proposed rework for elementalist profession

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Proposed rework for elementalist profession

Hello everyone, there have been a lot of balance related posts lately, but most tend to focus on a single element/elite spec/skill design. In this post I made an in depth balance proposal/wish list of problems I’ve encountered on my elementalist. Some traits are changed abit and some traitslots have gotten a completely new trait instead because of the previous trait not being relevant/lacking flavor or being changed over to a different specialization. This is by no means a community driven list although I believe most of the proposed balance changes are in line with the majority of the elementalist community. Feel free to add some questions/different design proposals, so we can adjust some ideas where necessary. (sorry for the lengthy post btw, invested abit more time into it then planned 😅). 
 

Philosophy on traitlines:

Every traitline should symbolize its attunement while simultaneously providing some key elements for certain build styles. In my opinion the best traitline key concepts are as follows:

Fire traitline: Fire attunement, power dps, burning dps, might gain, weapon conjuring
Air traitline: Air attunement, speed (superspeed, self-quickness and reduced recharge), critical strikes and CC’s.  
Earth traitline: Earth attunement, self-sustain, party sustain, bleeding damage.
Water traitline: Water attunement, healing, condition cleanse, DPS/personal healing
Arcane attunement: Switching between elements, aura’s, boonsupport& synergy, mobility
Tempest: Damage (power+condi), healing, alacrity support
Weaver: Damage (power+condi), surviveability.
Catalyst: Damage (power+condi), boonsupport, personal/group surviveability
 

Tweaking skill effects:
in this proposed rework there are almost no specific changes to skill coefficients/cooldowns etc. This primarily focuses on the skill designs and effects. The only time specific CD/dmge coefficients are mentioned is when this is an integral part of the skill design

 

Fire:

Adept major 2: Conjurer: conjure weapon skills and the conjured weapon abilities have reduced recharge.

Master major 2: (new trait) Master conjurer: your conjured weapons deal 20% more damage.

Grandmaster major 1: persisting flames: Fire fields created by weapon skills last longer, whenever you strike a foe while in fire attunement, gain increased strike damage for a duration (no longer requires field hit for buff).
Grandmaster major 3: Blinding ashes, increase damage from burning by 15%

 

Air:
Adept major 1: Zephyr’s boon: now grants superspeed when applying an aura (lower duration for allies)
Adept major 2: (new trait) disruptive air: steal a boon upon disabling an enemy

Master major 1: (new trait) whirling strikes: gain quickness when attuning to air

Master major 2: trait now grants 2 sec Fury upon crit/ 2 sec icd (previous effect)
Master major 3: Stormsoul: damage increased to 20% against disabled foes

Grandmaster major 3: (new trait) Arcane surge: arcane skills have reduced recharge, the next skill cast after an arcane skill has a 33% shorter cooldown.
 

Earth:
Adept major 1: earths embrace (now grants barrier to allies when attuning to earth)
Adept major 3: elemental shielding: now provides resistance instead of protection

Major master 2: rock solid (increase stacks of stability to 2)

Major grandmaster 1: Staunch auras (previously grandmaster catalyst); your auras now also grant stability to allies

Water:
Master major 1: arcane resurrection instead of soothing disruption (instead of providing auras now provides an AoE heal on successful finishing a revive).

Grandmaster major 2: (new trait) healing waters: 4% of your damage dealt is converted to personal heal instead.
 

Arcane:
Adept major 1: (new trait) empowered aura’s: auras now grant a boon specific to the elemental aura applied: fire=might, air=fury, earth= resistance, water=resolution.

Master major 1: Soothing disruption (previously on water master major)
Master major 3: smothering auras (previously on fire master major 2) remove increased duration on fire

Grandmaster major 1: evasive arcana (remove icd)
Grandmaster major 2: powerful aura (previously on water grandmaster major 2)
 

 

Tempest:
Adept major 1: Gale song (cast eye of the storm when disabled including stability)
Adept major 3: (new trait) master of singularity (singularity delay reduction -33%)

Master major 1: Tempestuous Aria: using a shout now grants alacrity to nearby allies
Master major 2: (new trait) overloading attunements: finishing an overload now grants increased stats depending on the attunement (fire=power, air=ferocity, earth=condi, water=healing power

Grandmaster minor: Hardy conduit: gain stability and swiftness when casting an overload. Finishing an overload grants an aura based on your attunement.
grandmaster major 1: Transcendent tempest: upon successfully completing an overload, gain increased damage (remove reduced time to attain singularity and increase duration to 15s)
Grandmaster major 2: Lucid singularity: now pulses alacrity when overloading
 

 

Weaver:
Adept major 2: inflict conditions whenever you use a dual strike based on your current elements (fire=burn, water=chilled, air=vulnerability, earth=bleeding)
Adept major 3: Grants increased vitality, gain additional vitality based on a portion of your power and condition damage (remove the sword requirement)

Master major 1: Weaver’s prowess: increase duration to 12 seconds, remove +10% condition damage

Grandmaster major 1: Elements of rage: increase duration to 12 seconds, damage and condition damage increased by 10% (instead of 5). Precision on vitality remains.
Grandmaster major 2: (new trait) every time you weave to another element, its singularity is instantly recharged.
Grandmaster major 3: invigorating strikes (now also applies to allies), additionally reduce cooldowns on stances by 20%.

Catalyst:

Adept minor: Depth of elements: no longer has a cd on energy gain after placing a sphere
Adept major 3: energized elements: no longer grants fury, now grants energy and reduces cooldown on jade spheres by 20%

Master major 2: (new trait) reduce cd’s on your augment skills by 20%
Master major 3: spectacular sphere: remove 10% damage reduction

Grandmaster major 1: Grant barrier to allies you grant auras to.
Grandmaster major 2: Empowered empowerment: doubles the effect of elemental empowerment regardless of the amount of stacks
 

 

Utilitiy skill changes:

Conjure skills don’t drop weapons on the ground anymore, cooldown conjure weapons is halved
signet of fire: now grants power instead of precision
signet of water: now grants healing power instead of -condi duration
signet of earth: now reduces incoming damage by 10%
glyph of renewal: recharge reduced to 50 seconds
Glyph of (lesser) elementals: no longer lose your elementals when using your mount
Lightning storm, ice storm, frost storm and invoke lightning no longer apply damage reduction per hit
Eye of the storm: now also grants shocking aura.
invigorating air: now also grants superspeed to allies
Tornado: Adjust its power level to competitive damage
Rebound: now grants the aura upon casting instead.
Weave self: duration weave self is increased to 30 seconds, remove perfect weave.
 

Weapon skills:

Staff:
Projectile speed AA increased by 50%
Water blast: can now target enemies and allies.
Stoning: able to hit multiple targets upon impact.
Ice spike: impact delay reduced by 50%
Eruption: impact delay reduced by 50%
Lightning surge: now also stuns upon impact, defiance break: 200
Gust: increased defiance break-> 400
Meteor shower no longer loses 10% damage on hit
 

Hammer:
Cooldown on flame wheel, ice coil, crescent wind and rocky loop removed.
Cooldown molten end, shock blast and ground pound reduced to 20 seconds
windstorm no longer propels yourself backwards

Sword:
riptide: no longer evades backwards

Dagger:
reduce casting time churning earth by 0.5 seconds

Scepter:
rock barrier now reduces incoming damage by 10%

overloads:
reduce casting time on overloads to 3 seconds.
 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Abjurer.9302]

I feel like these changes are a PVE wishlist and are bad for other parts of the game.   Here are some notable examples.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Master major 2: (new trait) Master conjurer: your conjured weapons deal 20% more damage.

Does this remove Smothering Auras?  The condition clears where added to fire so that elementalists are not reliant on the water trait line.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Adept major 1: Zephyr’s boon: now grants superspeed when applying an aura (lower duration for allies)

With the reduction in fury uptime from Raging Storm I would rather keep the fury and swiftness.   This way PVP DPS builds can maintain fury without boon duration.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Adept major 2: (new trait) disruptive air: steal a boon upon disabling an enemy

If this removes One With Air, it would have a negative impact upon scepter fresh air build which relies upon superspeed for survivability.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Adept major 3: elemental shielding: now provides resistance instead of protection

I feel like protection is the more valuable boon when providing support boons in WvW or making a tanky roamer.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

signet of fire: now grants power instead of precision

Precision is more valuable for hybrid DPS builds which this signet works well with.

 

5 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

signet of water: now grants healing power instead of -condi duration

This would remove the -98% condition duration build from the game.

[Bakeneko.5826]

16 minutes ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

I feel like these changes are a PVE wishlist and are bad for other parts of the game.   Here are some notable examples.

 

Does this remove Smothering Auras?  The condition clears where added to fire so that elementalists are not reliant on the water trait line.

 

With the reduction in fury uptime from Raging Storm I would rather keep the fury and swiftness.   This way PVP DPS builds can maintain fury without boon duration.

 

If this removes One With Air, it would have a negative impact upon scepter fresh air build which relies upon superspeed for survivability.

 

I feel like protection is the more valuable boon when providing support boons in WvW or making a tanky roamer.

 

Precision is more valuable for hybrid DPS builds which this signet works well with.

 

This would remove the -98% condition duration build from the game.

its bad even for PvE

[draxynnic.3719]

As a quick observation, having a shout trait reduce recharge and provide alacrity seems like overkill-in solo play, it's basically reducing recharge twice. Arenanet is also trending towards making the cooldown reductions baseline.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

Does this remove Smothering Auras?  The condition clears where added to fire so that elementalists are not reliant on the water trait line.

It is moved to arcane, the boon is kinda random in Fire atm. This way builds no longer require a fire traitline in wvw, PvE and pvp for condi cleanse and take arcane now instead for a more fitting traitline for most builds. (And pretty much all fire pvp builds use arcane anyways so that shouldn't be a problem either)

 

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

With the reduction in fury uptime from Raging Storm I would rather keep the fury and swiftness.   This way PVP DPS builds can maintain fury without boon duration.

I wouldn't mind changing raging storm back to the former variant (perma personal Fury uptime). Some decent accessibility to group superspeed would be massive in WvW though and could provide a decent alternative to the current scrapper superspeed.

 

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

I feel like protection is the more valuable boon when providing support boons in WvW or making a tanky roamer.

The coverage on protection is already pretty high in pvp/wvw/pve so adding more protection on top of that is pretty pointless (For Tempest: overload earth and aftershock, for catalyst: earthen jade sphere, for both elemental attunement in arcane). Although Weaver doesn't have access to protection, its Espec doesn't provide many auras so you probably wouldn't want to take the trait anyways. 

 

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

Precision is more valuable for hybrid DPS builds which this signet works well with.

Some extra power usually work just as good for those hybrids aswell. For most condi builds some extra power will be preferred over precision due to the lack of ferocity. This change would also offer a significant boost to more berserker oriented builds since they're often crit capped without the signet already (and you can easily swap some berserker to assassin stats). Last but not least it makes more sense of a signet of Fire (burn/power element) to increase condi/power damage. 

 

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

As a quick observation, having a shout trait reduce recharge and provide alacrity seems like overkill-in solo play, it's basically reducing recharge twice. Arenanet is also trending towards making the cooldown reductions baseline

I guess that's fair, providing alacrity alone should be pretty much sufficient for all gamemodes already. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

If this removes One With Air, it would have a negative impact upon scepter fresh air build which relies upon superspeed for survivability.

I'd say this actually opens up the possibility for a fresh air Tempest. You can quite easily get alot of auras so you are able to get a decent upkeep time on superspeed if you take zephyr's boon. Personal quickness or extra damage increase vs disabled targets also heavily favours the Burst style dps of a fresh air elementalist. 

 

1 hour ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

This would remove the -98% condition duration build from the game

I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad thing

[draxynnic.3719]

Something else I've been cogitating on:

First, I don't think it's a good idea for conjured weapons to have that many traits applied to them. Minions having multiple traits for necromancers is kinda justified due to minions being a big part of necromancer's identity, but even then there are people pushing for them to be consolidated. I don't think conjured weapons are at that level. Generally speaking, in fact, even if conjured weapons have their current problems satisfactorily assessed, I don't think they're ever likely to be something where you'd want to have more than one non-elite weapon conjure on your bar, so why would they justify multiple traits?

Second, if anything's going to be moved from Fire into Arcane, it should be the conjure weapon trait if anything. Conjurer is there at the moment because it has a fire-related effect (generating a fire aura), but if that's removed, well, there are conjures of all elements. Meanwhile, there's a trend toward every core traitline having at least one trait that influences auras, and removing Smothering Auras from Fire would cause that trend to be broken for one attunement only. And burning off conditions is a trend with the fire traitline.

I'm also not sure that support tempests in sPvP would thank you for being forced out of Fire and into Arcane, although maybe they would.

[The Boz.2038]

Conjures need deleted. Replaced entirely with one single skill: Glyph of Conjuration. That one summons a weapon into your hand, with corresponding Conjure's skills (Axe and Greatsword get merged in a compromise, because Axe is weak and GS is stwong). For the duration, you can't get rid of the Conjure; you can attune to a different element and use your own weapons' skills there, but if you attune back, it's Conjure's skills again. No more extra copy on ground. Lasts 15 seconds, cooldown 30.

The Glyph to lose is, obviously, Glyph of Renewal; it is the most niche of the glyphs, and a rez utlity could be found in the entirely new skill type that replaces Conjures, instead. For example, Wards! GW1 Ele has wards, which are basically wells! Or Mantras! OR! It could replace Glyph of Storms, and introduce a Storm skill type, instead, with a brand new Elite! So much can be done with that...
 

[Syronus.7605]

I like the general energy of these changes, I want to see more elementalists in-game and able to play well but many of these sound incredibly strong and certainly would make traits like Blinding Ashes an incredible pick for PvE condition builds. We already have seen though Amplified Wrath for guardians was nerfed recently from 15% to 10%. 

12 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Master major 1: (new trait) whirling strikes: gain quickness when attuning to air

Before Raging Storm existed I always took the inscriptions trait, it would be sad to see our only glyph trait be removed. I'd want to see it buffed a little.  It baffles me that it got extra might in PvP but didn't in PvE when they now want damage dealers to start providing their own might and the trait currently offers it so little.

12 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

signet of fire: now grants power instead of precision
signet of water: now grants healing power instead of -condi duration
signet of earth: now reduces incoming damage by 10%

I feel like there is something missing here.  Signet of Air?  Does that even get taken anywhere when swiftness is so common? Maybe that should get the precision bonus instead of the movement speed increase. 

12 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Weave self: duration weave self is increased to 30 seconds, remove perfect weave.

I don't agree that Perfect Weave should be removed, it has a neat looking effect and needed for tailored victory to flip but I do agree the process of how Weave Self achieves it's buff durations needs to be streamlined by the fact for optimal useage you need to delay achieving perfect weave to get the most out of it. The duration of perfect weave needs to reflect the duration of the whole process not just an additional ten seconds.  So when you achieve all four elements the duration remaining on your weave self needs to be added to the duration of your perfect weave.  Additionally Tailored Victory shouldn't consume your weaved elements, it isn't worth it.  Tailored Victory should also extend the duration of your perfect weave for a short time when used and the animation should be changed to something not so... clowny?

12 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Meteor shower no longer loses 10% damage on hit

The changes to meteor shower and multi-hit skills were done to prevent too much damage to large bosses like Keep Construct or Chak Garent?  It's a poor solution I agree (feels like they engineered the fun out of the skills) but taking the damage reduction per hit off puts them in the situation we had before.  One way I would want them to do this is this is instead change them to be pulsing and be consistant with the rest of the games AoE skills.  Meteor shower is unique though as the number of meteors scales with channel time so it would need overhauling, the skill and skills like it are just a balance nightmare for 'static' large boss content it seems from Arena Net's point of view.  The short answer though: Yes!  I want this band-aid gone too. 

13 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Tempest:
Adept major 1: Gale song (cast eye of the storm when disabled including stability)
Adept major 3: (new trait) master of singularity (singularity delay reduction -33%)

Master major 1: Tempestuous Aria: using a shout now grants alacrity to nearby allies
Master major 2: (new trait) overloading attunements: finishing an overload now grants increased stats depending on the attunement (fire=power, air=ferocity, earth=condi, water=healing power

Grandmaster minor: Hardy conduit: gain stability and swiftness when casting an overload. Finishing an overload grants an aura based on your attunement.
grandmaster major 1: Transcendent tempest: upon successfully completing an overload, gain increased damage (remove reduced time to attain singularity and increase duration to 15s)
Grandmaster major 2: Lucid singularity: now pulses alacrity when overloading

Tempest buffs are nice to see but I would want to keep the protection effectiveness increase on Hardy Conduit personally I would want the stability and swiftness on the major minor and gathered focus incorperated into a boon giving trait. The extra concentration when above a health threshhold should really change to if you have a warhorn equipped. Move the granting of an aura after an overload to Elemental Bastion, it gains the most benefit from it.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

First, I don't think it's a good idea for conjured weapons to have that many traits applied to them. Minions having multiple traits for necromancers is kinda justified due to minions being a big part of necromancer's identity, but even then there are people pushing for them to be consolidated. I don't think conjured weapons are at that level. Generally speaking, in fact, even if conjured weapons have their current problems satisfactorily assessed, I don't think they're ever likely to be something where you'd want to have more than one non-elite weapon conjure on your bar, so why would they justify multiple traits?

Second, if anything's going to be moved from Fire into Arcane, it should be the conjure weapon trait if anything. Conjurer is there at the moment because it has a fire-related effect (generating a fire aura), but if that's removed, well, there are conjures of all elements. Meanwhile, there's a trend toward every core traitline having at least one trait that influences auras, and removing Smothering Auras from Fire would cause that trend to be broken for one attunement only. And burning off conditions is a trend with the fire traitline.

I'm also not sure that support tempests in sPvP would thank you for being forced out of Fire and into Arcane, although maybe they would.

Honestly i wasn't sure what trait to put in Fire master major 2 after removing transmuting aura's out of it. An extra conjure trait seemed a semi decent trait since most conjured weapons are power focused and multiple traits in the fire traitline could open up a somewhat viable build for people that like to use the weapons.

I wouldn't worry to much about Tempest complaints whenever they have to pick arcane over fire. The fire traitline offers very little for support Tempest besides the condi cleanse. I believe combining powerful aura with transmuting auras in a single traitline will actually increase the Tempest build diversity they can maintain their party wide cleanse with only 2 traitlines instead of 3. (Same goes for wvw support tempest). 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

4 hours ago, Syronus.7605 said:

I like the general energy of these changes, I want to see more elementalists in-game and able to play well but many of these sound incredibly strong and certainly would make traits like Blinding Ashes an incredible pick for PvE condition builds. We already have seen though Amplified Wrath for guardians was nerfed recently from 15% to 10%. 

18 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Master major 1: (new trait) whirling strikes: gain quickness when attuning to air

Before Raging Storm existed I always took the inscriptions trait, it would be sad to see our only glyph trait be removed. I'd want to see it buffed a little.  It baffles me that it got extra might in PvP but didn't in PvE when they now want damage dealers to start providing their own might and the trait currently offers it so little.

18 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

signet of fire: now grants power instead of precision
signet of water: now grants healing power instead of -condi duration
signet of earth: now reduces incoming damage by 10%

I feel like there is something missing here.  Signet of Air?  Does that even get taken anywhere when swiftness is so common? Maybe that should get the precision bonus instead of the movement speed increase. 

18 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Weave self: duration weave self is increased to 30 seconds, remove perfect weave.

I don't agree that Perfect Weave should be removed, it has a neat looking effect and needed for tailored victory to flip but I do agree the process of how Weave Self achieves it's buff durations needs to be streamlined by the fact for optimal useage you need to delay achieving perfect weave to get the most out of it. The duration of perfect weave needs to reflect the duration of the whole process not just an additional ten seconds.  So when you achieve all four elements the duration remaining on your weave self needs to be added to the duration of your perfect weave.  Additionally Tailored Victory shouldn't consume your weaved elements, it isn't worth it.  Tailored Victory should also extend the duration of your perfect weave for a short time when used and the animation should be changed to something not so... clowny?

18 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Meteor shower no longer loses 10% damage on hit

The changes to meteor shower and multi-hit skills were done to prevent too much damage to large bosses like Keep Construct or Chak Garent?  It's a poor solution I agree (feels like they engineered the fun out of the skills) but taking the damage reduction per hit off puts them in the situation we had before.  One way I would want them to do this is this is instead change them to be pulsing and be consistant with the rest of the games AoE skills.  Meteor shower is unique though as the number of meteors scales with channel time so it would need overhauling, the skill and skills like it are just a balance nightmare for 'static' large boss content it seems from Arena Net's point of view.  The short answer though: Yes!  I want this band-aid gone too. 

18 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Tempest:
Adept major 1: Gale song (cast eye of the storm when disabled including stability)
Adept major 3: (new trait) master of singularity (singularity delay reduction -33%)

Master major 1: Tempestuous Aria: using a shout now grants alacrity to nearby allies
Master major 2: (new trait) overloading attunements: finishing an overload now grants increased stats depending on the attunement (fire=power, air=ferocity, earth=condi, water=healing power

Grandmaster minor: Hardy conduit: gain stability and swiftness when casting an overload. Finishing an overload grants an aura based on your attunement.
grandmaster major 1: Transcendent tempest: upon successfully completing an overload, gain increased damage (remove reduced time to attain singularity and increase duration to 15s)
Grandmaster major 2: Lucid singularity: now pulses alacrity when overloading

Tempest buffs are nice to see but I would want to keep the protection effectiveness increase on Hardy Conduit personally I would want the stability and swiftness on the major minor and gathered focus incorperated into a boon giving trait. The extra concentration when above a health threshhold should really change to if you have a warhorn equipped. Move the granting of an aura after an overload to Elemental Bastion, it gains the most benefit from it

Hmm i can definitely see blinding ashes being abit overtuned in my suggestions. 10% should indeed work out fine aswell.

 

I feel like the inscription trait is a little bit lost in 2012. The element based boon upon casting a glyph seems abit weird and i personally haven't seen any person using the trait in the last couple of years. With raging storm being a massive powerhouse i feel like it needs some strong competitive traits aswell (hence the personal quickness trait). 

 

To me the increased effectiveness has always been abit overkill on Tempest since it naturally has a good surviveability (and its only a self buff) and it often already gets alot of hatred in PvP. I would however really like having the aura upon overload added as minor baseline since both the alac and heal GM trait can benefit alot from extra aurashare. 

[Downstate.4697]

I like most of the suggestions tbh. Moving smothering auras to arcane just makes arcane water tempest the new meta in pvp. It wont change up catalyst much since they take arcane anyways.

A 20% damage increase to cc'd enemies makes LR op. Tornado was already critting for absurd numbers on catalyst. Theyd need to remove the crit from LR first.

[Abjurer.9302]

20 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

It is moved to arcane, the boon is kinda random in Fire atm. This way builds no longer require a fire traitline in wvw, PvE and pvp for condi cleanse and take arcane now instead for a more fitting traitline for most builds. (And pretty much all fire pvp builds use arcane anyways so that shouldn't be a problem either)

Other than air, the core trait lines all have an option for condition cleanse.  I think this is good for build diversity and these changes are stacking too much into arcane.

 

20 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

I wouldn't mind changing raging storm back to the former variant (perma personal Fury uptime). Some decent accessibility to group superspeed would be massive in WvW though and could provide a decent alternative to the current scrapper superspeed.

 

20 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The coverage on protection is already pretty high in pvp/wvw/pve so adding more protection on top of that is pretty pointless (For Tempest: overload earth and aftershock, for catalyst: earthen jade sphere, for both elemental attunement in arcane). Although Weaver doesn't have access to protection, its Espec doesn't provide many auras so you probably wouldn't want to take the trait anyways. 

These are cases where now arcane becomes the only option to get vital boons.

 

19 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

21 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

This would remove the -98% condition duration build from the game

I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad thing

Why remove a unique effect that elementalist has for 180 healing power?  If heal skills are lacking isn't it easier to change the healing coefficients?

 

19 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

I'd say this actually opens up the possibility for a fresh air Tempest. You can quite easily get alot of auras so you are able to get a decent upkeep time on superspeed if you take zephyr's boon. Personal quickness or extra damage increase vs disabled targets also heavily favours the Burst style dps of a fresh air elementalist. 

I play the air/water/weaver fresh air scepter build and would not like to see this build destroyed for the benefit of support tempest.  Waiting to get super speed from an overload seems very different from the twitchy playstyle that fresh air weaver provides.  It seems like many of these changes are to buff support tempest.  Why not change tempest skills and traits if that support build is lacking rather than stuffing everything into arcane?

Edited September 27, 2022 by Abjurer.9302

[Sahne.6950]

On 9/26/2022 at 1:51 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Adept major 1: Zephyr’s boon: now grants superspeed when applying an aura (lower duration for allies)
Adept major 2: (new trait) disruptive air: steal a boon upon disabling an enemy

Rip Freshair ele....