Feedback on Toughness Change

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:eg. Many bosses and creatures in instanced content focus attacks on the player with the highest toughness. A minor trait, Stone Flesh gives an Elementalist additional toughness while attuned to earth and can cut off both going into Earth attunement and selecting the Earth traitline. So we're changing that trait to grant 7% damage reduction instead of 150 Toughness, allowing it to play well with that type of content and expand some build options.

Can you please expand this change to Signet of Earth and Rock Barrier and maybe even Elemental Polyphony.I wait for that change for years now and you do one each year (already did the one on Weave Self last year). Why not do all of them right now?

Probably because neither of those skills keep you from picking up a whole traitline/using traited earth attunement in PvE. Elemental Polyphony might be an oversight, though.

Yeah but it pretty much stops you from using scepter condi in raids, which is sad.

They have nothing to swap elemental poliphony to though, the other 3 elements use stats and vitality seems a bit off. As for scepter, the toughness buff lasts briefly since you want to cast the skill immediately, but I do agree that a damage reduction buff would be better (even better if it's a strong reduction but only for 5 attacks, each one reducing the number of stones floating around you).

@steki.1478 said:They have nothing to swap elemental poliphony to though, the other 3 elements use stats and vitality seems a bit off. As for scepter, the toughness buff lasts briefly since you want to cast the skill immediately, but I do agree that a damage reduction buff would be better (even better if it's a strong reduction but only for 5 attacks, each one reducing the number of stones floating around you).

Weeeell... looks like they added Vitality to it regardless :o

We already got a damage reduction buff on the Earth GM so that probably won't work. However, I could see +Protection duration. The only issue is see with that the additional duration could potentially be useless because Protection isn't innate to Earth. The reduced duration against incomming movement debilitating conditions on Earthen Blessing might also work. Of course, Earthen Blessing would have to be reworked in this case.

If you wanted to keep the defensive part of Rock Barrier, it might as well just get its duration shortened significantly and pulse some small Barrier? I'd love to see more Barrier connected to Earth...

@Xaylin.1860 said:

@steki.1478 said:They have nothing to swap elemental poliphony to though, the other 3 elements use stats and vitality seems a bit off. As for scepter, the toughness buff lasts briefly since you want to cast the skill immediately, but I do agree that a damage reduction buff would be better (even better if it's a strong reduction but only for 5 attacks, each one reducing the number of stones floating around you).

My comment from reddit regarding +vitality on some traits :

Temporary vitality mechanic kinda sucks though. It can either work as a flat heal (which kills the purpose of vitality), or a false info that you have more health (which in fact does nothing). Fb may upkeep it nearly permanently, but condi weaver has it like 50% of the time (from raid perspective).

If toughness from traits is such a huge raid killer, they could rework tanking mechanic to work like SH for example, where you pick your tank at the start, regardless of gear stats.

Alternatively, they can make such traits grant barrier every 10 seconds or so. That way it's more equal for all classes.

Earth spec needs a big overhaul, it's supposed to be a defensive spec and the only thing that it does good is prevent you from getting crit at the cost of you not doing almost any damage, cc or support. Literally every other spec has better sustain/survivability options than earth. Even superspeed on air can provide better defense than earth spec, while also giving you huge damage boost.

Ele definitely needs a lot of small barrier procs from skills and trait benefits from earth spec and they can be both condi and defense focused.

@steki.1478 said:

@"Xaylin.1860" said:

Alternatively, they can make such traits grant barrier every 10 seconds or so. That way it's more equal for all classes.

I wouldn't say that Earth is the single worst. Chaos, for example, isn't as great for sustain as it may seem (for me it's mainly Staff). However, the spicier benefits like crit immunity suffer from Earth weaponskills being unattractive dmg-wise. Burning packs more punch so usually I want to rotate out quickly. Now, others like Diamond Skin are just a bit iffy unless also heavily investing in Water because of tresholds (which makes it kinda useless 'cause Water). Flawed design imho.

To be honest, I am not a fan of pulsing Barrier "for free". But there are other options like "when casting Earth skills"(e.g. Pyromancers Puissance). If you added +× incomming Barrier when in Earth you could potentially have sth. usable. This should work sufficiently well for Ele. Scrapper has its trouble with this set up because it is linked to power damage which is mainly close combat and that nice -Vit.