Water Traitline Needs A Rework

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Its been lacking for years. Its awful for damage builds, the 2 traits for it are just boring conditional passives. Aura sharing is one of the most degenerate supports in the game. Other than that it doesnt really offer anything.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

It is the cornerstone of any healing builds though. And that seems to be Anet’s intention: They intend it to be a healing line and if it’s healing reasonably ok then it’s working as intended.

If anything the 2 DPS traits are out of place as heck as their bonuses are too insignificant for a DPS build, and water skills themselves don’t benefit a lot from the DPS increase in tandem with the cooldown reduction. 

I’d rather they rework some of the traits to enable healing outside of water attunement, considering that it’s one of the major flaws with heal Tempest. Like Rev’s Vantari line allowing them to heal allies when using any Legend skills and gain more bonuses if using Ventari Legend skills, similarly there could be a trait that allows healing when using skills in any attunements, but gain bonuses if they’re water skills.

[Fueki.4753]

I'd love being able to camp Water and do fine dps.

I've put out a few ideas on how to make Water better for DPS without infringing on its primary healing role in another thread.

 

[Markus.6415]

It definately is the traitline that's there for healing builds, so dps wise shouldn't offer too much. I've been playing healtempest for years and just a couple days ago i compared my tempest, druid and herald with raw healing at the golem. I was so disapointed... i really was thinking ele is a good healer, but where other can heal through the strongest damage aoe, a healtempest struggles and dies. And can't even provide fury.

Healele definately needs it's heal on aura back and I believe that elemental bastion trait belongs into the water line. I think it fits pretty well with the frostaura you get when you drop under 75% health. And the powerful aura trait should be combined with "invigorating torrents" from the tempest traitline.

Those would be my ideas to bring it on par with the other available healbuilds right now. There's still more to do, like revisiting the traits that give extra concentration. Compared to other specs the numbers are just bad and for that extra 120 concentration you need to have 90%+ hp. Other healers also have traits that convert power into concentration or healing power and most of them have a 20% regen buff now too.

Worst offender right now is the druid with nearly every available ability being bloated with boons and heal and other effects.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Make Soothing power have the effect that soothing mists is always active. Regardless of attunement. 

In addition to its normal effect. 

[Markus.6415]

7 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Make Soothing power have the effect that soothing mists is always active. Regardless of attunement. 

In addition to its normal effect. 

Just a duration increase of 3-5s to soothing mist would already do wonders. It stays active when you swap attunements anyways, but currently runs out like 2s before you finish an overload from another attunement. The rotation is just too tight right now.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

5 minutes ago, Markus.6415 said:

Just a duration increase of 3-5s to soothing mist would already do wonders. It stays active when you swap attunements anyways, but currently runs out like 2s before you finish an overload from another attunement. The rotation is just too tight right now.

I remember playing it in Wvw a long time ago. Because if you don't join a group/squad, you could spread the effect on more than 5 people. 

The traited version was like healing for 800 or something? Put that on like 15 people and that's big passiv healing. 

Sadly, you needed to camp water for that, making it unavailable. A Gimmick build for zerg fight. 

With that change, you could freely play all attunements. 

Edited March 19 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Markus.6415]

Just now, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I remember playing it in Wvw. Because of you don't join a group/squad, you could spread the effect on more than 5 people. 

The traited version was like healing for 800 or something? Put that on like 15 people and that's big passiv healing. 

Sadly, you needed to camp water for that, making it unavailable. A Gimmick build for zerg fight. 

With that change, you could freely play all attunements. 

Ah I see... okay. I'm coming from a pve healalac perspective so i can't say what is good or bad for WvW or PvP. Freely play all attunements isn't possible in PvE, since you need to provide all the boons and alac and the heal from dipping into water.

[Markus.6415]

And here are traits of Tempest and Herald just to show the imbalance:

Tempest: Gathered Focus - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W), Lucid Singularity - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

Herald: Reinforced Potency - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W), Elevated Compassion - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

While herald gets a flat out 240 concentration increase all the time + some dps increase, tempest has to keep it's health above 90% to have 240.

heralds quicktrait also heals every second for giving a boon + has a power to concentration conversion slapped onto it, while tempest has only alacrity and nothing else.

[Bleikopf.2491]

1 hour ago, Markus.6415 said:

Healele definately needs it's heal on aura back and I believe that elemental bastion trait belongs into the water line. I think it fits pretty well with the frostaura you get when you drop under 75% health. And the powerful aura trait should be combined with "invigorating torrents" from the tempest traitline.

Powerful Aura being in Water is a relict from before HoT, therefore before Tempest. That said, I do strongly feel like healing on auras should be in Water.
And while I love the idea of Aura-share being available to all specs, I don't think I will ever see it anywhere outside of Tempest.
Weaver is too selfish in nature, and the only interesting things Catalyst does with Auras it can only do to itself (from what I've gathered, Staunch Auras doesn't work with Powerful Aura).

Having heal on auras be in Water at least opens up some more interesting options for Weaver and Catalyst concerning self-sustain.

[Sweetbread.3678]

16 hours ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

And while I love the idea of Aura-share being available to all specs, I don't think I will ever see it anywhere outside of Tempest.

When paired with Smothering Auras, it actually works really well on quick Cata for condi heavy group content. I usually end up running something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAIlpyoYrsN2LOySuRfA-e for those situations and mostly top the charts for cleanses without taking much of a dps hit.

[Bleikopf.2491]

5 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

When paired with Smothering Auras, it actually works really well on quick Cata for condi heavy group content. I usually end up running something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAIlpyoYrsN2LOySuRfA-e for those situations and mostly top the charts for cleanses without taking much of a dps hit.

This is all I hoped for. Smothering Auras truly is one of the better traits introduced lately.
It still leaves me with a sour aftertaste though that heal-on-aura is not in Water, but Powerful Aura has to be somewhere, preferably core.
Although now that I think about it, Arcane has room for an Aura-trait, right?

[Markus.6415]

On 3/19/2024 at 2:23 PM, Bleikopf.2491 said:

Powerful Aura being in Water is a relict from before HoT, therefore before Tempest.

I know that, I've been there. Another reason that some traitlines of Ele are in dire need of a rework to make it viable to the current game we're playing.

[Markus.6415]

4 hours ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

This is all I hoped for. Smothering Auras truly is one of the better traits introduced lately.
It still leaves me with a sour aftertaste though that heal-on-aura is not in Water, but Powerful Aura has to be somewhere, preferably core.
Although now that I think about it, Arcane has room for an Aura-trait, right?

Arcane would also make sense. In the grandmaster line replacing "evasive arcana" maybe, or add it to it.

[Sweetbread.3678]

15 hours ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

It still leaves me with a sour aftertaste though that heal-on-aura is not in Water, but Powerful Aura has to be somewhere, preferably core.
Although now that I think about it, Arcane has room for an Aura-trait, right?

They should probably just rename Powerful Aura to Mirror of Ice or Icy Prism, then it'd at least be thematically appropriate.

My dream patch would have something like Sphere Specialist getting reworked into something like "Comboing your jade sphere fields transmutes auras you've applied. Transmuting auras increases the duration of boons applied by jade sphere by 1 second."; or maybe something similar incorporated into Bountiful Power.

[crosknight.3041]

not just water but all the core trait lines need reworking, as well as the core utility skills (but that's another topic in general)

On 3/19/2024 at 8:23 AM, Bleikopf.2491 said:

Having heal on auras be in Water at least opens up some more interesting options for Weaver and Catalyst concerning self-sustain.

i would LOVE this, and would put aura share into the arcane trait line. not only would it free up tempest to actually provide alacrity without any limitations (currently alac on overload is counter productive since you can lock yourself out of water attunement for a bit if you overload water, meaning losing soothing mist and majority of your reliable team healing skills) but also allow Quickness catalyst to get into the healer game reliably too (i dont think i've seen a single player play catalyst healer at all).

[evilcat.6817]

In water 23? has a potencial for some damage power build.

Cleansing Water and Soothing Power could be merged together. Freeing slot for tier 3 dps perk.

Something like. Gain precision under effect of Soothing Mist and your crits chill enemies. Gain extra ferocity if you are 75% health. Something like that.

Edited March 21 by evilcat.6817

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

Could take a page from Reaper's trait to continue the ice-vulnerability theme, and make it something like:

Shattered Defense
Striking vulnerable enemies increases your critical chance and damage. Striking vulnerable enemies with Water skills gains bonus damage. 
Critical Chance per Stack: 2%
Critical Damage Increase: 5%
Bonus Damage: 10%

 

Edited March 21 by ZephidelGRS.9520

[Sweetbread.3678]

11 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Could take a page from Reaper's trait to continue the ice-vulnerability theme, and make it something like:

Shattered Defense
Striking vulnerable enemies increases your critical chance and damage. Striking vulnerable enemies with Water skills gains bonus damage. 
Critical Chance per Stack: 2%
Critical Damage Increase: 5%
Bonus Damage: 10%

Or at the very least give the trait a built in way to actually apply vulnerability. Something like: "Chilling a burning target fractures their defenses inflicting bonus damage and vulnerability", on top of what it already has.

GW1 had so much fun with stuff like https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Steam that combined elemental effects and played off of thermodynamics and physics. It would be great to see some of that synergy/creativity brought into the GW2 Ele traitlines, most of which are super partitioned and one-note atm.

Edited March 22 by Sweetbread.3678

[mirage.8046]

7 minutes ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Or at the very least give the trait a built in way to actually apply vulnerability. Something like: "Chilling a burning target fractures their defenses inflicting bonus damage and vulnerability", on top of what it already has.

yes, it would especially synergize with piercing shards. it's because there are very few ways to apply vulnerability in the water attunement and benefit from water's extra strike damage to vulnerable foes. that's the problem. a lot of vulnerability comes from skills outside the water attunement. at least weaver can use specific dual skills on pistol, scepter, sword, and hammer to benefit from piercing shards. core ele can't apply vuln as easily while being in the water attunement without using main-hand dagger or a catalyst doing the same with hammer in water. ironically, arcane precision gives you vuln on crit hits in water but you have to run a different spec just to take advantage of piercing shards.

[evilcat.6817]

I would prefer if water line was focused on defense: heal, regen, cleanse and offense: vulnerability, chill. So bleeds or burns are more fire/earth perks. It is easier to build with cohesive specialization as you could pick relics/runes/sigils pushing even more in that direction.

So for example: Your crit chill, you deal small bonus dmg againt chilled target, you crit on chill stun them, you deal bigger bonus against stun tartget (we ice prison them and shatter)

Generally water tier 3 needs some power dps option. If it will be conected with chills, vulnerability, and being healthy that is even better.

Edited March 22 by evilcat.6817

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

My only complaint with the water line is the lack of a damage enhancing grandmaster trait.  The self-heals and condi cleanses are all fine for PVP/WvW, but for PVE it just needs one more punch to make it great.  The specific build I'm thinking of is Power Fire/Water/Catalyst that uses a hammer.  On rare occasion I'll recommend that build to other players, or even play it myself, since it's biggest strength is the ability to do decent damage while in water attunement.  Also, the cooldown reductions for water skills makes it flow better.  My choices are Soothing Power, which does very little given it is a zerker build, Powerful Aura, with random aura spam not being particularly useful in PVE and does nothing for the player directly, and Cleansing Water, which doesn't do much given the build doesn't give out Aoe Regen.  In all Irony, Powerful Auras with Smothering Aura will do far more cleansing than Cleansing Water, making that final trait a dead option for PVE.  So, for now I just take Soothing Power for the miniscule heal.

I can understand the balance considerations.  Fire and Air don't have as many multiplicative modifiers, instead getting their value from the raw stats they give.  It is always a possibility that giving Water a third damage trait in the grandmaster tier, on top of the 10% from Flow Like Water and Piercing Shards, could push it into the dangerous territory where the healing option is also the best offensive option.  

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Something like: "Chilling a burning target fractures their defenses inflicting bonus damage and vulnerability", on top of what it already has.

This kind of idea should rather be as simple as "Chilling an enemy also applies Vulnerability".

Having to burn enemies first would mean this change is worthless for people who want to camp Water. Simply applying Vulnerability when chilling the enemy would be beneficial to both campers and attunement switchers.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Ideally Id probably swap smothering auras to a GM water trait, together with elemental bastion and soothing power. (And put powerful auras on gm arcane instead of elemental surge). 

Also completely rework soothing ice in water (at least in PvE). frost aura on crit doesn't make any sense when like 95% of the enemies dont even crit

[Markus.6415]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:01 PM, evilcat.6817 said:

In water 23? has a potencial for some damage power build.

Cleansing Water and Soothing Power could be merged together. Freeing slot for tier 3 dps perk.

Something like. Gain precision under effect of Soothing Mist and your crits chill enemies. Gain extra ferocity if you are 75% health. Something like that.

This would be an amazing step for healtempest too, so we can get a step closer to auramancers again ❤️