So, as I'm running my Ele through LW2, I have a lot of time on my hands while I'm afking through a bunch of unskippable dialogue/cutscenes. As such, I thought about some changes to traits:

Fire

• Conjurer Aura effect replaced. Now deals AoE damage and Burn when a Conjured you summon is equipped (Both the one you give yourself and the one you put down, even if an Ally picks it up)
• Smothering Auras replaced by Mighty Auras: Applying an Aura grants Might to allies (Max targets 5)
• Pyromancer's Training skill cooldown effect replaced. Now causes you to gain Condition Damage based on 7% of your Power.

Air

• Zephyr's Speed reworked to grant 25% movement speed at all times, grants 3s of Superspeed upon attuning to Air.
• One with Air reworked to now reduce the duration of movement impairing effects by 20%, increased to 33% while in Air.
• Ferocious Winds replaced by Buffeting Gales: Vulnerability you apply lasts 33% longer and you deal 10% more damage to vulnerable enemies.
• Inscription reworked to now grant Eye of the Storm (Stacking, 5s buff for 150 precision) upon activating a Signet and Signets have 20% reduced cooldown.
• Aeromancer's Training skill cooldown effect replaced. Now causes you to gain Ferocity based on 7% of your Precision.
• Fresh Air reworked to provide 250 Precision and Ferocity for 5s upon attuning to Air

Earth

• Stone Flesh reworked to reduce damage taken by 7% from Bleeding foes
• Earthen Blast now also applies 1 stack of Bleed for 10s in addition to its other effects.
• Strength of Stone stat gain effect replaced by 20% increased Bleed damage
• Earthen Blessing reworked to reduce the duration of disables against you by 33% and to grant 15 endurance when disabled
• Geomancer's Training skill cooldown effect replaced. Now causes you to gain Expertise based on 10% of your Vitality
• Diamond Skin now also triggers Earthen Blast when it activates
• Written in Stone reworked to now cause Cantrips to apply Immobilize and 2 stacks of 10s Bleed in an area on use and Cantrips have 20% reduced cooldown.
• Stone Heart now also provides Tectonic Shift when crit outside of Earth with a 15s cooldown

Water

• Soothing Mist reworked to provide a more consistent effect. Now heals for 80 + (0.1 * Healing power) with an interval of 1s while attuned to Water (As opposed to applying a 10s buff every 3s that does the same healing while attuned to Water)
• Piercing Shards replaced by Frostbite Chill you apply lasts 20% longer and deal 20% more damage to chilled enemies
• Glacial Burst new lesser Master trait, damages and chills (1s) nearby enemies when attuning to Water
• Cleansing Wave replaced by Healing Ripple which combines both traits
• Soothing Disruption replaced by Glyphic Auras which causes Glyphs to grant you an aura based on your attunement (Fire = Fire Aura, Water = Frost Aura, Air = Shocking Aura, Earth = Magnetic Aura) and reduces the cooldown of Glyphs
• Aquamancer's Training replaced by Hydromancer's Training: Increases healing done to other allies by 15% and causes you to gain Healing Power based on 5% of your Power and 5% of your Condition Damage
• Cleansing Water removed and has its effect added to Soothing Power in addition to its other effects
• Heart of Ice new Grandmaster trait, causes critical hits against chilled enemies to deal bonus damage and sends out ice shards that damage and bleed nearby foes (Main target also gets Bleed) 5s CD (8s PvP/WvW)

Arcane

• Arcane Prowess Might duration is now 12s
• Arcane Precision reworked to now cause critical hits to cast Arcane Blast on the target (10s CD)
• Elemental Lockdown also grants a stack of Arcane Power
• Arcane Ressurection replaced by Elemental Surge
• Elemental Enchantment reworked to now cause Critical hits to reduce the remaining cooldown of Attunements by 1s and causes attuning to reduce remaining cooldowns of weapon skills for other attunements by 5s
• Bountiful Power now also grants 250 Concentration
• Attunement Mastery new Grandmaster trait, causes you to cast Arcane Wave when attuning (20s CD)

There are some unbalanced traits but that's okay. The important thing was to pass on the idea. I loved it, especially about Water and Earth, which are the weakest and have little use

@Taril.8619 said:

Arcane

• Arcane Precision reworked to now cause critical hits to cast Arcane Blast on the target (10s CD)
• Elemental Lockdown also grants a stack of Arcane Power
• Elemental Enchantment reworked to now cause Critical hits to reduce the remaining cooldown of Attunements by 1s and causes attuning to reduce remaining cooldowns of weapon skills for other attunements by 5s
• Bountiful Power now also grants 250 Concentration
• Attunement Mastery new Grandmaster trait, causes you to cast Arcane Wave when attuning (20s CD)

Add arcanes' skills in the trait lane is a good idea to make Elemental Surge, and so arcane skills, useful without revert the changes of the skills. May be even a bit too OP as you'll apply blindness or immobilize very easily with weaver d/f or d/d for example. Even druid will have less Immobilize.Arcane Precision I'm not fan, I think the trait is already good as it is.Elemental Enchantment too damn OP. Fire weaver will be unbalance for example, as you'll swap attunement every 2 sec, spam sunspot and have -10 sec on Fire Shield and transmute

Something anet realty need to do is add more aura transmutation effects from the trait line. Its such a good core ele wepon effect and has a lot of build in balancing of needed an aura being on a short ranged and having a cast time.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:Elemental Enchantment too kitten OP. Fire weaver will be unbalance for example, as you'll swap attunement every 2 sec, spam sunspot and have -10 sec on Fire Shield and transmute

Note that the weapon skill reduction specified OTHER attunements.

Meaning that if you were maximizing Sunspot by say going Fire > Air > Fire then you'd only be getting a 5s cooldown reduction and wouldn't even be able to use Fire Shield on your Fire Attunement and would need to attune again.

2s attunement CD isn't that bad, given that Arcane already pushes Weaver down to 3.5s CD and Fresh Air allows for insta-Air refresh (Which allows an instant switch into Air/Air for Weaver)

Not to mention, numbers can be altered, the main thing I was going for was the basic idea. Which was trying to turn Fresh Air's gameplay into something that can be utilized with any Attunements in the Spec that's literally about swapping Attunements a bunch. While also incorporating each Spec's weapon skill cooldown reduction from lesser Grandmaster traits in some way (Since I'd replaced them all with stat conversions given how the 15% CDR doesn't actually have much impact due to how long it typically takes to do a typical attunement shift rotation back to the same element anyway with only some of the 30s and 40s CD skills still being on CD when you come back, but even then they're only getting 4.5-6s CDR from the trait)

@Jski.6180 said:Something anet realty need to do is add more aura transmutation effects from the trait line. Its such a good core ele wepon effect and has a lot of build in balancing of needed an aura being on a short ranged and having a cast time.

The issue with this is the fact that Aura Transmutation is literally only a thing for a total of 4 skills across every single weapon and attunement.

Staff - Earth - Skill 3Dagger - Air - Skill 3Dagger - Water - Skill 4Focus - Fire - Skill 5

Which is a very specific thing to add trait effects to, especially as it's possible to run builds that literally won't access any of these skills (Scepter/Warhorn Tempest literally doesn't have a Transmutation skill. Weaver PvE builds don't use Water attunement) especially since they seemed to not want to give E-Specs any Transmutation effects.

@Taril.8619 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:Elemental Enchantment too kitten OP. Fire weaver will be unbalance for example, as you'll swap attunement every 2 sec, spam sunspot and have -10 sec on Fire Shield and transmute

@Jski.6180 said:Something anet realty need to do is add more aura transmutation effects from the trait line. Its such a good core ele wepon effect and has a lot of build in balancing of needed an aura being on a short ranged and having a cast time.

The though is to make is a mostly core ele effect but as thing stand there already 1 transmutation effect and all the ele classes can use it but all it dose is condi clear and on fire line there room for transmutation effects on all of the atument lines. Earth should have aoe stab air needs aoe super speed water needs aoe heal or reg it would go a long way to making the core ele trait lines and wepon set up much stronger then they are now.

If it makes the elite spec too powerful then anet just needs to nerf the elite spec accordingly BUT the endless nerfing or the lack of add on to the core ele just because of the elite spec is wrong on many levels.

Smothering Auras is something I'd like to keep

@Taril.8619 said:Staff - Earth - Skill 3Dagger - Air - Skill 3Dagger - Water - Skill 4Focus - Fire - Skill 5

What do you think of putting all the auras on the staff?The weapon with the most support is the staff, and the auras I see as support very well.Since necros have Marks on their staff, the Elementalist would have Aura on their staff.

@JohnWater.5760 said:

@Taril.8619 said:Staff - Earth - Skill 3Dagger - Air - Skill 3Dagger - Water - Skill 4Focus - Fire - Skill 5

It could work I guess.

The issue is what skills would be replaced in Staff's kit? As well as what would replace the auras in the other weapons kits?

Not to mention, some justification for doing so.

If the idea is to try and make staff more supportive, that sort of change does fit. But it does lead back to what will replace the skills in other kits? New supportive skills that could have just been given to Staff instead? New offensive skills?

But, if the idea is to consolidate the auras down to a single weapon set so that more traits synergy can be created for aura transmutation, then that still has the issue with having multiple traits for a single weapon set (Not only that, but still only 4 out of 16 skills on that weapon set) when the norm is having 1 trait for 1 weapon type.

It's the fundamental flaw with aura transmutation as a whole, it's just not expansive enough a mechanic to get the kind of support it could utilize well. Since it's predicated on having these specific weapon skills that allow the transmutation to occur (While Aura synergy in of itself is fine, because Leap and Blast finishers can produce auras in addition to these specific skills that grant auras and allow transmutation)

At best, the mechanic could work with more trait synergy if transmutation was an F skill, which seems like more of an E-Spec concept more so than a proper core Ele change given that the current attunements are enough of a class mechanic as is.

@Taril.8619 said:So, as I'm running my Ele through LW2, I have a lot of time on my hands while I'm afking through a bunch of unskippable dialogue/cutscenes. As such, I thought about some changes to traits:

• Smothering Auras replaced by Mighty Auras: Applying an Aura grants Might to allies (Max targets 5)

Smothering auras was a much needed trait to release the strangehold water had on elementalists condi cleanses. This has long been an issue with elementalists traits due to their fairly poor utility cleanse options (though swapping cantrips to earth could make cleansing fire somewhat viable in that regard, especially in combination with diamond skin).

Inscription reworked to now grant Eye of the Storm (Stacking, 5s buff for 150 precision) upon activating a Signet and Signets have 20% reduced cooldown.Fresh Air reworked to provide 250 Precision and Ferocity for 5s upon attuning to Air

They intentionally removed precision from being conditionally applied because it makes crit maxing for PvE very annoying and unreliable. Those sorts of traits in the air line are a bad direction.

Soothing Mist reworked to provide a more consistent effect. Now heals for 80 + (0.1 * Healing power) with an interval of 1s while attuned to Water (As opposed to applying a 10s buff every 3s that does the same healing while attuned to Water)

This is a massive nerf.

I like the water and arcane changes though. IMO the big frustration of being an elementalist generally comes from the fact that in order to deal with conditions you are locked into taking a combo of two traits, which really limits builds (fire + tempest/weaver, or water + arcane). This would be vastly improved simply by the swap of cantrips to earth line like you have though, to make cleansing fire usable, instead of in water where you take the water line to help with conditions anyway and thus don't want to take cleansing fire over the other more useful cantrips.

@God.2708 said:Smothering auras was a much needed trait to release the strangehold water had on elementalists condi cleanses. This has long been an issue with elementalists traits due to their fairly poor utility cleanse options (though swapping cantrips to earth could make cleansing fire somewhat viable in that regard, especially in combination with diamond skin).

Though, there could be other ways to improve Ele's lackluster cleansing. Such as improving some utilities (Signet of Water active cleansing a condi? Glyph of Elemental Power cleansing a condi? Ether Renewal being not trash? Maybe reduce the base cooldown on Cantrips to something less than 400 years?) or alternative lines getting some cleanse capacity somewhere (I could see Arcane having a cleanse on attuning trait, maybe in place of Final Shielding?)

@God.2708 said:They intentionally removed precision from being conditionally applied because it makes crit maxing for PvE very annoying and unreliable. Those sorts of traits in the air line are a bad direction.

Well, the thing is, with Precision being converted into Ferocity as baseline for the specialization due to the changed lesser Grandmaster trait, it's no longer as detrimental to overcap on crit chance with the spec. Whilst also improving the usage of the spec for builds outside of PvE Power builds that hit 100% crit chance.

@God.2708 said:This is a massive nerf.

Maybe so, and if required it can be buffed.

@Taril.8619 said:The issue is what skills would be replaced in Staff's kit? As well as what would replace the auras in the other weapons kits?

Not to mention, some justification for doing so.

I think a little differently.I learned that a game is never finished, if it is finished it is a dead game (no updates). So this is like an adaptation, the skills could be replaced or added, for example, Air 4 could be the aura, and it additionally spreads Swiftness to allies.And those replaced in other weapons could be offensive or defensive skills.

At best, the mechanic could work with more trait synergy if transmutation was an F skill, which seems like more of an E-Spec concept more so than a proper core Ele change given that the current attunements are enough of a class mechanic as is.

It could be Elementalist's real trade-off.

Some good and some bad ideas. Pretty much mentioned by others already. But I had a thought for Diamond Skin.

There's a better way to buff Diamond Skin... now that I think about it. If you make Earth Traitline more focused on Protection application, you can then change Diamond Skin to something better.

Diamond Skin: Gain barrier when you gain protection. All damaging conditions are now reduced by 20% effectiveness when you have barrier on you. That creates better synergy with Traitlines & Utilities that create protection or barrier. Which then causes less reliance on Fire and Water traitline cleanses. Right now, Diamond Skin isn't strong enough to rely on it's own for condition defense