Crystal Shield with specialization - Love/balance.

The earth mage was for a long time a bad copy of ice mage, considering his main attack (stone arrow) has no additional effect, the only movement limitation skill (Root) in the tree makes the caster stop moving to be casted and the earth tree lacks of a really powerful healing over time like soothing rain.

Talking about the Crystal Shield, despite the main different effect compared to ice shield (Hp vs Fire resist) if you're earth spec crystal shield gets a bonus damage avoidance, with the aim of making the earth tree unique and interesting why not substitute this bonus to the damage avoidance obtainable in other ways without even taking the water spec with something really worth it like damage resist?

A consistent damage resist bonus on Crystal Shield would really make sense considering earth being a tank oriented tree and it could finally make specialization in this tree interesting even for those who do not use the earthquake.

 

I have felt the same way on this for a very long time. Earth, even from a Tank point of view, It lacks one of the basic functionalities to make it a viable option. The new balance improvements and some love are helping. I think this kind of addition with it would help.