Elementalist Traitlines for the current state of the game

[lLobo.7960]

Elementalist used to have a lot of diversity in its traits and be able to fill different roles in a group. Not anymore.

With the changes in the game over the past years and expacks, elementalist way of buffing allies, providing support and dealing dmg has become obsolete and after many nerfs not even viable in some cases. Ele has become a simple melee dps class with not much flavor to it.

I'd like to see more synergy for ele traits, to provide ways for eles (and tempests and weavers) to become more than just dps. Tempest need to provide better support with auras and overloads, be it offensive or defensive support.

Fire:

Improves sustained damage through power and burns, buffs power and condition dmg through might.

• 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, and burning lasts longer.
  • Major Adept: Blinding Ashes - Blind foes that you burn (5s ICD per target).
  • Major Adept: Powerful Auras - Auras you apply give might (4 stacks 10s). 
• Minor Master: Sunspot - Inflict damage and burning at your location and gain a fire aura when you attune to fire.
  • Major Master: -Burning rage: Gain increased condition dmg based on your power. When you gain fire aura, burn nearby foes.
  • Major Master: Smothering Auras - Fire auras you apply last longer and pulse resolution (1s every second).
  • Major Master: Power Overwhelming - Gain increased power when above the might threshold. Deal more damage to burning foes.
• Minor Grandmaster: Pyromancer's Training - Reduces recharge on all fire weapon skills. Each skill you use while attuned to fire grants you might.
  • Major Grandmaster: Persisting Flames - Executing blast finishers on fire fields grant fire aura to you. Fire fields last longer. 
  • Major Grandmaster: Pyromancer's Puissance - Gain a stacking damage and condition damage bonus while attuned to fire (1% per second up to 10%). Stacks last for 10s and reset duration upon application.
  • Major Grandmaster: Conjurer - Conjure utilities skills recharge faster. Conjure weapon provide higher bonuses and conjure abilities have reduced recharge .

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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 cleanse to make sure you can stay in fire longer to deliver the dmg (instead of having to swap to a defensive attunement)

Air:

Improves mobility, burst and critical damage and crowd control.

• 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: Raging Storm - Critically striking a foe grants fury. Gain ferocity while under the effects of fury.
  • Major Master: Tempest Defense - Cast Shocking Aura when disabled. Deal increased damage to stunned or knocked-down foes.
• Minor Grandmaster: Aeromancer's Training - Gain ferocity based on your precision. Reduces recharge on all air weapon skills.
  • 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.

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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:

is about codition dmg (with bleeds) and defense through reducing dmg, condition dmg and applying weakness and cripple to opponents.

• 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. (Armor of Earth now pulses stability -1s- and protection -1s- for the duration)
  • Major Adept: Serrated Stones - Bleeds you apply last longer; Apply bleed to foes you apply cripple or immobilize to.
  • Major Adept: Rock Solid - Gain stability when attuning to earth. Magnetic auras you apply pulse stability (1s every second)
• Minor Master: Earthen Blast - Bleed and cripple foes for 3 seconds when attuning to earth.
  • Major Master: Geomancer's Defense - Apply resistance when you apply protection. Remove movement impairing conditions when you receive stability.
  • Major Master: Elemental Shielding - Grant protection when applying an aura to yourself or an ally. Protection you apply have improved damage reduction.
  • Major Master: Strength of Stone - Gain expertise based on your toughness.
• Minor Grandmaster: Geomancer's Training - You recover more quickly from slow, crippling, immobilizing, and chilling. Reduces recharge on all earth weapon skills.
  • 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. You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth.

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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 trait 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 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:

is about cleanse and healing. Its the go-to sustain traitline for ele.

• Minor Adept: Aquatic Benevolence - regenerate health (Soothing mist) and gain Healing Power while attuned to Water.
  • Major Adept: Invigorating Auras - Gain frost aura when critically hit. Auras you apply give regeneration (3s) and 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 regeneration and vigor; reduce recharge on cantrips.
• Minor Master: Healing Ripple - Heal nearby allies when attuning to water.
  • Major Master: Soothing Ice - Frost Auras you apply slowly heal the receiver (pulse healing for frost aura duration).
  • 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: Flow like water - Block or evading an attack heals you and gives 10% healing effectiveness.
• Minor Grandmaster: Aquamancer's Training - Reduces recharge on all water weapon skills. Regeneration you apply have improved effects.
  • 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 provide a bonus to healing power.

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This changes make 3 clear options on the water line: improving auras (auras can give regen and vigor, frost auras able to give regen twice, 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:

is about fast swaping attunements, giving short buffs to each and all attunment on swap and about arcane skills.

• 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 -  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 Lockdown - Gain a boon when you disable a foe, 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.
• 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

Tempest:

is about staying longer in attunements and overloading them for greater effects. It relies on caster centered AoEs and group support.

• 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 - 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
• Minor Grandmaster: Hardy Conduit - Pulse protection and barrier 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 4 secs (instead of 2).
  • Major Grandmaster: Lucid Singularity - Remove and gain massive resistance to movement-impeding conditions while overloading your attunements. Overloads pulse superspeed.
  • Major Grandmaster: Tempestuous Auras - When you apply an aura to yourself, apply the same aura to 10 allies.

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This gives 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.

Weaver:

is about combining attunements and using dual skills. It gives the ele options for a bit of mobility, barrier and vitality to use its melee range (with sword) more reliable or provides bonus for swaping to diferent attunements and combinations.

• 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 (+100). Gain bonus vitality when wielding a sword (+40) or a dagger (+40). 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 damage to you, Air - increased condition duration, Earth - reduced condition duration 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 barrier 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.

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With the changes to air (superspeed can give quickness) there are a lot of synergy with weaver traits. Removing the ferocity bonus from elements of rage, and making it a flat crit bonus when attuning to a single element, makes it more limited in use, but a great synergy with bonus on dps oriented attunments that also provide bonus while at the attunement.

Edited April 14, 2022 by lLobo.7960
Updating

[MyPuppy.8970]

I like that. I'd love that. Not gonna happen though.

[Enigmoid.1264]

You have obviously put a lot of work into this but your changes to support elementalist do little to nothing to improve its viability and are muddled and confused. In particular looking at the water and tempest trait changes while I see many improvements there are some things that just don't work and actively hurt tempest in its support capacity. You haven't looked at weapon skills or utilities so it is difficult to comment on exactly how your trait changes would play out.

A general comment would be that your traits are FAR TOO FOCUSED on their attunement instead of general changes to playstyle. This is the whole issue with elementalist traits is that they pigeonhole you into attunements when the class was designed to swap attunements.Your competing traits generally are poorly balanced. If a trait requires your whole setup to be build around it you will always or never pick that trait. Furthermore traits that compete with one another yet have insane synergy with one another will always feel like trash to pick.

You see this poor design in the tempest traits.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.Major Master: Elemental Bastion - Auras you apply heal allies.

Tempest shouts virtually do nothing except apply an aura. "Feel the Burn". 1 stack of burn and a paltry packet of damage besides the fire aura. So why is the most fundamental trait about auras (heal on aura) in competition with something that reduces the cooldown of skills that do almost nothing but apply auras? The aura from shouts isn't meaningful if it doesn't do anything. (I assume the boon and condition is the same old might/swiftness/regen/protection thing). These two should not be in opposition [buff allies by sharing auras, improving shouts] as they are more or less the same thing.

The minor traits in tempest are still unneeded trash. You don't need more swiftness. So many ele skills and traits give swiftness that this minor trait is useless. Fix: Have the minor traits apply to five people or change the swiftness into a second or two of quickness (upon completion). Instead of protection have overloads give stability baseline (to nearby allies as well because ele has 0 stability outside of Earth attunement) because getting off an overload in competitive environments is virtually impossible. This is part of the reason why tempest sucks and part of the required fixes.

The Tempest GM traits likewise have 0 focus and are too specific to make any sort of sense. Lets say I am not using a support build but trying to be more damage oriented as you say. Then I get to choose between a benefit that I only get with a warhorn and a sand squall every 30 seconds, movement condi removal on overload, and aurashare on a build with minimal aura generation and benefits. These GM traits are complete trash and literally do nothing in this case. You could not run a GM tempest trait on dps tempest and not notice anything. Currently the GM traits are bad for dps tempest but at least I can get a little heal and some frost aura.

The water traits are a complete mess.

Please don't put vitality only when attuned to water to avoid health yo-yo (the attunement bonuses should be permanent or 1 bonus is permanent and the other temporary. i.e. always receive the vitality and get the healing power only when attuned to water).

Elementalist has soothing mist because its main heals are locked behind water attunement and a support/healer that doesn't always have its 'oh crap' button available needs something to mitigate this. Which is why ele has soothing mist. It looks bad to have a GM trait that absolutely requires a prerequisite Masters trait (does Soothing Power do anything if you don't take Aquamancer's training?) in order to get anything out of it.There are just too many tradeoffs in water for these traits to work, especially in 5 man content where these changes are severe nerfs.

Soothing mist is needed as a baseline to help viability of non staff support/heal builds which have low healing output, especially if you are not camping water attunement.

There is no meaningful condi clear in the traits outside of water. Competitive builds in PvP are still forced into the water traitline. Currently support tempest in PvP can give weak soothing mist and still clear some condis. Now it can clear condis or have soothing mist (on others). None of these changes help tempest in PvP and are in fact a severe nerf. Likewise a nerf to weaver sustain.

None of these changes address the core issues with ele. Traitlines are still to hyper focused on attunements. No meaningful condi cleanse trait outside of water. Aura benefits scattered in multiple traitlines with boons from auras locked in traitlines. You simply can't make a cohesive support build with protection and stabilty solely available in earth, regen and vigor only available in water, fury and quickness only available in air when other classes don't need 4 traitlines to make it happen (compare to druid and firebrand). Too many tradeoffs.

[lLobo.7960]

@Enigmoid.1264 said:Tempest shouts virtually do nothing except apply an aura. "Feel the Burn". 1 stack of burn and a paltry packet of damage besides the fire aura. So why is the most fundamental trait about auras (heal on aura) in competition with something that reduces the cooldown of skills that do almost nothing but apply auras? The aura from shouts isn't meaningful if it doesn't do anything. (I assume the boon and condition is the same old might/swiftness/regen/protection thing). These two should not be in opposition [buff allies by sharing auras, improving shouts] as they are more or less the same thing.

The propose is to improve auras on their respective traitlines:@lLobo.7960 said:

• Fire Major Master: Powerful Auras - Auras you apply give might. Fire auras you apply last longer pulse resistance (1s every second).
• Fire Major Master: Power Overwhelming - Gain condition damage based on your power. When you gain fire aura, burn nearby foes.
• Fire 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.
• Air Major Adept: Zephyr's Boon - Grant boons to allies you grant auras to. Glyphs apply boons based on your attunement.
• Air Major Master: Zephyr speed - Static auras you apply give superspeed (3s). Apply quickness (3s) when you apply superspeed.
• Earth Major Master: Elemental Shielding - Grant protection when applying an aura to yourself or an ally. Protection you apply have improved damage reduction.
• Water Major Adept: Soothing Ice - Gain frost aura when critically hit. Frost auras you apply give regeneration (3s).
• Water Major Master: Invigorating torrents - Auras you apply also grant regeneration and vigor.
• Major Master: Final Shielding - Create an Lesser Arcane Shield when your health drops below the threshold. Arcane shield is now an aura.

So a tempest can focus on auras healing and therefore have less auras since it looses the shouts CD reduction, or focus on more auras (and boons and conditions from shouts) with shouts on a reduced CD. Then it can further:

• Spec on fire auras and have auras giving might, applying extra burns, and pulsing resistance;
• Spec on air and having auras providing fury and swiftness, and static auras providing superspeed and quickness;
• Spec on earth and having auras providing improved protection;
• Spec on water and having auras providing regen and vigor, with frost aura providing regen twice (so removing 2 conditions with GM)
• Spec on Arcane and have arcane shield applying to 10 people.So if you want to be a tempest healer, you can choose to use auras to heal and focus less on staying in water attune, using other attunements (fire provides tons of auras) and therefore providing more boons or focusing more on damage, or you can focus on using water attunement to heal (lower CD on water skills, soothing mist, recharge water attune when using a heal, lower overload CD by using skills from that attunement, etc) and use shouts to provide more auras for buffs...

@Enigmoid.1264 said:The minor traits in tempest are still unneeded trash. You don't need more swiftness. So many ele skills and traits give swiftness that this minor trait is useless. Fix: Have the minor traits apply to five people or change the swiftness into a second or two of quickness (upon completion). Instead of protection have overloads give stability baseline (to nearby allies as well because ele has 0 stability outside of Earth attunement) because getting off an overload in competitive environments is virtually impossible. This is part of the reason why tempest sucks and part of the required fixes.

Agree in part. I think overloads, on channeling, should pulse effects around the caster. Fire already pulses might, water already pulses heal and cleanse(?)... air should pulse electric charge, earth should pulse stab (does it currently pulses protection or just apply it once?).

@Enigmoid.1264 said:The Tempest GM traits likewise have 0 focus and are too specific to make any sort of sense. Lets say I am not using a support build but trying to be more damage oriented as you say. Then I get to choose between a benefit that I only get with a warhorn and a sand squall every 30 seconds, movement condi removal on overload, and aurashare on a build with minimal aura generation and benefits. These GM traits are complete trash and literally do nothing in this case. You could not run a GM tempest trait on dps tempest and not notice anything. Currently the GM traits are bad for dps tempest but at least I can get a little heal and some frost aura.

Tempest GM trait for dps would be the movement one. This makes overloads not only break stun, but also let you free to move while overloading. It might not be optimal for a raid dps spec, but its great on competitive areas where people will try to pin you down.

@Enigmoid.1264 said:Please don't put vitality only when attuned to water to avoid health yo-yo (the attunement bonuses should be permanent or 1 bonus is permanent and the other temporary. i.e. always receive the vitality and get the healing power only when attuned to water).

I thought about that. The idea was to have it more in line with the other minors as a good stat bonuses.Ele has a stat deficiency (lower defense and health pool without better base values or coefficients on skills to compensate) and need better stats bonuses on traits.One option I though was to have soothing mist in a selfish version as the minor, and soothing mist providing healing power. Then when you share soothing mist with 10 people, you also provide then more healing power for their own heals.

@Enigmoid.1264 said:Elementalist has soothing mist because its main heals are locked behind water attunement and a support/healer that doesn't always have its 'oh kitten' button available needs something to mitigate this. Which is why ele has soothing mist. It looks bad to have a GM trait that absolutely requires a prerequisite Masters trait (does Soothing Power do anything if you don't take Aquamancer's training?) in order to get anything out of it.There are just too many tradeoffs in water for these traits to work, especially in 5 man content where these changes are severe nerfs.

Yes, I though about that, as mentioned above. The way I see is that you can be a full on healer, reducing CD on water skills and providing group-wide soothing mist and water attune skills (and overload if you go tempest) providing heals, or you can use water attune heals as a spike heal, with your healing skill recharging the water attunement. In this last case, you could be on other attunement, pop into water (triggering the AoE heal from minor master trait), use the water skills, pop out of water, use your heal that recharges water attune, then going into water attune again for another AoE heal from the minor master (and potentially another overload) . While one style provides constant heals and regen, the other provides more burst heals.

@Enigmoid.1264 said:Soothing mist is needed as a baseline to help viability of non staff support/heal builds which have low healing output, especially if you are not camping water attunement.It is still a great option if you don't need vigor and regen on every aura or if you plan to pick up your allies with the ress trait. But it is selfish, although it is together with a water skills CD reduction. Good option for dueling eles that don't focus on auras (like weavers) and prefer to remove conditions with water line instead of trying to resist them with the fire (resistance on flame auras) or earth (reduced condi dmg on protection, diamond skin, etc) lines.

@Enigmoid.1264 said:There is no meaningful condi clear in the traits outside of water. Competitive builds in PvP are still forced into the water traitline. Currently support tempest in PvP can give weak soothing mist and still clear some condis. Now it can clear condis or have soothing mist (on others). None of these changes help tempest in PvP and are in fact a severe nerf. Likewise a nerf to weaver sustain.

I don't think other lines should be removing tons of conditions. That is one of the roles of water. On the proposed traitlines there are 3 ways of dealing with condis:

• Water cleanses condis (with auras or with shorter skills CD and water attune)
• Fire resists conditions with pulsing resistance on fire aura (that you get from skills, blasts, fire attune, overloads, shouts). It is very powerful but can be corrupted/striped.
• Earth reduces condi dmg with protection. Also can be corrupted, but it reduces condi dmg and direct dmg, making protection a very powerful buff.So you can take one or two of those to deal with conditions. A Fire/X/X ele can use the fire spec to reduce a lot of condi pressure as long as it can keep its fire auras going (with blasts, with constant swap into fire, with shouts and overloads, etc). Fire/Air with fresh air can nearly keep permanent fire aura, or combine with earth to have a strong condi duelist dealing tons of burns with the auras and resisting the condi and power dmg with protection... Those paths are viable, but still vulnerable to corrupt/strip, in which case, water would still be better for condi removal, but not as good pressure on itself. Its about options...

@Enigmoid.1264 said:None of these changes address the core issues with ele. Traitlines are still to hyper focused on attunements. No meaningful condi cleanse trait outside of water. Aura benefits scattered in multiple traitlines with boons from auras locked in traitlines. You simply can't make a cohesive support build with protection and stabilty solely available in earth, regen and vigor only available in water, fury and quickness only available in air when other classes don't need 4 traitlines to make it happen (compare to druid and firebrand). Too many tradeoffs.

Trade-off are important.A fire/air/tempest would provide tons of support (with might/fury/quickness/superspeed/swiftness/resistance) while also able to apply great dps.A earth/water/tempest would provide great heal and support with protection/regen/vigor/heals and cleanses.A Fire/Arcane/tempest would provide tons of might and deal a lot of condi dmg with burns.A fire/air/weaver could be great dps using fire as a protection from condis with the fire aura traits, or be a pure dps with fire traits improving dmg and condi dmg.A air/water/weaver could be a great duelist focusing on superspeed and quickness from traits and aurasA fire/arcane/weaver could use lingering elements to keep its fire attunement buffs while cycling other attunements, becoming a great hybrid (power and condi) dps.

Thanks for putting time to take a look.The idea is to have the discussion going. I'm sorry the format does not make it more clear the changes from the current state of traits.

I didn't have time to make more proposals for changes in skills and utilities. And didn't want to make this more than what already is...

[Enigmoid.1264]

Your traits still don't work because they don't fix the main issues with elementalist. They are better, by far, for the most part but they are bandages on cancer patients. In the context of tempest support this is especially clear. Look at druid with stone spirit - 1 utility and 1 trait (which buffs all the spirits) puts significant protection on the entire party (10 people). Compare with having to take the entire Earth traitline (and getting little out of it) to apply some protection. It just doesn't work. Druid can put out tons of boons. Chrono can put tons of boons. Ele has to choose between a couple common boons?

The context of gear must be made. If you are trying to apply boons you are going to be running boon duration, of which there are no good dps+concentration sets (like seekers in pvp). So this idea of a boon-dps tempest is kinda moot.

The GM tempest traits are bad. Lucid singularity is terrible. The issue is being cc-ed during an overload, not getting crippled. Tempest NEEDS more stability for its class mechanic to work. Period.

The traits just don't work together and have too much anti synergy. Not really your fault, its how ele was designed and why ele traits suck. I.e. look at air/fire. The minors are all dps focused and you have a selection of a few support traits. There are potentially 1.5ish major support traits (if I'm getting 1-2 might per aura then this line is useless) and 0 minor support traits in the fire line. Why bother? Its just not cohesive. Yet there are no other might generating traits.

I think the issue is that a lot of the damage modifiers simply need to go with that damage added to weapon/utility skills. This low base damage + tons of modifiers creates a potential monster in PvE leading to ele not having any damage in PvP when it can't run the modifiers. You just have more and more modifers and extra stats which will make this effect worse.

Not trying to shoot you down. I do like a lot of your changes (the air traitline is quite nice).

I will post my thoughts on traits later.

[otto.5684]

I love the fire changes. I always want to play a fire condi Ele and this could really make this a reality.

[lLobo.7960]

@Enigmoid.1264 said:Your traits still don't work because they don't fix the main issues with elementalist. They are better, by far, for the most part but they are bandages on cancer patients. In the context of tempest support this is especially clear. Look at druid with stone spirit - 1 utility and 1 trait (which buffs all the spirits) puts significant protection on the entire party (10 people). Compare with having to take the entire Earth traitline (and getting little out of it) to apply some protection. It just doesn't work. Druid can put out tons of boons. Chrono can put tons of boons. Ele has to choose between a couple common boons?

The context of gear must be made. If you are trying to apply boons you are going to be running boon duration, of which there are no good dps+concentration sets (like seekers in pvp). So this idea of a boon-dps tempest is kinda moot.

The GM tempest traits are bad. Lucid singularity is terrible. The issue is being cc-ed during an overload, not getting crippled. Tempest NEEDS more stability for its class mechanic to work. Period.

The traits just don't work together and have too much anti synergy. Not really your fault, its how ele was designed and why ele traits suck. I.e. look at air/fire. The minors are all dps focused and you have a selection of a few support traits. There are potentially 1.5ish major support traits (if I'm getting 1-2 might per aura then this line is useless) and 0 minor support traits in the fire line. Why bother? Its just not cohesive. Yet there are no other might generating traits.

I think the issue is that a lot of the damage modifiers simply need to go with that damage added to weapon/utility skills. This low base damage + tons of modifiers creates a potential monster in PvE leading to ele not having any damage in PvP when it can't run the modifiers. You just have more and more modifers and extra stats which will make this effect worse.

Not trying to shoot you down. I do like a lot of your changes (the air traitline is quite nice).

I will post my thoughts on traits later.

Not sure...Using plaguedoctor or seraph you could build a tempest/fire/arcane, provide might/fury/resistance (attune fire, overload, blast, warhorn share) to the whole party/raid while outputing considerable condi dmg (burn ele doesn't need expertise). Using water instead of arcane, you would loose some condi dmg but gain great healing options (using the healing skill to recharge water attunement) providing good might/regen/vigor/resistance and still doing great condi dps.

There are not great option for a offensive buffer (as seeker in pvp), but hariers or comanders (if the extra toughness is not an issue) would do great for fire/air/tempest using the auras to provide constant quickness and superspeed to the group/raid. Each air overload would provide quickness (with shock aura traits), swap into fire for fire aura, might share, blasts, swap into earth for another aura and extend buffs with Wh, back in to air for more overload.

Ele is not a passive boom-bot like chrono or druid can be, it would be a different way to provide support. I don't think we should have the same passive way of providing every boon in the game to the whole party/raid, but would be nice to update tempest/ele to provide more boons based on their chosen playstyle (agressive with fire/air or defensive with earth/water) while also giving the weaver and core ele more viable combinations (with resistance in fire, quickness/superspeed in air, lower hp threshold for earth traits such as diamond skin, etc)

[lLobo.7960]

Did some edits on the original post to include a few more things from discussions here...

Traits that give auras pulsing boons, therefore to benefit from longer auras (from runes and other traits), etc...Lesser arcane power on attunement swap in arcane instead of fury (fury in air) or might (might in fire)... Makes it a nice synergy with arcane traits and weaver (faster attunes)

[lLobo.7960]

Really hope Ele gets some more synergy in the upcoming patch.Maybe the devs now come around the forums to see suggestions and feedback.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Elem and weaver are currently at their best after years of nothing since the review of every specialisations.There is now "okai" synergy between specs, with Weakness, Vulnerability, boons, swiftness/regeneration, auras, ...

To me there are still some issues :Earth Lane. I still don't understand the purposes except to be a very cheap tankTempest. I still don't understand the purposes. Traits and shouts give cheap boons with short duration but long CD ...no need to say they are useless without Water and/or fire lanes (at the price of the others traits with no adequacy). We need something more, a DMG buff for allies or quickness/alacrity/resistance. I will exchange 1 or 2sec of the auras for shorter CD and less common boons than 4sec regen or protection.Useless Utility Skills (Effects/affinity, CD, affilied traits ...) and elite skills.

[lLobo.7960]

Another balance patch, and tempest is still unable to provide decent buffs, locking it out of being used as a support from most of the game.

 

Really wish devs would have a good look on how to improve synergy among elementalist lines.

Something beyond "swiftness cleanse conditions, yay!"

 

[Mini Crinny.6190]

2 hours ago, lLobo.7960 said:

Another balance patch, and tempest is still unable to provide decent buffs, locking it out of being used as a support from most of the game.

 

Really wish devs would have a good look on how to improve synergy among elementalist lines.

Something beyond "swiftness cleanse conditions, yay!"

 

Elementalist

We feel that the elementalist has been in a very good place since the July 2020 balance update. Both Tempests and Weavers have effective high damage power and condition damage builds available, while the Tempest is also powerful in a support role.

 

nope, you are wrong, tempest is powerful hurr durr

Edited May 3, 2021 by Mini Crinny.6190