ANet says they want to improve tempest support, here is what needs to be looked at:

• Give tempest options to be offensive support or defensive support (Elementalist is about versatility, so tempest support should be based on what elements he chooses aside from tempest line)
• Give the elemental traitlines meaningful choices that have synergy, and meaningful boons to make tempest relevant on the current PvP and PvE meta.
• Make traits/runes that extend aura times relevant by providing traits that set auras to pulse boons instead of just providing a single application

Tempest should not be pigeonholed in a healing/cleansing bot. Let the tempest line be about large AoEs, group effects and staying longer on attunements. Let the type of support (offensive or defensive) be decided by the other two traitlines.

Here are a few suggestions:

Tempest:

• Minor Proficiency: Warhorn Proficiency - You can wield the warhorn weapon.
• Minor Adept: Singularity - Attain elemental singularity by remaining in an attunement for a period of time. Upon attaining singularity, you may overload the attunement to your vicinity.
  • Major Adept: Gale Song - Recharge "Eye of the Storm!" when a foe attempts to control you by stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch (This has a 90s CD and only activates if the shout is on CD). Eye of the Storm now provides quickness (5s) to allies.
  • Major Adept: Effective Conduit - Using skills from an attunement reduces the recharge of its overload.
  • Major Adept: Unstable Conduit - Overloading an attunement grants an aura based on the element you're attuned to when the ability is completed.
• Minor Master: Speedy Conduit - Pulse swiftness and stability to yourself when overloading an attunement.
  • Major Master: Tempestuous Aria - Allies affected by your shouts gain a boom and Enemies are affected by a condition based on shout. Shouts have reduced CD and applies to 10 targets.
  • Major Master: Elemental Bastion - Receive an aura at the start of your overloads based on attunement. Auras you apply last 33% longer.
  • Major Master: Harmonious Conduit - Upon successfully completing an overload, gain a buff based on overload (fire 5% dmg and condi dmg, air 10% crit dmg, earth -10% dmg and condi dmg reduction, water 10% healing effectiveness) for a period of time (5s).
• Minor Grandmaster: Hardy Conduit - Pulse protection and barrier to yourself while overloading an attunement.
  • Major Grandmaster: Imbued Melodies - Gain increased concentration when wielding a warhorn. Use Sand Squall when struck while below the health threshold. Sand squall now extends boons for 10 targets.
  • Major Grandmaster: Lucid Singularity - Remove and gain massive resistance to movement-impeding conditions while overloading your attunements. Overloads pulse superspeed to yourself.
  • Major Grandmaster: Tempestuous Auras - When you apply an aura to yourself, apply the same aura to 10 allies.

Air overload - Reduce the dmg of the lightening strikes and increase the number back to 5 targets. Provide static discharge to allies on each pulse instead of just completion.

The idea is to give the tempest the option to buff allies by sharing auras, improving shouts or being more selfish and focusing on its own overloads to complete them successfully and frequently. The reduced recharge on overloads could be a flat percentage but seems more interesting giving it a reduced recharge per skill use, making that weapons with faster casting times (scepter, dagger) can overload faster than slow ones (staff). The changes try to combine well with the options on each traitline and lets the tempest (by moving aura share from water) becomes a full offensive (fire/air/tempest) or defensive (water/earth/tempest) support or even a mix of those. Tempest can also focus on being more selfish and versatile by focusing on overloading more frequent and successfully at the cost of sharing auras and heals.

Fire:

Giving fire a condi cleanse makes it just more of the same of what we have with water. Eles wanted more ways to deal with condis out of the water line, but not the same way. It makes much more sense to make fire line a way to resist condis instead of cleansing it. This makes it a different playstile where you try to keep up your resistance, but if you loose it (corrupt or stunlock) you take all the condis you couldn't cleanse (the risk vs reward idea).

• Minor Adept: Empowering Flame - Gain power and condition damage (150 @ lvl80) while attuned to fire.
  • Major Adept: Burning Precision - Critical hits have a chance to cause burning (3s, 5s ICD per target), and burning lasts 33% longer.
  • Major Adept: Blinding Ashes - Blind foes that you burn (8s ICD per target).
  • Major Adept: Powerful Auras - Auras you apply give might (2 stacks 10s). Fire auras give extra might each second (1 stack 10s).
• Minor Master: Sunspot - Inflict damage and burning at your location when you attune to fire and gain a fire aura.
  • Major Master: Pyromancer's Training - Reduces recharge on all fire weapon skills. Each skill you use while attuned to fire grants you might.
  • Major Master: Burning Fire - Fire auras you apply last longer and pulse resistance (1s every second).
  • Major Master: Power Overwhelming - Gain condition damage based on your power. When you gain fire aura, burn nearby foes.
• Minor Grandmaster: Burning Rage - Deal more damage to burning foes.
  • Major Grandmaster: Persisting Flames - Executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fire aura to you. Fire fields last longer. Create a lava font when you go down.
  • Major Grandmaster: Pyromancer's Puissance - Gain 10% damage and condition damage bonus while attuned to fire
  • Major Grandmaster: Conjurer - Conjure utilities skills recharge faster. Conjure weapon provide higher bonuses and conjure abilities have reduced recharge .

This changes try to increase the hybrid dmg of fire line. It gives you choices as in: If you change attunements often, than maybe the bonus dmg in fire is not as useful as lasting fire fields, while if you stay longer in fire you can build more might and have increased dmg and condi dmg. Or you can trait more defensively with blinds and condi resistance to make sure you can stay in fire longer to deliver the dmg (instead of having to swap to a defensive attunement)

Air:

• Minor Adept: Ferocious Winds - Gain ferocity and precision (150 @ lvl80) while attuned to air.
  • Major Adept: Zephyr's Boon - Grant boons (fury and swiftness) to allies you grant auras to. Glyphs apply boons based on your attunement.
  • Major Adept: One with Air - Move faster while attuned to air and gain superspeed when attuning to air.
  • Major Adept: Piercing Lightening - vulnerability you apply last 33% longer. You have increased critical chance to vulnerable foes (2% per stack) while attuned to air.
• Minor Master: Electric Discharge - Strike your target with a bolt of lightning when attuning to air.
  • Major Master: Zephyr speed - Static auras you apply pulse superspeed (3s every 3s). Apply quickness (3s) when you apply superspeed.
  • Major Master: Aeromancer's Training - Gain ferocity based on your precision. Reduces recharge on all air weapon skills.
  • Major Master: Tempest Defense - Recharge Shocking Aura when disabled (Only activates if shocking aura is on CD, 25s CD). Deal increased damage to stunned, dazed or knocked-down foes.
• Minor Grandmaster: Raging Storm - Critically striking a foe grants fury. Gain ferocity while under the effects of fury.
  • Major Grandmaster: Bolt to the Heart - Deal more damage when your foe's health drops below the threshold.
  • Major Grandmaster: Fresh Air - Recharge air attunement on a critical hit. Gain a ferocity boost when attuning to air.
  • Major Grandmaster: Lightning Rod - Cast Lightning Rod when you disable a foe. Electric Discharge hits twice against disabled foes.

These changes create the opportunity for air to be the go-to element for a power dmg burst (sustained burst with FA, higher CC burst with lightening rod or finishing bursts with BttH), but also opens the possibility for a fresh-air tempest to constantly buff its group offensively with fury and quickness by sharing shock auras. It also opens up synergy with weavers elemental pursuit with adding quickness on superspeed (proposed zephyrs speed) at the cost of tempest defenseEles that focus on air burst, can also use piercing lightening to improve their crit chance, opening up viability for valkirie and cavaliers stats, making the burst air ele (that does not have stealth or lots of invuls) more survivable at the expense of having lower crit chance when not in air or against foes without vulnerability

Earth:

• Minor Adept: Stone Flesh - Gain toughness and expertise (150 @ lvl80) while attuned to earth.
  • Major Adept: Earth's Embrace - Gain Armor of Earth whenever your health drops below the threshold. (Change Armor of Earth to pulses stability -1s- and protection -1s- for the duration instead of a single application)
  • Major Adept: Serrated Stones - Bleeds you apply last longer; deal more damage to bleeding foes.
  • Major Adept: Rock Solid - Gain stability when attuning to earth. Magnetic auras you apply pulse stability (1s every second)
• Minor Master: Earthen Blast - Bleed foes and cripple them for 3 seconds when attuning to earth.
  • Major Master: Geomancer's Defense - Protection reduces condition damage done to you and stability removes movement impairing conditions on you.
  • Major Master: Elemental Shielding - Grant protection when applying an aura to yourself or an ally. Protection you apply have improved damage reduction.
  • Major Master: Geomancer's Training - You recover more quickly from slow, crippling, immobilizing, and chilling. Reduces recharge on all earth weapon skills.
• Minor Grandmaster: Strength of Stone - Gain expertise based on your toughness.
  • Major Grandmaster: Diamond Skin - Remove conditions when struck while your health is above the threshold (50%).
  • Major Grandmaster: Written in Stone - Maintain the passive effects of signets when you activate them. Reduce recharge of signets.
  • Major Grandmaster: Stone Heart - Enemies that critically hit you receive weakness (2s, 5s ICD per target). You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth.

The changes try to give stone heart a bit of a use outside of earth to be a viable trait if you are not camping earth, while also improving the aura traits on earth. By making rock solid a selfish trait, it can be moved down to adept and be a good option to earthen embrace (constant stability with auras or a burst at 50%hp). The change to diamond skin aims to make synergies with traits like earthen embrace, _bolstered elements, and final shielding

Water:

• Minor Adept: Aquatic Benevolence - regenerate health (Soothing mist) and gain Healing Power (150 @ lvl 80) while attuned to Water.
  • Major Adept: Invigorating Auras - Auras you apply heal allies and also grant vigor.
  • Major Adept: Latent Stamina - Apply vigor in a radius when attuning to water. Granting vigor to allies also restores a portion of endurance.
  • Major Adept: Soothing Disruption - Cantrips grant you an aura (armor of earth: magnetic aura, cleansing fire: fire aura, lightening flash: shock aura, mist form: frost aura, tornado and ether renewal: aura based on attunement); reduce recharge on cantrips.
• Minor Master: Healing Ripple - Heal nearby allies when attuning to water.
  • Major Master: Soothing Ice - Gain frost aura when critically hit. Frost auras you apply pulse regeneration (1s every second).
  • Major Master: Soothing recovery - Cast geyser when reviving an ally. Geyser revive allies. You have improved revive speed, and give frost aura to you when reviving an ally, and frost aura to allies you revive.
  • Major Master: Aquamancer's Training - Reduces recharge on all water weapon skills. Regeneration you apply have improved effects.
• Minor Grandmaster: Aquatic Benevolence - 10% healing effectiveness.
  • Major Grandmaster: Cleansing Water - Remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally.
  • Major Grandmaster: Cleansing Wave - Recharges water attunement when using a heal skill. Remove a condition from you and your allies when attuning to water.
  • Major Grandmaster: Soothing Power - Soothing Mist has increased effects and apply to 10 people.

This changes make 3 clear options on the water line: improving auras (auras can give regen and vigor, being a great combo for group cleanse combo with cleansing water), giving heals and cleanses when going into water, and refreshing water attunement faster at the expense of your heal skill, or to be a full healer staying longer in water attunement and improving your soothing mist and water cooldowns.The proposed change to soothing mist and soothing power, make it more efficient and the effect also helps the ele using his healing skills and combos, but only effect the ele. But if the ele takes soothing power this will make this trait not only improve the regen you apply, but also buff other players own healing, making a great choice for a healing ele that is not focused on auras. The soothing mist effect also lasts for a while, even when you leave water, threfore can be used by an ele that stays in water longer or one that jumps in water for burst heals...

Arcane:

• Minor Adept: Elemental Attunement - When attuning to an element, you and nearby allies gain a boon.
  • Major Adept: Arcane Precision - Skills have a chance to apply a condition on critical hits.
  • Major Adept: Renewing Stamina - Gain vigor when you deliver a critical hit.
  • Major Adept: Arcane Abatement - Reduce fall damage you receive; cast a spell based on your attunement when you receive fall damage. Swapping attunements restores health.
• Minor Master: Elemental Fury - Gain Leaser Elemental Power (Arcane skill: You do critical damage with your next 2 attacks. grants bonus ferocity.) when swapping attunements.
  • Major Master: Lingering Elements - Attunement bonuses (from minor traits) linger longer (5s) after leaving an attunement.
  • Major Master: Elemental Contingency - Gain a boon when you are struck, based on your current attunement.
  • Major Master: Final Shielding - Create an Lesser Arcane Shield when your health drops below the threshold. Arcane shield is now an aura (it triggers aura traits, can be shared with aura-shrare, and can be consumed to trigger the AoE dmg).
• Minor Grandmaster: Elemental Enchantment - Gain concentration and your attunements gain reduced recharge.
  • Major Grandmaster: Evasive Arcana - Create an attunement-based spell after dodging.
  • Major Grandmaster: Elemental Surge - Based on your attunement, arcane skills inflict a condition on foes. Gain more ferocity when you use an arcane skill. Arcane skills recharge faster.
  • Major Grandmaster: Bountiful Power - Gain increased effects for each boon on you based on attunement: fire: 1% dmg, 1% condi dmg; air: 1% dmg, 1% crit dmg; water: 1% healing, 1% outgoing healing; earth: 1% dmg reduction, 1% incoming condi duration reduction

Weaver:

• Minor Proficiency: Sword Proficiency - You can wield swords in your main hand.
• Minor Adept: Weaver - Your active attunement is now applied to your main hand, with the old attunement moving to your off hand. Attunement recharges are reduced. Gain access to Dual Attack and the Stance utility types.
  • Major Adept: Superior Elements - Dual Attack skills weaken enemies. Attacks against weakened foes have increased critical chance.
  • Major Adept: Elemental Pursuit - Gain superspeed when inflicting inhibiting conditions on enemies.
  • Major Adept: Master's Fortitude - Gain increased vitality when wielding a sword. Gain bonus vitality based on a portion of your power and condition damage.
• Minor Master: Elemental Refreshment - Gain barrier when swapping attunments.
  • Major Master: Weaver's Prowess - Gain bonuses for a period of time after attuning to a different element: Fire - increased condition damage, Water - reduced condition duration to you, Air - increased condition duration, Earth - reduced condition damage to you.
  • Major Master: Swift Revenge - Gain swiftness when using a Dual Attack. Deal extra damage to enemies while under the effects of swiftness or superspeed.
  • Major Master: Bolstered Elements - Gain stability when activating a stance. Activate Lesser Stone Resonance when struck while below the health threshold.
• Minor Grandmaster: Elemental Polyphony - Gain attributes based on your current attunement. When dual attuned, gain both benefits.
  • Major Grandmaster: Elements of Rage - Gain bonuses for a period of time when attuned to a single element. Fire - 10% damage, Air - 10% critical dmg, Water - 10% healing eff, Earth - 10% dmg reduction.
  • Major Grandmaster: Woven Stride - Gain swiftness when you are inflicted with inhibiting conditions. When gaining either superspeed or swiftness, also gain regeneration. Swiftness has increased effectiveness.
  • Major Grandmaster: Invigorating Strikes - Gain vigor when using a Dual Attack. Vigor has increased effectiveness. Dodge rolling grants a barrier.

With the changes to air (superspeed can give quickness) there are a lot of synergy with weaver traits. Making the bonuses of elements of rage and weaver prowess more related to the attunements opens the possibility of weaver as a support (water/earth) that uses the reduced attunement CD to trigger more water heals and earth defenses while obtaining defensive bonuses.

Just reading up to here:

Major Adept: Gale Song - Trigger "Eye of the Storm!" when a foe attempts to control you by stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch. Eye of the Storm now provides static aura to allies.

And I understand that you didn't understood why they changed tempest defense. A CC counter trait shouldn't lead to more CC. This is the kind of trait (passive CC) that are unfun to play against and that's why those traits were eradicated from the game.

I didn't go throught everything but I can see that you keep the traits that are effective only when you are in a specific attunment and that's simply why I disagree with the whole thing. In reality, the elementalist don't need much to become "good", the elementalist only need traits to affect them whatever their attunment is. By enoforcing the idea that you need to be in a specific attunment to make use of a trait (like you do) you continue to pigeonhole the elementalist into specific traitlines based on the gamemode "need". Which mean that the whole thing that you did is as flawed as the current thing and elementalist would continue to stay pigeonholed in water in spvp after all those change happen.

NB.: I don't understand how change to weaver would do any good to tempest.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Just reading up to here:

Major Adept: Gale Song - Trigger "Eye of the Storm!" when a foe attempts to control you by stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch. Eye of the Storm now provides static aura to allies.

Agreed with this. While OP had some nice suggestions for support traits, he completely ruined every other aspect of ele, such as damage, cdr, defense and boon traits, on top of adding more focus on traits that only work in specific attunement.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Just reading up to here:

Major Adept: Gale Song - Trigger "Eye of the Storm!" when a foe attempts to control you by stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch. Eye of the Storm now provides static aura to allies.

Eles really need a way to deal with stunlocks and burst. If the passive is absolutely out of the window, then the trait should at least refresh the CD of eye of the storm when cc'ed.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I didn't go throught everything but I can see that you keep the traits that are effective only when you are in a specific attunment and that's simply why I disagree with the whole thing. In reality, the elementalist don't need much to become "good", the elementalist only need traits to affect them whatever their attunment is. By enoforcing the idea that you need to be in a specific attunment to make use of a trait (like you do) you continue to pigeonhole the elementalist into specific traitlines based on the gamemode "need". Which mean that the whole thing that you did is as flawed as the current thing and elementalist would continue to stay pigeonholed in water in spvp after all those change happen.

I disagree. The elemental lines let the ele specialize in those aspects of each element and be better while focusing that element. This is part of the flavor and mechanics of the ele. The one thing I see it could change is the return of this trait in arcane:Major Master: Lingering Elements - Attunement bonuses (from minor traits) linger longer (5s) after leaving an attunement.This gives core eles with 2 elements and arcane the edge over e_specs to keep both attunement bonuses while swaping attunements, and give tempest/weaver the option to focus on one attunement and keep its bonuses longer while dipping in other attunements during their rotations.

@steki.1478 said:Agreed with this. While OP had some nice suggestions for support traits, he completely ruined every other aspect of ele, such as damage, cdr, defense and boon traits, on top of adding more focus on traits that only work in specific attunement.

How is the damage ruined by giving options to boost burst in air tree and even more hybrid dmg in fire tree? The main PvE dmg build (fire/air/weaver) is unchanged (in structure and use) with the proposed changes and even buffed on its burst and hybrid dmg parts.How is defense ruined by giving viable defensive options in earth and giving the heal on aura trait to water so it can be used by core and weaver? Improved protection to earth would make it available for defensive focused weavers and core eles. The proposed changes to earth and fire make fire/earth a viable bruiser or condi dps with both arcane or weaver. A different playstile from the water bruiser, where you try to resist conditions with resistance buff and reduce dmg with earth while doing condi dps with bleeds and burns.How are boon traits ruined by improving the aura traits to make use of extended auras and giving eles access to other boons such as resistance and quickness?

@lLobo.7960 said:

@"steki.1478" said:Agreed with this. While OP had some nice suggestions for support traits, he completely ruined every other aspect of ele, such as damage, cdr, defense and boon traits, on top of adding more focus on traits that only work in specific attunement.

My bad, I guess I skipped some traits while reading yesterday when it comes to fire spec (mostly might generating and cdr). However, by "ruined" I didnt specifically think you made those things worse, some traits actually bring huge powercreep.

Your weaver suggestions seem unnecessary, there's better things to change on it such as more application and interaction with barrier and superspeed, which dont have to do anything with attunements (weaver's prowess is quite bad suggestion IMO). Air and arcane are practically the same with small but impactful improvements which is great. Water is just heals heals and and more heals with no mentions of ice related stuff and some traits are basically doing the same things in a slightly different way; the idea is nice, but some traits either need to get merged or just removed since there's no really competition between them, you get almost same support from all of them (and even if you dont get certain benefit in one tree, you get it in next one or from minors). Earth traits have good potential, but they are either on a different place or add too much powercreep; there's improved prot but no way to get it or you get a lot of prot which is even stronger, theres 2 impairing condi reduction traits in same tree for no reason. With certain spec combinations like fire+earth, ele could be literally unkillable (especially with water or weaver) while pulsing cancer around it, we dont need that in game. I dont really think that players find tank builds fun to play with or against; water weaver bruiser doesnt need an alternative tank build, it needs an alternative damage build.

The major thing I dont like (in game, not with suggestions) is traits that work only in specific attunements. Anet's been updating weapon traits in other classes to provide bonuses even if you dont wield them, but gain additional bonus when it's equipped. I just dont understand why they are so late with this trend when it comes to ele.

I'm a huge fan of quickness on shocking aura (or superspeed), stab on magnetic aura as well (but there's quite few ways to get those auras, unless you're tempest) as attunement cooldown refresh (could easily add earth refresh on stun break).

@steki.1478 said:

@lLobo.7960 said:

@steki.1478 said:The major thing I dont like (in game, not with suggestions) is traits that work only in specific attunements. Anet's been updating weapon traits in other classes to provide bonuses even if you dont wield them, but gain additional bonus when it's equipped. I just dont understand why they are so late with this trend when it comes to ele.

The traits mentioned are reworked and there's buffs/nerfs here and there, but overall, core ele is getting buffs. Which I won't fuss about.

However, many would agree that Ele has a hard time finding an identity. Not much about the class can't be found elsewhere, which makes them just average.

If anything, Auras is it's greatest difference and buffing core ele should be about buffing auras. Doing so shouldn't be specific, like getting stability only with magnetic aura, or granting resistance only with fire aura...Getting specific auras is incredibly difficult, unless you're a tempest. Most weapons only have access to one aura... In fact, sword doesn't have any!

Boons should be granted upon any aura, otherwise the auras will be as useless as buffs in only one attunement. It's too much of a pigeonhole to make any use out of it. It forces ele to have 20 skills and yet be able to only use some of them. Which has always been the classes biggest problem to begin with

Improve Air & Earth 5 on Warhorn please!

@"Dahir.4158" said:Improve Air & Earth 5 on Warhorn please!

Lightning Orb is already amazing against huge hitbox and clueless people!

@lLobo.7960 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I didn't go throught everything but I can see that you keep the traits that are effective only when you are in a specific attunment and that's simply why I disagree with the whole thing. In reality, the elementalist don't need much to become "good", the elementalist only need traits to affect them whatever their attunment is. By enoforcing the idea that you need to be in a specific attunment to make use of a trait (like you do) you continue to pigeonhole the elementalist into specific traitlines based on the gamemode "need". Which mean that the whole thing that you did is as flawed as the current thing and elementalist would continue to stay pigeonholed in water in spvp after all those change happen.

I disagree. The elemental lines let the ele specialize in those aspects of each element and be better while focusing that element. This is part of the flavor and mechanics of the ele. The one thing I see it could change is the return of this trait in arcane:

Then we will agree to disagree.

The issue of those traits that require you to be in a specific attunment to work is that they pigeonhole you into a specific attunment. Even if you summon back lingering attunment this doesn't change this inate flaw which force you into this attunment. In fact, bringing back lingering attunment on the table just allow you to play a kind of "alfa version of weaver", which is proof enough that your point of view don't leave the elementalist out of the drought that he is stuck in since age.

On the flavor topic, I'd even say that contrary to what you say, focusing on attuning into a single attunment is not what the traitline should do. Traitlines should define the kind of mage that you are and add an hint of your primary element(s) into every skills that you use, whatever your attunment. Fire magic making fire skill do more damage isn't gonna fix anything on a profession that highly revolve around the idea of going in and out of attunment. On the opposite, traits that give an hint of fire magic to any attunment like burning precision really make you a fire mage on such a profession.

I'd rather see arcane take the burden of the skill CD reduction than see it take the burden of lingering attunment. Ideally, the "X magic" traitlines should make their own attunment linger, arcane shouldn't have anything to do with that.

From pvp only guy perspective:

I get why many ele's want more specialized trait lines but I am not big fan of it. In pvp success of build ( and success of it in current meta) ties to how many roles build can perform well. Scrapper for example: can contest/bunker node, support via gyross and 1v1. Spellbrakerr: 1v1, node contesting and teamfigther (via rampage cc's and boon removal).

On other hand we got ele builds like sw/d that is good at contesting and that's it (to slow at killing stuff). Tempest=only healing...I bet many people to this days puke on thought how fun was in HoT ranked to carry by healing only!. And this why i don't like this proposed changes - nothing would change - we still overspecialize to be good at one thing while warriors can bunker nodes on freaking berserker amulet.

I wonder tho - how devs want to make tempest work by focusing on cleansing and boons. More boons points towards celestial type builds and at least for me celestial healbot with earth runes is quite nice in ques and doesn't explode instantly after being focused in teamfights. That brings me to my main point and it is not only my opinion but hear it on ex-proleague streams. Tempest self sustain is a joke - in current meta it has almost no staying power in teamfights.

I say almost thanks to one quality change - dagger main hand earth 3 re-work. Now when fight doesn't go well or being focused down i can Lightning Flash on higher ground and kite away by Magnetic Leap+Burning Speed, heal myself up and get back to the fight or rotate somewhere i would be more useful. FB can't do that, it's lacks such kind of mobility. Usually it' has no choice: win fight or die. If we see more reworks like Magnetic Leap then maybe there is still hope for our Tempest to get back into competitive pvp.

@Mr Godlike.6098 said:I get why many ele's want more specialized trait lines

I believe that majority of suggestions that can be seen on forums talk about specializing into specific roles, not into specific attunements. For example fire spec should improve damage output overall, not just improve damage of fire skills or damage you do while attuned to fire.

When it comes to tempest it has several roles (among different game modes): heal bot with some cleanses (water/arcane with shouts - all modes), cleanse bot with heals (fire/water - wvw, maybe pvp), immob spam with heals and cleanses (water/arcane with arcane skills - wvw), boon bot with some dps or heals (earth/air, fire/water, air/water etc. - pve), burn tempest with perma might+fury (arcane/fire - pve) and FA tempest (air/arcane or fire/air - pve). The only builds that can be considered meta are cleanse bot in wvw and FA tempest in pve, others are just good to have when you have no support, but not needed at all when you do and there's nothing wrong with that.

While tempest doesnt cover multiple roles at once like some supports, the ones it has, it does them quite well and every specialization has a part in those builds (earth one is probably the most limited because it provides only one useful trait which is prot on auras). I dont think that tempest needs to have good personal sustain, it should be weaver's job. Tempest should focus on either aoe support or aoe pressure and depending on build and game mode it can do both of those quite effectively.

The only things lacking on tempest spec IMO is the aura share trait which should be a minor in tempest instead of major in water and stability+prot/swiftness as minor as well. The rest of the traits arent in a big need of change compared to core ele. Earth spec rework is the only chance for tempest to compete with fb in pvp because earth provides quite bad support right now and it has pretty bad self sustain traits as well so it's not a part of many builds.

@lLobo.7960 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I didn't go throught everything but I can see that you keep the traits that are effective only when you are in a specific attunment and that's simply why I disagree with the whole thing. In reality, the elementalist don't need much to become "good", the elementalist only need traits to affect them whatever their attunment is. By enoforcing the idea that you need to be in a specific attunment to make use of a trait (like you do) you continue to pigeonhole the elementalist into specific traitlines based on the gamemode "need". Which mean that the whole thing that you did is as flawed as the current thing and elementalist would continue to stay pigeonholed in water in spvp after all those change happen.

I disagree. The elemental lines let the ele specialize in those aspects of each element and be better while focusing that element. This is part of the flavor and mechanics of the ele. The one thing I see it could change is the return of this trait in arcane:

I'm in agreement with you. I feel the purpose of the trait lines has always given favor to using specific elements because the concept lends to the idea that choosing a specialization specializes you in some fashion. To expect the traitlines to just be generic bonuses that don't take much account of what attunement it improves really makes building much more bland.

To Dadnir, I'm assuming you're on the mark with the prospect of meta-building for competitive play, and I appreciate that perspective because it is a necessary perspective when discussing suggestions as a whole...but you have to admit, balancing so that a set of traits is decently functional across all attunements will likely lead to mild and vanilla builds in general. It's what makes the difference between GW2 build-craft and GW1 build-craft (or at least that's what I've been told as I've not played GW1 myself).

That being said, some criticism to lLobo's Water attunement suggestion: Why is it all healing!? While I can see what you're getting at, no other attunement is that pigeonholed. Fire gets power/condi and resistance/blinds, air gets burst power/crit/quickness and movement/CC, earth gets bunker/stab/defensive boon support and longer duration condi while water gets support/boon share and dodges. Something doesn't add up here.

Water has no offensive options whatsoever. Might sound crazy but I'm just seeing an imbalance. Maybe give Water team condi-damage support with some kind of ability that improves condi duration on a target (call it Poison the Well or something) or at the very least, using a chill on a target with max vulnerability causes a status that mimics max vulnerability (+25% damage) while removing all stacks of vulnerability, basically giving you the ability to bypass the cap for a time. Give water something offensive besides some +% damage per boon, is what I'm saying.

@Dadnir.5038 said:On the flavor topic, I'd even say that contrary to what you say, focusing on attuning into a single attunment is not what the traitline should do. Traitlines should define the kind of mage that you are and add an hint of your primary element(s) into every skills that you use, whatever your attunment. Fire magic making fire skill do more damage isn't gonna fix anything on a profession that highly revolve around the idea of going in and out of attunment. On the opposite, traits that give an hint of fire magic to any attunment like burning precision really make you a fire mage on such a profession.

Perhaps on a mechanical level. I agree with your premise, I just don't think it actually reflects what is presented. Applying burning on crits doesn't denote a fire mage because the act of burning is denoted with the condition of burn, not the magic. A Guardian can burn, a Berserker can burn, anything with Forgeman Rune or combo in a fire field can burn. Not to mention, burning on crit isn't very visual in execution.

Maybe it's personal preference, but if I'm imbuing fire magic in all my fire elementalist skills, wouldn't that equate to a modified element? Like Fire+Air= Smoke/Ash, Fire+Water=Combustion/Steam and Fire+Earth=Lava/Metal? This should be the concept of Weaver, not every other element specialization unnless we get specializations that do the opposite (focus on focusing on particular elements) then I'm not sure why you think all concepts for all specializations should emulate the same concept.

I don't think on the proposed changes the elemental traitlines are exclusive on their attunements. They do have options for higher benefits on their attunements, both on entering the attunement or to staying on it as those are the playstiles of the elementalist

I don't understand why you would want dmg traits on the water line.Why would you go into water for dmg?

Anyway, the way attunements work (and IMO, the way they should keep working) is that the ele itself is very versatile, but attunements are very specific (hence why we dont have water skills doing massive dmg - goodbye ice spike). The efficacy of the ele on each area depends on how it improves a certain attunement. The ele itself (no traits) is almost like a blank (low dmg, low healing, low defense, low mobility) but this gives it the higher potential for specializing. This specialization comes from focusing the elements that are associated with that role: Fire for sustained dmg, air for burst and mobility, earth for defense and water for healing and cleansing.So, no. You won't have the best dps option as a water ele. Water in GW2 is associated with cleansing and healing...

In the proposed traits I've tried to give every elemental line a way to improve their own element in and out of their attunement. Each line should give you options to improve staying in that attunement or (to a minor degree) improve that attunment aspect while out of it. But of course, an ele in water attune should not be doing more sustained dmg than an ele in fire, or more burst than an ele in air...

Anyway... Lets say you want to be doing dmg on water. The best way to do this is (and has always been since the old water camping LH dungeon build) to use conjures.I know, conjures are clunky and all that, but for the practicality of this, lets say they make conjures work with ammo (to conjure them) and that by using a conjure for its full duration you can keep it 100% of the time (except for FGS).

So with the proposed traits above, if you want to deal dmg in water attune you would not go tempest (water overload is not much dmg, tempest traits are more for support if you are not focusing on overloads) and you will unlikely go weaver (weaver bonuses are about swaping attunements fast and constantly). So core ele it is. You would also not be using arcane as it focus on improving attunement swaping.Of course the water line doesnt have big dps traits so we need to get the traits in other trees that deal dmg... Fire and Air.There is two ways to go about this. Sustained dmg with auras and conjure flame axe or burst with lightening hammer (or a mix of both).For the flame axe aura play you would go:Fire: Powerful Auras (stack might on auras) - Power Overwhelming (condi dmg for power and AoE burn on fire aura) - Persisting Flames (blasts on fire fields give fire aura and fire fields last longer)With this you can use your flame axe (while in water) to deal a lot of burns and give yourself fire auras (by combo fields) that will deal more burn and build might.Air: Zephyr's Boon (fury and swiftness from auras, glyphs give auras) - Aeromancer's Training (extra ferocity) - Bolt to the Heart - (more dmg to foes under 50%)This will make your fire auras (that you can get 2 with the flame axe with the jump and the blast over the fire field) give you fury and swiftness on top of the pulsing might, and will also make glyphs give you an aura based on your attunement (so you can get frost aura by using a glyph in water), also you get some crit dmg and dmg against foes under 50% hp. All that can be used while in water attunement.Then the last traitline would be water and you can use that to get all healing from auras, etc, etc... Or you can even go tempest and focus on reducing overload recharge and use water overload for your sustain (since you want to camp water)...

The other option is to instead of using the flame axe and focusing on auras to build might and hybrid dmg is to use the lightening hammer and focus on quickness and superspeed on the air line.Fire: Burning Precision (burn on crits and longer burns) - Power Overwhelming (more dmg to your burns) - Conjurer (more crit dmg from LH and reduced CD on skills)With this you can apply burns even with the LH and being in water attune with your crits, the burns last longer and you get a dmg bonus against burning foes (minor trait). Also your LH will give you higher bonuses to crit dmg and precision.Air: Piercing Lightening (increase vulnerability duration) - Zephyr speed (quickness on superspeed) - Lightning Rod (improved dmg against disabled foes)This sets up the LH burst. The LH can give you superspeed, witch then gives you quickness. With quickness you can set use the LH stuns to apply a serious burst (using lightening storm and auto) as a combo.Again, anything on water would be to improve your healing or deal with conditions, or go tempest and focus on the overload for that...

But anyway... massive wall of text, no one will read...

TL/DR: there is a lot of synergy in the proposed traits above, and they dont work exclusively on their attunements...

I like some of your suggestions, but some of them seem borderline overpowered, like the stone heart applying weakness on every critical hit with no ICD, all critical hits inflicting burning with no ICD. The blind on burn was powerful pre-nerf so I think it's fine at 7-8 seconds. Weakness IMO as a condition should be nerfed so I'm not a fan of its passive application.

Not a huge fan of passive hard CCs so I can't be down with Tempest Defense or Gale Song applying Shocking Aura.

@killahmayne.9518 said:I like some of your suggestions, but some of them seem borderline overpoweredYes, but that is why discussions and tweaking are for. I'm not trying to say these are perfect solutions for everything, but I think it would be a good direction to start. There are still a lot to be done about utilities (some proposed here like conjures) and weapon skills.

@killahmayne.9518 said:like the stone heart applying weakness on every critical hit with no ICD, all critical hits inflicting burning with no ICD. The blind on burn was powerful pre-nerf so I think it's fine at 7-8 seconds. Weakness IMO as a condition should be nerfed so I'm not a fan of its passive application.

Those would have an ICD per target.stone heart would only apply weakness out of earth, as in earth you can't be critically hit. With an ICD per target.The burning precision inflicting burn on crits, same thing. ICD per target (just removed the chance part) in a way that you can nearly keep 1 burn stack if you constantly attack (3s burn every 5 secs, remember the trait also gives 33% burn duration) or 2 if you have 100% burn duration.The blind on burns is currently bad as it also does not have a ICD per target, so it gets wasted on any mob/object in your way. The way its set up in the proposed changes it competes with the burn on crit trait, so you would have to get your burns from elsewhere. Fire auras (meaning you blind opponents that hit you) or weapon skills (meaning you would have to be on fire) so I think it balances it out. But yes, an ICD per target is important here.

@killahmayne.9518 said:Not a huge fan of passive hard CCs so I can't be down with Tempest Defense or Gale Song applying Shocking Aura.Yes, I've seen this brought up a few times. And I agree that the potential to give shock aura to 10 targets can be quite an issue on certain game-modes.I think a good way to change this is to, instead of passive activation, is to recharge the skills. So tempest defense could recharge shocking aura CD (with a CD of 25 secs on the trait activation, and blast shocking aura if you currently have it active) while gale song would recharge eye of the storm and maybe giving quickness to it (with a CD of 90s) giving those skills a second chance to be used under certain circumstances.

@steki.1478 said:Water is just heals heals and and more heals with no mentions of ice related stuff and some traits are basically doing the same things in a slightly different way; the idea is nice, but some traits either need to get merged or just removed since there's no really competition between them, you get almost same support from all of them (and even if you dont get certain benefit in one tree, you get it in next one or from minors).Ice related stuff is quite hard on the ele. Maybe I think this because I've played ele for so long, but chill is such an OP condition I'm not sure how to place it on traits outside of improving frost auras or in arcane.Water has very similar traits but that work in different ways. So you can heal with auras, with going in and out of water, or with camping water and being a full healer.Using auras for heals can sustain you if you don't want to be in water (a fire/water weaver can get lots of auras by going in and out of fire, or a fire/water tempest using blasts, shouts and overloads to upkeep fire auras)...

@steki.1478 said:With certain spec combinations like fire+earth, ele could be literally unkillable (especially with water or weaver) while pulsing cancer around it, we dont need that in game. I dont really think that players find tank builds fun to play with or against; water weaver bruiser doesnt need an alternative tank build, it needs an alternative damage build.The fire/earth combo can be really strong, but the interesting thing with the combo is that it would lack mobility and would be very vulnerable to corrupt boons as fire/earth have no meaningful way of cleansing conditions (just resisting them)

@steki.1478 said:The major thing I dont like (in game, not with suggestions) is traits that work only in specific attunements. Anet's been updating weapon traits in other classes to provide bonuses even if you dont wield them, but gain additional bonus when it's equipped. I just dont understand why they are so late with this trend when it comes to ele.

I think traits that only work in an attunement are fine as long as they are stronger than normal traits for that tier and also there are other options on the traitlines.

@"lLobo.7960" said:I don't understand why you would want dmg traits on the water line.Why would you go into water for dmg?

I think it's more a matter of "would you still like to do damage while in water" as it'd be something you can do while supporting. Then again, I wouldn't directly advocate for straight up damage to water attunement but rather offensive support to reward a supportive build.

Anyway, the way attunements work (and IMO, the way they should keep working) is that the ele itself is very versatile, but attunements are very specific (hence why we dont have water skills doing massive dmg - goodbye ice spike). The efficacy of the ele on each area depends on how it improves a certain attunement. The ele itself (no traits) is almost like a blank (low dmg, low healing, low defense, low mobility) but this gives it the higher potential for specializing. This specialization comes from focusing the elements that are associated with that role: Fire for sustained dmg, air for burst and mobility, earth for defense and water for healing and cleansing.

The remove defensive conditions and CC from air and fire and put them in earth and water...

FYI, I don't agree with that change, but that's basically the standard you're putting to water attunement.

@Leo G.4501 said:I think it's more a matter of "would you still like to do damage while in water" as it'd be something you can do while supporting. Then again, I wouldn't directly advocate for straight up damage to water attunement but rather offensive support to reward a supportive build.But you can do dmg while supporting. That is the whole point of most of the changes here. Of course you are not going to heal your group or yourself in other attunements as much as you could do in water...If you trait water to improve your heals, you can get heals from auras, make auras give regen and improve regen... Those are all obtainable out of water attunement. Healing with auras is mostly better to do out of water attunement (with the proposed changes, fire can output a lot of auras). With thempest you can boost this healing to your group with shared auras... So a fire/water/tempest can use fire auras to heal while doing some good hybrid dmg and buffing the group. It will not deal as much dmg as focused fire dmg (due to getting aura traits in fire instead of dmg traits) or as an water ele (dut to loosing all the water attune bonuses) but it would still be viable.

@Leo G.4501 said:The remove defensive conditions and CC from air and fire and put them in earth and water...

FYI, I don't agree with that change, but that's basically the standard you're putting to water attunement.Fire is sustained dmg, meaning slow and constant building might, doing power and condi (burn) dmg and a few ways of sustaining (blinds, resistance)Earth is defense and (lower) condi dmg, meaning bleeds, dmg mitigation and some defense against conditions and CC (stab, earth armor)Air is control and burst, meaning fury, crit dmg (precision and ferocity), mobility (superspeed, swiftness) to deliver the burst, and control and improved dmg against cc'ed foes, etcWater is healing and cleansing, it does have some control trough chill, and that is missing on the proposed traits, but as mentioned above, I'm not sure how to give ele a whole bunch of chill...