd probably be looking at dagger+dagger with fire+water+air/arcane realistically similar to the core cele ele days , with earth only really used in competitive for stone heart or diamond skin. The condi output is lower than weaver so ultimately the earth traitline isn't that interesting ; the lower attack rate and lack of burning on autos means you are limited to Drake's Breath/Ring of Earth mainly for conditions due to offhand weapon cooldowns. Back then there wasn't Flow like Water , which is a trait added in 2019 so power damage should be higher overall even if running the water traitline.

In the case of fire+water+air you would probably run Bolt to the Heart due to lack of Air overload , so the damage bonuses and modifiers are from 180 ferocity from Raging Storm and 150 ferocity (x2 in air) from the minor trait Aeromancer's Training. Fire+water+Arcane would match that if at 10+ boons with Bountiful Power ; most people have Fury so the Air traitline is better usually.

For the ranged option , probably minor tweaking to scepter could be done to make it more attractive as a core ele condi option. For example, dropping the secondary strike on flamestrike (the total coefficient is 0.6 from 0.45+0.15 right now so autoing on scepter with fire attunement is a bad idea for power spec) for a longer duration AoE burning or adding bleeding onto Dust Devil for PvE only. Fire +earth+arcane provides 33% chance with 1 proc /3seconds (i.e. Arcane Precision) or once every 5 seconds (Burning Precision) so really roughly half the time at best, so running arcane+fire+earth with a slightly higher attack rate is probably weaker than running scepter if looking at burning conditions.

Anything is fine as long as core is buffed and specs are not nerfed imo!

@God.2708 said:Likewise with support, the hallmark of elementalist supporting is their auras. Queue in tempest adding boatloads of additions to aura applying capabilities and allowing you to heal on aura application and it leaves you wondering how a core elementalist could even support. Throw in the fact tempest actually gives the elementalist utilities that can effect allies in a meaningful way and you're left with the issue that any core line that could be made to compete with tempest would really just replace one of the other two lines and make the tempest line overpowered.

Healing on Aura should've been a core ability not Tempest. It's still not too late for Anet to switch Powerful Aura and Elemental Bastion. Tempest is all about SHARING auras, so Powerful Aura naturally aligns with Tempest. Whereas Elemental Bastion is all about healing which is what the water traitline is about. If you switch the two, you would ultimately buff core without changing anything to tempest. Tempests would still need to trait Tempest & Water, which they already do if they're speccing support.

The other thing I would do to buff core is give better aura generation. Core Ele's identity is wrapped around Aura's (Smothering Auras, Zephyr's Boon, Elemental Shielding), but creating aura's is limited to the weapon. Since it's 2020 and not 2012, aura generation on Core Ele needs to be buffed. I would recommend an F5 that allows granting an aura based on your current attunement. 25sec CD. Instant activation. Only available to Core.

Granting Aura's like Air and Earth on command would be a huge buff. Combine those with the traits mentioned above, and Core Ele would become much stronger than what they already are. Best part is, it doesn't affect Elites or weapons, and it still remains within the identity of Core.

Core doesn't have access to elites, but elites have access to everything core has. As a consequence, anything you add to core is also added to the elites. This makes it very difficult to improve core without also improving the elites.

Possible solution: Develop an exclusive core trait line so that core builds have a weapon, a set of utilities, and a trait line that aren't shared by the elite specs.

@"Turkeyspit.3965" said:Ele is my least played class (I only really play Auramancer in WvW), but I've seen a lot of talk about this in this section of the forums, and I was wondering what if Core Ele's "thing" became centred around conjured weapons? With long cooldowns and such, you rarely see them used. What if they gave Core Ele an F5 ability that made those utilities not suck?

I'm semi opposed to the idea of core 'gaining' something. Elementalist has managed to maintain a very fine line with the elite specs coming with very subtle consequences (Increased attunement CD, or loss of skill 3-5 on demand). It keeps the class playstyle feeling unique for each specialization but still very familiar. Taking a route akin to revenant wouldn't feel quite right, and adding such in would likely barbarize the class down the line.

@Jski.6180 said:Just remove a equal wepon gained and an equal utitly set from the elite spec. It would fix a lot of the power creep for all classes. I would also like to see a full trait line removed as well but that maybe too much to balance things out right (making the core classes into there own elite spec. say arcane line for ele)....

Far beyond reasonable development scope IMO. The elite specializations do not need heavy handed nerfs, and for the most part weaver and tempest are fine though some recycling of underused traits in them to give new toys and directions is always appreciated. Core simply struggles to lay out a proper niche and IMO CMC has the right idea with the make three core traitlines synergize well so taking an elite specialization line feels like a consequence. I simply don't think elementalist is in a good spot to do that right now with how the traits are set up.

@Infusion.7149 said:I don't think it's so much the traitlines as the weapons : Weaver has some crit chance , a brief 10% damage bonus while single attuned (or 10% condition damage while using condi weaver) , and +120 attributes but you could offset that with three offensive traitlines (fire/air/arcane/water after changes ; earth is for condi mainly). Tempest only has a short 7% damage bonus after overload. Sword is really strong (the only way to reasonably output burn regularly due to the internal cooldown on Burning Precision and Arcane Precision without resorting to overloads) and so is warhorn against non moving targets....

Weaver outdoes all other traitlines aside from air when enemy is sub 50% hp in terms of power damage increases. 10% + 10% + 120 power/120 ferocity + ~17% crit chance. It is not quite as competitive in terms of condi damage, and IMO it is a good line of thinking to analyze core weapons and figure out how to make their condi applications more natural and perhaps make earth more appreciable of a traitline take there. I would hesitate to look to weapons to fix core though, as anything you change there weaver and tempest have access to as well.

@Stallic.2397 said:

Healing on Aura should've been a core ability not Tempest. It's still not too late for Anet to switch Powerful Aura and Elemental Bastion. Tempest is all about SHARING auras, so Powerful Aura naturally aligns with Tempest. Whereas Elemental Bastion is all about healing which is what the water traitline is about. If you switch the two, you would ultimately buff core without changing anything to tempest. Tempests would still need to trait Tempest & Water, which they already do if they're speccing support....

Such a trait swap would indeed be a subtle buff towards core ele. I do think another trait akin to sunspot that would apply on aura on swap to attunement would be really beneficial. Issue is such a thing would likely end up in water line as shocking aura or magnetic aura on demand like that would be insanely strong.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:Core doesn't have access to elites, but elites have access to everything core has. As a consequence, anything you add to core is also added to the elites. This makes it very difficult to improve core without also improving the elites.

Possible solution: Develop an exclusive core trait line so that core builds have a weapon, a set of utilities, and a trait line that aren't shared by the elite specs.

This is addressed in the first line of my post. Elites do not have access to everything core has. Core can pick any 3 traitlines, elites can only pick two. The issue is elementalist traitlines are inherently very focused 'This traitline is support' 'This traitline is damage' so that making any third core traitline compete in that regard makes tempest or weaver rise even more. This is different than, say, necro where after the death magic change necro gained some very strong 3 traitline synergies that the elite specializations cannot gain access to.

What? I am sure that elite specs can pick 3 lines.

@God.2708 said:

@"Turkeyspit.3965" said:Ele is my least played class (I only really play Auramancer in WvW), but I've seen a lot of talk about this in this section of the forums, and I was wondering what if Core Ele's "thing" became centred around conjured weapons? With long cooldowns and such, you rarely see them used. What if they gave Core Ele an F5 ability that made those utilities not suck?

@Jski.6180 said:Just remove a equal wepon gained and an equal utitly set from the elite spec. It would fix a lot of the power creep for all classes. I would also like to see a full trait line removed as well but that maybe too much to balance things out right (making the core classes into there own elite spec. say arcane line for ele)....

@Infusion.7149 said:I don't think it's so much the traitlines as the weapons : Weaver has some crit chance , a brief 10% damage bonus while single attuned (or 10% condition damage while using condi weaver) , and +120 attributes but you could offset that with three offensive traitlines (fire/air/arcane/water after changes ; earth is for condi mainly). Tempest only has a short 7% damage bonus after overload. Sword is really strong (the only way to reasonably output burn regularly due to the internal cooldown on

Burning Precision

and

Arcane Precision

without resorting to overloads) and so is warhorn against non moving targets....

@Stallic.2397 said:

Healing on Aura should've been a core ability not Tempest. It's still not too late for Anet to switch Powerful Aura and Elemental Bastion. Tempest is all about SHARING auras, so Powerful Aura naturally aligns with Tempest. Whereas Elemental Bastion is all about healing which is what the water traitline is about. If you switch the two, you would ultimately buff core without changing anything to tempest. Tempests would still need to trait Tempest & Water, which they already do if they're speccing support....

@AliamRationem.5172 said:Core doesn't have access to elites, but elites have access to everything core has. As a consequence, anything you add to core is also added to the elites. This makes it very difficult to improve core without also improving the elites.

Possible solution: Develop an exclusive core trait line so that core builds have a weapon, a set of utilities, and a trait line that aren't shared by the elite specs.

But elite spec should be just that elite specialization by giving them 1 more wepon set and 1 more utility set as well as letting them have a full trait line with out any lost of trait line chose from the core class you have a more generalist class then the core. Yes it can specialize in a roll better then the core but it dose not have to.

@Junkpile.7439 said:What? I am sure that elite specs can pick 3 lines.

An elite spec has to pick the elite spec line. If you have three really strong core traitlines with a specific synergy balanced among the three, the elite spec cannot take advantage of it.

@Junkpile.7439 said:What? I am sure that elite specs can pick 3 lines.

He's saying that three core traitlines should have better synergy than an elite with two core lines. I actually think the synergy of all core traitlines are pretty decent. The problem is, a perfect Ele needs all four (Fire/Water/Air/Earth). If you can only pick 3, then Ele's very design is to be lacking in some important feature.

Elites are supposed to be side grades, not upgrades. But for Ele, Tempest and Weaver create a well rounded approach that core is lacking. Tempest doesn't need that many lines to only support. Weaver doesn't need four lines to only deal damage. The niche of those elites is what makes them better choices.

@God.2708 said:I'm semi opposed to the idea of core 'gaining' something. Elementalist has managed to maintain a very fine line with the elite specs coming with very subtle consequences (Increased attunement CD, or loss of skill 3-5 on demand). It keeps the class playstyle feeling unique for each specialization but still very familiar. Taking a route akin to revenant wouldn't feel quite right, and adding such in would likely barbarize the class down the line.

Far beyond reasonable development scope IMO. The elite specializations do not need heavy handed nerfs, and for the most part weaver and tempest are fine though some recycling of underused traits in them to give new toys and directions is always appreciated. Core simply struggles to lay out a proper niche and IMO CMC has the right idea with the make three core traitlines synergize well so taking an elite specialization line feels like a consequence. I simply don't think elementalist is in a good spot to do that right now with how the traits are set up.

What niche you want core ele to fulfill will decide what buff it should recieve. As of right now, the jack of all trades is what debilitates the class. In the end, most likely, you'll have to add something to core to avoid buffing Elites

If your approach is to only change traits though, then Earth is the traitline that needs the most buffs. Second choice is most likely Water or Arcane. Fire traitline is in my opinion is the strongest traitline Ele has.

Well I kinda disagree with the OP, the issue is more that 4 out of 5 core traitlines are specific to a single attunment whereas e-specialization's trailines aim to benefit all attunments. The elementalist is designed around the idea of dancing through attunments which result in a lot of ups and downs if you take the attunment specific traitlines. The general nature of the e-spec traitline reduce a lot those ups and downs which is why they end up feeling "better" to use.

Thus, from my point of view the issue is that the core traitlines are to specialized. The traits of the "magic" traitlines just need to be less dependant on the current attunment of the elementalist to fix the problematic. (This issue was mitigated in the vanilla game by the trait Lingering attunment which have been lost when the specialization system have been implemented.)

Adding a stand alone, non-weapon arcane attunement to core would be great. In other words, F5’s 1-5 skills are the same if you have staff or d/d. This way they’d only have to develop one set of skills. Elite specs of course lose this.

Ele is such a mess. It kittens me off that it's so bad at everything. I mean you play full burst scepter/dagger and in water line you have 3 weapon skills that heal. Ranger shoot one long range shot and you need to use all those three skills to get same amount hp back. Well idea is to do damage not heal. Why the kitten damage is so low then and why my skill bar is full of healing skills that doesn't do kitten?

Add swiftness + regen boons to Water minor traits and add protection boon to Earth minor traits.Then we won't all be forced to run arcane or weird builds that make up for the lack of boons. And it might actually be worth running water or earth again.

talking only about pvp/wvwThe problem with core ele is that it stopped "evolving" in 2012. During vanilla it was good, game wasnt flooded with skillspamming, random bullshit ccs, aoes etc. PvP was slower and there was time to use skills and put some AAs. Theres no such time now.Lets take a look at core d/d. Fire? Biggest burst in this build, to zerk guy you can easily do 10k damage under 2 seconds. Predictable and hard to land combo, but possible. Air? The other dmg source, also some defense and 2 or even 3 CCs if you know what youre doing. If you combo all skills together you can use em all under 4 seconds, then what left is air AA which is pretty good, but once again its just aa meanwhile others will spam skills. Water? Wet noodles damage, not bad healing, access to blast, chill and cleansing. Earth? Some utility (scuffed af 2 that is supposted to block projectiles), but also cc and immobilize. Earth 5 is not bad, AoE and all, but it still hits less than fire skills so its just to fill gap in rotation.Overall its not bad, but not enough. Not even Jack of all trades, master of none because theres a better version called Weaver that has access to more skills and combos. Weaver can just dance around, miss skills and still do enough to win meanwhile core have to land everything and pray to god that its enough pressure, not another stalemate. Few days after Feb patch I did some dd core vs df weaver, both of us are quite experienced and good eles, high rank legends blah blah blah. Ended as 50/50, but the thing is that core has to do everything perfectly to put enough pressure and not get stun locked, meanwhile Weaver can quickly recover from mistakes.

Idk what should be done to fill gap between Weaver and core, idc about this class since they killed sw/d. I wouldnt expect much from ANet tho, they never had and never will have any idea what to do with ele, have fun with LR build while you still can.

What they need to do is go further with reducing the dependency of traits on attunements like they sorta touched on recently. And bring the earth traitline up to 2020 because it's just not that great compared to fire, air, and water. They should keep trying to bump up the synergy between the different element trait lines while keeping arcane the boon powerhouse. This makes arcane hard to replace for might, prot, and vigor generation on self and also makes it beneficial to take two element traitlines. Of course the added benefit of the elite spec would be adding stuff like dmg modifiers and new skills for the elite specs. It would make it a bigger decision to consider ditching either arcane or air+fire (or any combination), since they would work less without eachother.

Or go as far as to replace the element traitlines, at least in name. Like others have said, make it so the defensive traitline doesn't just benefit earth magic. Hell, half of the traits are "...while you are attuned to earth" which totally defeats the purpose of the elementalist. Make my healing traitline have something that makes all combo finishers behave as if they were executed in a water field (maybe overpowered, but just an example). Instead of blasting fire fields for might or fury, I'm blasting them for healing or leaping through them for frost aura. Give me an offensive traitline that changes the healing from my water skills and traits become ice skills that damage instead of heal. I feel like there is a lot of creativity being ignored on ele.

@Stallic.2397 said:What niche you want core ele to fulfill will decide what buff it should recieve. As of right now, the jack of all trades is what debilitates the class. In the end, most likely, you'll have to add something to core to avoid buffing Elites

If your approach is to only change traits though, then Earth is the traitline that needs the most buffs. Second choice is most likely Water or Arcane. Fire traitline is in my opinion is the strongest traitline Ele has.

That is true. I would honestly argue air is needed more over Water or Arcane. It is very good at dealing additional damage, but it provides almost no flexibility in doing so unlike the fire line. Arcanes only issue is how awful the master traits currently are. Water is in a very nice spot with letting you choose between sustain or additional damage, it's just in a competing spot with fire now since green number healing isn't as sought after as evades are.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Well I kinda disagree with the OP, the issue is more that 4 out of 5 core traitlines are specific to a single attunment whereas e-specialization's trailines aim to benefit all attunments. The elementalist is designed around the idea of dancing through attunments which result in a lot of ups and downs if you take the attunment specific traitlines. The general nature of the e-spec traitline reduce a lot those ups and downs which is why they end up feeling "better" to use....

That's an interesting angle to take on the situation, but I don't think that puts you in disagreement with me. I would buy into the addendum to my statement that because weaver and tempest don't have any element dependent components (or any dependencies apply to all elements equally, like Elemental Polyphony) it makes it harder for core lines to compete as whether you are seeking to support or deal damage they get to apply their bonuses equally.

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:Add swiftness + regen boons to Water minor traits and add protection boon to Earth minor traits.Then we won't all be forced to run arcane or weird builds that make up for the lack of boons. And it might actually be worth running water or earth again.

You mean make soothing ice not suck or shoehorn you into taking cantrips? I do find it a bit comical that Soothing Ice had its ICD increased for 60s for being a passive trait, but Burning Fire still sits at 40s. Rock Solid too needs to just... do something that isn't what it's been doing the past 7 years during which I don't think once it was used.

@"Widmo.3186" said:talking only about pvp/wvwThe problem with core ele is that it stopped "evolving" in 2012. During vanilla it was good, game wasnt flooded with skillspamming, random kitten ccs, aoes etc. PvP was slower and there was time to use skills and put some AAs. Theres no such time now....

S/D did come out and basically become a better D/D which was unfortunate. Honestly Elementalist has always had the edge over enemies in drawn/extended fights. It simply exceeds the pressure most people can handle. The issue is it feels kinda of un-fun to face off against because a good Elementalist seems like a dancing wall you simply cannot do anything against. From a PvP/WvW perspective on the smaller scale side, I think that's honestly what would most behoove core. Create some triple line synergies that give it more endurance while not having to sacrifice to much of its burst so it can afford to make mistakes while setting up for the boom.

@ScottBroChill.3254 said:What they need to do is go further with reducing the dependency of traits on attunements like they sorta touched on recently. And bring the earth traitline up to 2020 because it's just not that great compared to fire, air, and water. They should keep trying to bump up the synergy between the different element trait lines while keeping arcane the boon powerhouse. This makes arcane hard to replace for might, prot, and vigor generation on self and also makes it beneficial to take two element traitlines. Of course the added benefit of the elite spec would be adding stuff like dmg modifiers and new skills for the elite specs. It would make it a bigger decision to consider ditching either arcane or air+fire (or any combination), since they would work less without eachother....

As much as people bang on earth, it really just seems locked up because of two traits. Stone Heart because of it's only in earth property (tying in to what you're saying) and then Rock Solid because the other two traits serve very niche purposes that don't slot nicely into most builds and rock solid is near useless. There's just no reason to flip to earth and gain some stab when earth really doesn't have anything worth wanting stab over aside from possibly channeling dagger earth 5. The minors are nice, written in stone is niche but mostly held back because signets themselves are sort of eh (and no elite signet ANET plz) and diamond skin is incredible though somewhat feast or famine.

Honestly in terms of boons the big thing is that Elementalist is still locked in 2012 like Widmo said. It has no alacrity, It has no quickness, It has no resistance. There are basically no other builds/classes that do not have access to at least one of those in a useful quantity, and they are some of the most fight changing boons.

I don't have any specifics to fill in the blanks, but here's a basic framework for one possible way of creating advantages for core builds relative to the elite specs. Create benefits associated with each core trait line, then additional benefits for pairing trait lines.

Example:

Water/Earth Tempest gains benefits W, E, and WE while Water/Earth/Fire Core gains the same benefits plus WEF, WF, EF, and F.

So the old core ele was about fields and auras maybe some how letting core ele produces a field and or aura with an F5 to the atument they are in (earth field is a must add in.)

That or some how making auras / fields stronger when your in core ele and core ele only. (I realty miss the old ele field game play.)

To be fair, most elites are much more powerful than core only builds.

the main question:

why?

core is fine as it is. It does not have to deal with tempests really long cooldowns or weavers clunky mechanics. It can use three useful traitlines and does not have to worry about all the crap in tempest/weaver lines.

Core is fine. You can run water/fire/arcane and be a sustain monster. You can run fire/air/earth and be a power/condi monster. You can run water/earth/arcane and be a total bunker. Really. What is you problem?

The problem is that all three ele specs, for all the clunky mechanics and keyboard piano DO NEITHER ENOUGH DAMAGE NOR ENOUGH SUPPORT.

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the main question:

why?

core is fine as it is. It does not have to deal with tempests really long cooldowns or weavers clunky mechanics. It can use three useful traitlines and does not have to worry about all the kitten in tempest/weaver lines.

Core is fine. You can run water/fire/arcane and be a sustain monster. You can run fire/air/earth and be a power/condi monster. You can run water/earth/arcane and be a total bunker. Really. What is you problem?

The problem is that all three ele specs, for all the clunky mechanics and keyboard piano DO NEITHER ENOUGH DAMAGE NOR ENOUGH SUPPORT.So you say that best part of ele is a problem and traitlines that are pure joke are good? :D

I am saying that core is fine compared to the other two and all three suffer from the fact that the damage and sustain output is subpar with other classes. High risk, high reward, correct? Then why are no risk classes highly rewarded and ele kicked in the teeth?