Water traits give more dmg than fire traits now.

[Vova.2640]

Great balance Anet. 10/10.

[steki.1478]

Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

[Crystal Black.8190]

I don't know why this trait even exists in water. Isn't water supposed to be about healing and condition removal, maybe some control with chill. Vulnerability and increased damage by it would fit much better in the air line.

[LazySummer.2568]

@"steki.1478" said:Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

How about we stop this hybrid damage nonsense (just like the melee mage bs) because it has and will never work except on condi mirage of all things and look where that got them. You're either too strong or purposely made weak because you get the double "advantage".

[lLobo.7960]

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@"steki.1478" said:Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

How about we stop this hybrid damage nonsense (just like the melee mage bs) because it has and will never work except on condi mirage of all things and look where that got them. You're either too strong or purposely made weak because you get the double "advantage".

How about we having options?

[XxzaverxX.6790]

In all honesty, having hybrid or any type of build available to us is a blessing I'm glad we're able to have some type of build diversity. Hopefully more will come in the future.

[LazySummer.2568]

@lLobo.7960 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@"steki.1478" said:Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

How about we stop this hybrid damage nonsense (just like the melee mage bs) because it has and will never work except on condi mirage of all things and look where that got them. You're either too strong or purposely made weak because you get the double "advantage".

How about we having options?

you get the current class that stays bad then because too many types of damage + too many skills means it can do too many different things so gotta keep it balanced. That's also how we're so diverse right now having only sword builds so have fun.

[Jski.6180]

It will be nerfed in time they are normalizing ele dmg they been doing it for some time nerf a major dmg effect with a buff to another dmg effect to ease ppl into the new dmg output that anet feels the class should be doing. Mark my words when this is all said and done ele will not be the top dps class any more for the most part its not.

[Stallic.2397]

It's funny how the water spec is now overloaded with benefits.

Buffs are great, but I gotta say, I wasn't expecting a traitline used heavily for ele's to get even more buffs.

Add that to the cleansing wave buffs we got last patch. No doubt Anet wants Ele's to rely solely on healing power to achieve anything in this game

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm willing to entertain a water/air/weaver build. But... I don't find much utility in it. The only open slot is the grandmaster line, but the weaver can't make much use out of Soothing Power, Powerful Aura, and Cleansing water. A zerker weaver can't make much use out of any of them.

[Zilong.1407]

i love it. I've been wanting more damage in both water traits and weapon skill for a long time now.

[MyPuppy.8970]

I'm planning to play DD Fire/Water/Air. I wish investing in a traitline also granted a cd reduction of respective attunement, but baseline CDR on weapon skills sounds good enough. Too bad it doesn't benefit dual skills. This lack of synergy is what makes me want to drop weaver out. I'm gonna miss ToF though, and core elites feel useless.

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

I'm curious about water/air/tempest dps in raid that provide some added bonus to group though, since grandmaster trait is still free for aura share/cleanse with the 2 damage buff. It'll give the raid group some adaptability, especially for groups that healers struggled or unable to adapt to situations.

[Blocki.4931]

I don't see the issue with this? Water has some bursty skills on it so having traits that augment them makes sense, no? Some people use that traitline because they're supports, they could do with a little bit of additional damage for sure. Don't be so narrowminded tot hink that supports aren't supposed to deal damage. Bad supports don't, that's why they're bad or at the very least not played.

[steki.1478]

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:I'm curious about water/air/tempest dps in raid that provide some added bonus to group though, since grandmaster trait is still free for aura share/cleanse with the 2 damage buff. It'll give the raid group some adaptability, especially for groups that healers struggled or unable to adapt to situations.

Fire spec still gives 150 power and 10% damage outside of fire attunement (+300 power while in fire) and 20% cdr of fire skills which is pretty big. Water skills are useless and you barely even attune to water to use extra 10% damage.

[Ultramex.1506]

Well at least i can play ice shaman now

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

@steki.1478 said:

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:I'm curious about water/air/tempest dps in raid that provide some added bonus to group though, since grandmaster trait is still free for aura share/cleanse with the 2 damage buff. It'll give the raid group some adaptability, especially for groups that healers struggled or unable to adapt to situations.

Fire spec still gives 150 power and 10% damage outside of fire attunement (+300 power while in fire) and 20% cdr of fire skills which is pretty big. Water skills are useless and you barely even attune to water to use extra 10% damage.

I'll give you the CD one, which is a big thing. But in terms of damage buff water offers 10% Piercing Shards and 10% Flow like Water. This is only slight worse than fire traitline, which has 10% Pyromancer's Training, 4% empowering flames and 4-8% Power Overwhelming (assuming full zerk + food + 25 might). Obviously if min-max damage you'll go for fire for the reduce CD + extra burns + persisting flames, but water doesn't lose out that much in terms of damage while offering nice synergy to tempest aura share.

[steki.1478]

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:I'm curious about water/air/tempest dps in raid that provide some added bonus to group though, since grandmaster trait is still free for aura share/cleanse with the 2 damage buff. It'll give the raid group some adaptability, especially for groups that healers struggled or unable to adapt to situations.

Fire spec still gives 150 power and 10% damage outside of fire attunement (+300 power while in fire) and 20% cdr of fire skills which is pretty big. Water skills are useless and you barely even attune to water to use extra 10% damage.

I'll give you the CD one, which is a big thing. But in terms of damage buff water offers 10% Piercing Shards and 10% Flow like Water. This is only slight worse than fire traitline, which has 10% Pyromancer's Training, 4% empowering flames and 4-8% Power Overwhelming (assuming full zerk + food + 25 might). Obviously if min-max damage you'll go for fire for the reduce CD + extra burns + persisting flames, but water doesn't lose out that much in terms of damage while offering nice synergy to tempest aura share.

You get 300 power when you cast those fire skills which is big. It's comparable to 10% damage while in water attunement, but water doesnt have any useful dps skills, while fire ones are the part of rotation.

It's definitely viable to play FA tempest with either fire, arcane or water spec, but I still think that fire is the most reliable one for dps because the buffs are consistent and part of the rotation. Arcane (and water to some degree) rely on good supports, but they also bring decent self sustain so they are definitely more newbie friendly, while bringing comparable dps numbers.

[Yannir.4132]

Makes you wonder whether a Core Ele with Fire/Air/Water will be the highest DPS ele build after the patch.

[Yannir.4132]

@steki.1478 said:Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Hey all - the Elementalist notes were missing an entry from the initial posting:

• Power Overwhelming: This trait has been reworked. It now grants 150 bonus power while the elementalist has at least 10 stacks of might. This power bonus is doubled while attuned to fire.

Sorry about that - it was a change made early, but with the note coming in a bit late. That should be all the notes.

btw, in case you didn't see it.

[steki.1478]

@Yannir.4132 said:

@steki.1478 said:Fire still gives you a lot of burns and cdr on most damaging skills. It's finally acting as a hybrid power/condi spec rather than full power one. Now they just need to do something with power overwhelming (% power -> condi damage) because there's almost no need to ever use it.

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Hey all - the Elementalist notes were missing an entry from the initial posting:

• Power Overwhelming: This trait has been reworked. It now grants 150 bonus power while the elementalist has at least 10 stacks of might. This power bonus is doubled while attuned to fire.

Sorry about that - it was a change made early, but with the note coming in a bit late. That should be all the notes.

btw, in case you didn't see it.

I did, that comment was before they updated the notes. Comment above yours also addresses it ;)

I made a suggestion somewhere for it to give extra power, but less condi per might stack, but they decided to just give extra power on 10 might instead, which is a lot better for ele.

[Dadnir.5038]

Well, granted that PvP players complained that they were pigeonholed in water and didn't have enough damage, I don't find surprising that at some point they would put more damage into the water traitline to try to soothe the complaints.

That said I wouldn't be surprised to see the core PvE ele build being "viable" in PvE end game after this patch.

[steki.1478]

Considering that ele is a hybrid class by nature, its core specs should be focused on both offense and defense in some way.

Fire has defense in form of cleanses and blind. Offense is obvious.

Water has offense from vuln. It would be great if it had GM trait focused on offense as well, for example have some damage proc when you chill someone (works great with frost aura). Defense is obvious.

Air defense comes from superspeed, but it would be nice to have a mobility+support based GM trait like quickness on superspeed application. Even master traits could use something like that. Offense traits are very obvious.

Earth is all around balanced between offense and defense, but it's generally very weak spec because none of those are as impactful as other specs.

[CETheLucid.3964]

Water was one of the weakest attunements outside of healing and switching to it was always a huge risk outside of that. Even with all the buffed damage traits, it's not like water is going to unseat the DPS attunements. It's a good change overall and the fact that it has interplay with other elements is all the better.

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

@steki.1478 said:

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@NICENIKESHOE.7128 said:I'm curious about water/air/tempest dps in raid that provide some added bonus to group though, since grandmaster trait is still free for aura share/cleanse with the 2 damage buff. It'll give the raid group some adaptability, especially for groups that healers struggled or unable to adapt to situations.

Fire spec still gives 150 power and 10% damage outside of fire attunement (+300 power while in fire) and 20% cdr of fire skills which is pretty big. Water skills are useless and you barely even attune to water to use extra 10% damage.

I'll give you the CD one, which is a big thing. But in terms of damage buff water offers 10% Piercing Shards and 10% Flow like Water. This is only slight worse than fire traitline, which has 10% Pyromancer's Training, 4% empowering flames and 4-8% Power Overwhelming (assuming full zerk + food + 25 might). Obviously if min-max damage you'll go for fire for the reduce CD + extra burns + persisting flames, but water doesn't lose out that much in terms of damage while offering nice synergy to tempest aura share.

You get 300 power when you cast those fire skills which is big. It's comparable to 10% damage while in water attunement, but water doesnt have any useful dps skills, while fire ones are the part of rotation.

It's definitely viable to play FA tempest with either fire, arcane or water spec, but I still think that fire is the most reliable one for dps because the buffs are consistent and part of the rotation. Arcane (and water to some degree) rely on good supports, but they also bring decent self sustain so they are definitely more newbie friendly, while bringing comparable dps numbers.

Yeah 300 power when in fire + another 150 power from empowering flames minor trait. That's 450 power which is roughly 450/3550=12.6% damage boost when considering the standard SC build for tempest + 25 stacks of might. Along with 10% of pyro's training that's a good 22.6% damage buff from fire traitline when attune to fire and 18.4% buff when not in fire, so it is very comparable to straight up 20% buff from water as calculated below.

https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/elementalist/tempest/power/

Some people also kind of forget that this change allows piercing shards to work on non-water attunement by 10%, so you don't have to swap to water skills even if you trait for water line. Couple that 10% from piercing shard with 10% from the new Flow Like Water (10% damage when >75% health) it is still a good 20% damage buff.

Interestingly if you see this rotation video you'll notice tempest doesn't use fire as often, so the CD doesn't play that much into it.

So yeah I'd still go for fire/air/weaver if I'm just going for balls-to-walls dps on ele. But water/air/tempest is probably the better tempest dps/support hybrid build if tempest is your dig.

EDIT: fixing broken link, I gave up on build editor lol