Guild Wars 2

GW2 has this philosophy about avoiding the “holy trinity”, and I may have a good idea on how to further improve the application of that philosophy. I noticed that each profession has access to a different number of weapons, and I think it causes some play style issues.
For instance, a warrior has access to the highest number of weapons. This allows each weapon to fit each player’s build really well. A warrior focusing on burst damage will use a greatsword and a rifle. A more defensive warrior will use a shield, and if a warrior wants to focus on control they can use the hammer. The longbow or axes even allows the warrior to specialize in AoE. Essentially, the warrior has a weapon for each specific role they want to fulfill.

Since I play an elementalist, I’ll use it for the next example.
Elementalists have very few weapons to choose from. Because of this, each weapon has control, AoE, burst, defense, and condition damage built into the same attunements. This means that each different build for the elementalist is stuck using the same weapon skills.
A more specific example would be an elementalist using a scepter and a dagger. Imagine this elementalist focusing on burst damage. In fire, there are plenty of burst options, yet most of these are AoEs (which is the staff’s main concern, anyway). In water attunement, that burst build loses its effectiveness with the low damage and the healing/support skills, as well as the frost aura which is a control ability. The same problem persists in the air attunement, as most of those abilities are control abilities with only a couple of abilities pertaining to direct damage. The earth attunement has some very powerful burst, but the autoattack is mainly for condition damage, and the rest of the abilities are defensive or used for control.

My solution for this problem is to give the elementalist (and other professions) access to more weapons, and perhaps change the weapon sets to fulfill their individual roles more effectively. The elementalist needs a weapon that has more burst capabilities, and a different weapon (offhand) with more defense options. There needs to be a weapon that focuses on healing, and another one that focuses on conditions as well. A suggestion might be a greatsword for burst damage, and the scepter may be used primarily for condition damage. A warhorn could add some healing, and the focus could be used for defense.

The same argument could be applied to many other classes, but I’d like some feedback. What do you guys think about expanding the weapon options for the professions?

This sounds like a Suggestion.

I would love if my ele had more weapons. But to be honest, the whole game lacks that sense of weapon skills progression. As being somewhat related to the game balance, I would absolutely think it be better off separating the PvP style of play from PvE in which would lessson complications between the PvE and PvP spectrums of balancing.

Gendalf was able to wield a sword and a staff on Lord of The Rings. =(

Elementalists can have the same amount of weapons that Warriors have when Warriors can have the same amount of magic that Elementalists have. Sound fair?

I’d like my Warrior to have Stealth skills like Thieves have but that’s a ridiculous suggestion, as is yours.

Enmity.3428:

Elementalists can have the same amount of weapons that Warriors have when Warriors can have the same amount of magic that Elementalists have. Sound fair?

I’d like my Warrior to have Stealth skills like Thieves have but that’s a ridiculous suggestion, as is yours.

I am merely suggesting that other professions’ weapon skills should be more focused and not so broad and that it might mean giving them more weapons to do so. Plus, mesmers use greatswords as a spell casting weapon, I don’t see how the same idea couldn’t be applied to another spell casting class. That’s beside the point, though. I’m not suggesting the addition of mechanics to other classes, like a warrior having stealth. Having access to more weapons is not a special mechanic.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_skills

Elementalists have far more weapon skills than warriors. Giving Elementalists more weapons multiplies these weapons skills by 4.
Elementalist have more than enough flexibility with what they got, I don’t get the point of this thread…

Warriors have such a wide array of weapons because they don’t get that customisation through anything else.

You could argue that eles are the ones with an unfair advantage because if they want to change their build all they need to do is push 1 button and they’ve got a whole new set of weapon skills. Warriors have to buy and carry around a whole extra set of a weapons to get the same functionality and in battle they’re limited to just 2 sets instead of the 4 eles have. And even then all their weapon sets are primarily focused on damage, they don’t have the same AoE healing capacity that eles do.

Or you could claim both are at a disadvantage to engineeers who, like eles, don’t get weapon swapping but can have up to 3 kits to give themselves new weapon skills and get 3 extra attacks and an extra heal from their profession mechanic.

But really it’s just different forms of customisation. If they made all the professions the same there would be no point having different ones.

Danikat.8537:

Warriors have such a wide array of weapons because they don’t get that customisation through anything else.

You could argue that eles are the ones with an unfair advantage because if they want to change their build all they need to do is push 1 button and they’ve got a whole new set of weapon skills. Warriors have to buy and carry around a whole extra set of a weapons to get the same functionality and in battle they’re limited to just 2 sets instead of the 4 eles have. And even then all their weapon sets are primarily focused on damage, they don’t have the same AoE healing capacity that eles do.

Or you could claim both are at a disadvantage to engineeers who, like eles, don’t get weapon swapping but can have up to 3 kits to give themselves new weapon skills and get 3 extra attacks and an extra heal from their profession mechanic.

But really it’s just different forms of customisation. If they made all the professions the same there would be no point having different ones.

And that’s where my idea falls off. My only level 80 is an elementalist, so I had nothing to really compare it to aside from looking at the weapon skills on the wiki. I still wouldn’t complain if a new weapon was introduced to the elementalist for some extra flavor, but now I can see where the variability is an advantage.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_skills

Elementalists have far more weapon skills than warriors. Giving Elementalists more weapons multiplies these weapons skills by 4.
Elementalist have more than enough flexibility with what they got, I don’t get the point of this thread…

I just wish. The only way for an elementalist player to keep up with the DPS rat race is to constantly swap atunements. This because the control (air) and support (water) do not really work well in PVE for sustained use and so he needs to go deep into the arcane trait line to get quick attunement recharge so he can dip in and out of them to get those single skills that work for him.

Never mind trying to keep track of those 20+ cooldowns when you can only see a quarter of them at any one time, while the warrior can sit in GS unless the fight demands a ranged approach.

I wonder if they could have built the elementalist weapon system so that you had two sets of 5, with each of the 5 having 4 elemental sub-options that could be swapped around outside of combat.

Then again, it is virtually impossible to balance a game so that sitting in a single set and swapping between sets of skills are of equal value.

digiowl.9620:

I just wish. The only way for an elementalist player to keep up with the DPS rat race is to constantly swap atunements.

And that’s a problem because….you have to try a bit harder? I think most can agree elementalist is a harder class to play than others (such as warrior and guardian)

So what you have to switch attunements on the fly to have decent DPS, I honestly feel that was the whole idea behind elementalists and being unable to switch weapons in combat but rather 4 elemental attunements.

Draknar.5748:

digiowl.9620:

I just wish. The only way for an elementalist player to keep up with the DPS rat race is to constantly swap atunements.

And that’s a problem because….you have to try a bit harder? I think most can agree elementalist is a harder class to play than others (such as warrior and guardian)

So what you have to switch attunements on the fly to have decent DPS, I honestly feel that was the whole idea behind elementalists and being unable to switch weapons in combat but rather 4 elemental attunements.

Thing is that you more or less need to dump 20-30 points into arcane to keep up with the joneses, limiting the amount of build flexibility available. End result is that most elementalists are played like thieves in light armor, dual daggers and evasive arcana.

digiowl.9620:

Draknar.5748:

digiowl.9620:

I just wish. The only way for an elementalist player to keep up with the DPS rat race is to constantly swap atunements.

And that’s a problem because….you have to try a bit harder? I think most can agree elementalist is a harder class to play than others (such as warrior and guardian)

So what you have to switch attunements on the fly to have decent DPS, I honestly feel that was the whole idea behind elementalists and being unable to switch weapons in combat but rather 4 elemental attunements.

Thing is that you more or less need to dump 20-30 points into arcane to keep up with the joneses, limiting the amount of build flexibility available. End result is that most elementalists are played like thieves in light armor, dual daggers and evasive arcana.

This. All the ranged weapons of Ele do not feel well put together, and/or are just plainly badly-designed, eg: dragon’s tooth, a spell that is designed to miss its target. 19/20 skills on staff are AOE, and the 1/20 skill that is single-target is weak, which makes the weapon really bad for general purpose use, and useless for 1v1.

This is the true reason why you see so many D/D Eles – its really the only good weapon we have.

FYI most in-game, real elementalists stay on fire 90% of a fight, unless it’s a crowd of mobs that demands many AoEs to slow down, stack bleeding, burn, and finish with Meteor Shower. And it’s not the elementalists’ fault, fire supply all the damage needed and will do fine alone against a boss, unless it has constant-spawning minions AND they happen to aggro on you. In open world I can pwn a lot of mobs just in fire, the sense of attunement swapping is only valid for competitive areas (WvW, sPvP).

Your thread would be better entitled ‘Equal weapon skill combinations’ rather then ’equal number of weapons. Technically, most classes have a relatively equal number of skills available (most are 100-130, 2 have just less than one hundred, and two have quite a bit more than 130) But it seems your problem is that some classes have combinations of weapon skills that are applicable in less situations. Namely the engineer and Elementalist.