Ok what is wrong with Elves and Long Rests

[Kadarai]

EDIT: NVM, found the re-re-tweaked answer from sage advise. Still stupid though.

[Arkhios]

FWIW, elves' ability to trance for a shorter period of time to gain same benefits as from long rest (in 5th edition's terms) has long tradition in the game's history. It's not a recent addition, if that's what you thought.
It is poorly worded in 5th edition, though.

[Dalebert]

My understanding as of now is that the book said elves get the benefits of a long rest in just four hours of trancing.

Then, it was tweeted by Crawford or Perkins or someone that they still need 8 hours but 4 of that can be light activity, which is brand new and not at all waht the books say.

More recently I could swear that it got officially ret-conned back to the original understanding, i.e. they only need 4 hours. It's like they realized there was nothing in the rules to support their ruling that they still needed 8 hours.

[Tanarii]

Yeah, it per old sage advice it didn't change the long rest requirement. They recently updated the official sage advice compendium to change that do to Long Rest changes, per the comment in the SA question in that document.

Most likely due to the planned release of XgtE's new (optional?) sleep rule. Or possibly it was due to an errata to the PHB's Long Rest rule to include sleep of 6 hrs as part of a long rest. I forget which we concluded it was when I posted a thread about it.

[Greywander]

They changed it to affect long rests? My thinking was that it meant you could have the elf stand watch for 4 hours of an 8 hour rest instead of 2. Which becomes really important if you're a small party (2 or 3 people). A party of two elves allows them to nap while the other one stands watch.

It would also give the elf more time to complete certain tasks like, I don't know, copying a scroll into a spellbook or something. Most of the time stuff like that won't matter, but it's nice to have that ability when it does.

[LeonBH]

Yes, they changed the rule for elves. When the elf finishes their Trance, they also finish their long rest.