Guild Wars 2

I didn’t see a suggestion forum, so I’ll leave this here.

I know this is a bold proposal, and I know that often people react blindly, negatively, and with great vigor to big proposed changes, but this I have to say:

I’ve been playing my ELE for a month now, taking my time doing Staff solo PvE going from 1 to 55 (so far). I have analyzed and I have tried out strategies in game, and I find Staff/Fire to be very useful – and it’s a good thing too, since I am very squishy. If Staff/Fire were less effective, I would simply be dying a lot more, in advance of a rage-quit. ;p

So Staff/Fire works pretty well to get me through the game. And whenever I switch away from Fire, I get locked out of it for what seems quite some time. Enough time that even though I’ve tried to move through the other elements to include them in my rotation, I finally gave up and just use Fire.

So it got me thinking, why even have ANY attunement recharge? I can understand using it in certain circumstances – overloading an attunement via Tempest, for example – I’m not suggesting that be changed. But in general use, why even have it? Would it be so game breaking if ELE’s could swap between the four attunements at will? I honestly don’t think so.

Removing attunement recharge (apart from special circumstances like Tempest) would encourage us ELEs to branch out of our preferred element. If you want to keep a minor recharge – like the length of time after swapping to a second element that you have to wait before swapping to a third(1.5 sec?) – I don’t think that would be terrible, but as an ELE, I think you would want to encourage people slipping back and forth through the elements. Right now, I stay in fire and it gets the job done – and I don’t have to worry about being locked out from access to my fave element.

Just one person’s opinion. And now, this being the internet and all, let the flaming of my proposal begin! ;p

Ele’s will be invincible if there’s no timer on the attunement.

So, basically it would be like being able to weapon swap between 4 different weapons instantly back and forth with no cooldown whatsoever.

No thanks.

You know. When the professions were designed I bet they looked at zero recharge time and decided against it for balance reasons. In that case you will have zero chance of convincing them of your argument as they have already looked at it and decided against it.

OP plays ele to lvl 55. Camps fire attunement with staff. Claims to have tried out and ‘analyzed’ different strategies in game. Comes to forum to suggest attunement swapping have just a global cooldown because they find no merit in other attunements but fire.

Let me help point out the elephant in the room. Learn to play.

Ask for flames, get flames. Bye bye.

I’d love to see that in action…as long as they remove initiative cost of thief abilities too.

i agree with u OP, actually, while we’re at it, lets make ALL the ele’s skills have no CD. ele’s should also be immune to conditions cuz conditions are bad. and now that i think about it, they should be immune to damage. ele’s should also have all their skills replaced with an instakill skills. thank OP, i love your ideas!

kappa

When you get to level 80 and find more substantial content, as good as fire is…using the other attunements is imperative. You can’t judge tactics on the first 55 levels since there is virtually no variation in gameplay, outside of maybe story dungeons.

Triangulator.2867:

Let me help point out the elephant in the room. Learn to play.

That’s just unnecessarily rude. Shame on you.

Sorry for the crass dismissal of the others. Not that I agree with the suggestion, just that there’s no need to be rude about it.

A healthy part of elementalist’s play is using all elements, and as Draknar noted above, it would be like giving Ele 4 different weapon swaps, where other classes max at 2. For most classes, those swaps are on a 10 second cooldown. You might see where giving instant swaps might be a little overpowered.
(Granted, there’s Engi kits, but that requires an opportunity cost in utilities.)

If you’re having trouble with kiting on Staff, be sure to use Earth’s wall and Air’s static field to gain some distance, then swap to Water for additional heals. You won’t be able to stand and fight with staff, but you can hold back and strafe as you fight. I refer to this as “the dance” as the enemy will constantly try to flank you while doing it, and it leads to a huge run-around.

Hope that helps.

sindyr.5306:

So Staff/Fire works pretty well to get me through the game. And whenever I switch away from Fire, I get locked out of it for what seems quite some time. Enough time that even though I’ve tried to move through the other elements to include them in my rotation, I finally gave up and just use Fire.

You have so much utility on all attunements. I think you have to learn quite a bit about ele. Without recharges on attunements ele where totally OP.

To show you the use of rotations here is a little Guide to rotations.

This is for D/D ele in PvP, but I think if you search a little bit you will find guides for other weapons and areas of the game.

Have you even checked pvp before making this post? Ele is close to unkillable already there, you want buff like this? Whyyyyyyyy >_<

Rauderi.8706:

Sorry for the crass dismissal of the others. Not that I agree with the suggestion, just that there’s no need to be rude about it.

A healthy part of elementalist’s play is using all elements, and as Draknar noted above, it would be like giving Ele 4 different weapon swaps, where other classes max at 2. For most classes, those swaps are on a 10 second cooldown. You might see where giving instant swaps might be a little overpowered.
(Granted, there’s Engi kits, but that requires an opportunity cost in utilities.)

Only if you ignore the toolbelt skills.

If you’re having trouble with kiting on Staff, be sure to use Earth’s wall and Air’s static field to gain some distance, then swap to Water for additional heals. You won’t be able to stand and fight with staff, but you can hold back and strafe as you fight. I refer to this as “the dance” as the enemy will constantly try to flank you while doing it, and it leads to a huge run-around.

Hope that helps.

Missing a few things there. Earth 5 is also an immobilize and water 4 is a chill. Standing next to the mob while attuned to water isn’t necessary a bad idea, you just need to continue strafing away from the enemy attacks.

Static field then push the mobs through the field with 3 is also nice.

Fire 4 is an evade.

I often waste a bunch of those to deal more damage if the situation looks safe enough.

When you prematurely dismiss anyone who may disagree with you as flaming, it’s not conducive to healthy (and much-needed) debate.

That being said, the idea is not excellent, for reasons others have already stated. Also, Ele is only great when played well. Part of playing well is having your rotations down and part of having your rotations down is timing. Those who have "mastered’ ele should feel accomplished in doing so, (I am certainly not one) and removing cooldowns on attunements is an unnecessary buff for the class. Try out other weapons and builds, max your trait lines, and see how you feel then. Enjoy the challenge!

To the OP: please ignore the rude replies. Some people don’t have anything better to do with their time.

As for your request, if they didn’t change anything else, it would make the ele a seriously broken profession.

Fire staff ele has the potential for the highest dps in game, at the expense of being practically locked in the fire atunement. You have the alternative of a more flexible ele using more atunements via fresh air (oh, but i don’t know if you unlock fresh air at level 55, i don’t think so), in which your main damage source becomes air, but you rotate between all atunements using your cds, blasting fields, healing and whatnot. You lose a bit of damage, and you have to use dagger main hand, since since staff kind of sucks for air. I think that’s the dynamic playstyle you are looking for.

Skyline Crash.6254:

i agree with u OP, actually, while we’re at it, lets make ALL the ele’s skills have no CD. ele’s should also be immune to conditions cuz conditions are bad. and now that i think about it, they should be immune to damage. ele’s should also have all their skills replaced with an instakill skills. thank OP, i love your ideas!

kappa

Diamond Skin
Obsidian Flesh
Mist Form

:P

Ahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahhahahahahahahahahayahahah

NO

Likes fire…. has the name ‘sindyr’…. I see what you did there.. xD

The idea of attunement recharge is to punish you. If it wasnt there you could just swap into water for some quick healing everytime your heals were up. You can do it now, but the cost is about 7 or 8 seconds without fire. Also, there are some sigils in the game that distribute boons on weapon swap(and in eles case on attunement change), which would instantly get out of control.

Metalman.6345:

The idea of attunement recharge is to punish you. If it wasnt there you could just swap into water for some quick healing everytime your heals were up. You can do it now, but the cost is about 7 or 8 seconds without fire. Also, there are some sigils in the game that distribute boons on weapon swap(and in eles case on attunement change), which would instantly get out of control.

Those sigils already have their own cooldowns otherwise engineers would would be able to use them with kit swap like you described.

sindyr.5306:

So it got me thinking, why even have ANY attunement recharge? I can understand using it in certain circumstances – overloading an attunement via Tempest, for example – I’m not suggesting that be changed. But in general use, why even have it? Would it be so game breaking if ELE’s could swap between the four attunements at will? I honestly don’t think so.
p

Yes, it would be because of certain traits.

Elemental Attunement: When attuning to an element, you and nearby allies gain a boon.
Fire Attunement- Increased outgoing damage; stacks intensity. Might (15s): +30 Power, +30 Condition Damage
Water Attunement- Gain health every second; stacks duration. Regeneration (5s): 650 health
Air Attunement- Movement speed increased by 33%; stacks duration. Swiftness (8s): 33% Movement Speed
Earth Attunement- Incoming damage decreased; stacks duration. Protection (5s): -33% Incoming Damage

Add to that Bountiful Power (deal more damage for each boon on you).

And possibly go into earth, for Rock Solid (Grant stability to nearby allies when attuning to earth).

So someone could take these traits and run around swapping attunements at will, giving constant uptime on several boons… This would be very OP. The arcane line’s Minor Grandmaster trait gives you a reduced recharge on attunements, so maybe you don’t have that yet.

So you only play a class only in PVE, and only for 1 motnh, and you want this OP changes that’d shatter the whole Meta-scene because it’d make it easier to you?

Sounds about right.

Literal god mode.

Checked his forum history. His FIRST post is around 16 days ago.

It means he probably is a new player that only play for around 1 month.

I can understand why you suggest things that you have no idea what you’re talking about now. Play it longer and get better. This idea would not be accepted because it’s so broken.

sindyr.5306:

Removing attunement recharge (apart from special circumstances like Tempest) would encourage us ELEs to branch out of our preferred element.

A while back there was a guy who said an ele should stick in one attunement (he liked fire too) and that changing attunements made one a ‘bad’ player.

Clearly, he was mad.

But for the sake of argument, let’s call eles who stick in one attunement “mono-elementalists” and eles who use a rotation “multi-elementalists”.

Now, being a mono-elementalist is actually very selfish. If you choose fire, you may be doing some damage but you’re denying your allies (and yourself) the benefits of healing and control provided by the other attunements. It’s also boring. And as you progress through the game and face greater difficulties, you’ll find that fire is not enough.

I understand why you feel like camping in fire. It’s daunting starting a new game and it’s especially daunting to learn a complicated profession like the elementalist. You’re telling yourself that all you need is fire because that’s all you can mentally handle at the moment. But as you grow in skill and confidence, you will find yourself naturally expanding your repertoire and soon you’ll wonder how you ever got by without all the attunements. Give it time.

And, lastly, this post belongs in the Elementalist section of the forums. Just so you know.

On another note, if attunement swaps had no cooldowns, there would be significant balancing required in the form of skill cool downs. Individual skills would have to be adjusted with much longer cooldowns to keep things under control (think minutes for the 4 and 5 skills), and the synergistic traits would have to be nerfed into the floor.

What would this all lead to, you might ask? Ele players spontaneously combusting, the most boring gameplay ever conceived, and basically deleting eles from the game because nobody would play them.

It’s obvious there is a skill level/lack of experience issue here. Maybe the thread should be closed before there is too much toxicity?

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Now, being a mono-elementalist is actually very selfish. If you choose fire, you may be doing some damage but you’re denying your allies (and yourself) the benefits of healing and control provided by the other attunements. It’s also boring.

Thats an incredibly bizarre way of looking at it. I dont see how using fire only is ‘selfish’ rofl….if anything its actually more beneficial for allies that dont require additional support to survive.

And boring is subjective, but fire ele is simplistic.

zombyturtle.5980:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Now, being a mono-elementalist is actually very selfish. If you choose fire, you may be doing some damage but you’re denying your allies (and yourself) the benefits of healing and control provided by the other attunements. It’s also boring.

Thats an incredibly bizarre way of looking at it. I dont see how using fire only is ‘selfish’ rofl….if anything its actually more beneficial for allies that dont require additional support to survive.

And boring is subjective, but fire ele is simplistic.

True.. boredom is subjective. But ….‘incredibly bizarre’? Incredibly?!

You’ve got me curious. Putting pve aside for now, does it really benefit a raid party or a fractal party or a dungeon party or in pvp if one or more members only uses 1/4 of their weapons and spends part of their time not contributing any dps/healing/control while their skills are on cool-down? Wouldn’t it affect the efficiency of the team and does that matter? I really am curious what people’s thoughts are on this.

This suggestion would be impossible to implement for various reasons. Ele has too many traits and effects based around swapping attunements, to the point where reducing the cooldown to zero would literally make them godlike and overpowered to an extent of becoming ludicrous.

Keep in mind that they get boons when swapping elements, or healing when attuning to water, or aoe blinds or super speed when attuning to air, or aoe damage when attuning to fire, etc. Now imagine all that without cooldowns. You’d be able to heal to full health without cooldowns, permanently blind enemies, spam aoe’s, get endless boons like protect or might with no effort, endless condition removal spam or even endless super speed in combat.

You’d quite literally have to redesign the elementalist from the ground up to make this suggestion even remotely feasible. Elementalists are fine as they are. Even with said cooldowns they remain one of the strongest, most versatile classes in the game. You just need to learn how to play with them.

sindyr.5306:

I didn’t see a suggestion forum, so I’ll leave this here.

I know this is a bold proposal, and I know that often people react blindly, negatively, and with great vigor to big proposed changes, but this I have to say:

I’ve been playing my ELE for a month now, taking my time doing Staff solo PvE going from 1 to 55 (so far). I have analyzed and I have tried out strategies in game, and I find Staff/Fire to be very useful – and it’s a good thing too, since I am very squishy. If Staff/Fire were less effective, I would simply be dying a lot more, in advance of a rage-quit. ;p

So Staff/Fire works pretty well to get me through the game. And whenever I switch away from Fire, I get locked out of it for what seems quite some time. Enough time that even though I’ve tried to move through the other elements to include them in my rotation, I finally gave up and just use Fire.

So it got me thinking, why even have ANY attunement recharge? I can understand using it in certain circumstances – overloading an attunement via Tempest, for example – I’m not suggesting that be changed. But in general use, why even have it? Would it be so game breaking if ELE’s could swap between the four attunements at will? I honestly don’t think so.

Removing attunement recharge (apart from special circumstances like Tempest) would encourage us ELEs to branch out of our preferred element. If you want to keep a minor recharge – like the length of time after swapping to a second element that you have to wait before swapping to a third(1.5 sec?) – I don’t think that would be terrible, but as an ELE, I think you would want to encourage people slipping back and forth through the elements. Right now, I stay in fire and it gets the job done – and I don’t have to worry about being locked out from access to my fave element.

Just one person’s opinion. And now, this being the internet and all, let the flaming of my proposal begin! ;p

Easy, do it just like me. DON’T ever change attunements. I did for Year 1 and year 2…before learning how to change it in early year 3 of the game…….

That would be cool only if the current traits wouldnt make it OP:

Sorry, sindyr, but if you think “I’m L55 & I’ve settled on this as the only way I can play” is a solid foundation for a suggestion, you are going to get disagreed with, and flamed too.

I’m a Day One player. I long ago had all 8 original classes at the cap. Ele is low in the pecking order, but something I did, with a free slot & lots of play-time available over the summer, was to replay & re-level, from 1 to 80 (not 55) every class (something different to do before HoT). And the really important component of that was to play them differently!

No going zweihander or axes on the warrior, no fire on the ele, no wells on the necro, etc. Experiment. It was interesting. There are still builds that I can’t make work. I still can’t get on with Gadgets or the Elixir Gun on the Eng, Physicals on the War, etc. But I came out of it with a greater appreciation of just how many ways you can build each class. Every class. Spectrals on the Necro… Hmmm, not my favourite build (Wells, Corruptions, or Reaper, for me), but I can make it work, as just one example.

This is all preamble, to establish some credentials. I really do have some foundations to say that your suggestion would be a disaster. It would make the ele stupidly over-powered. I can understand why you make it, but it isn’t a good idea. Far from it. And it won’t get any serious support from experienced players.

Try sceptre / dagger. Try the other attunements. Fire is a glass cannon, mostly, whatever the weapons & utilities you pick. Burn it down (literally! ) before it does you. The other attunements work differently. Try them out; get used to them. I’m still a bit iffy about Air, partly because I’m mostly a solo player, and a lot of it is support. Water & Earth are great, but slower to kill in PvE (which is where I mostly am). I used to load up on Cantrips; now I think Arcane is great.

Experiment. Make yourself give a good run to every weapon, to every attunement, to every set of utilities, trait yourself appropriately for each (at L80 you have enough points to open everything except the Elite, even if you’ve never completed a single HP). Once you’ve done that, you’ll see there’s no need for a shorter cd on attunement recharge.

Mirtis.6847:

I’d love to see that in action…as long as they remove initiative cost of thief abilities too.

I think that would only be fair if warrior skills have no cool downs at all.

Draknar.5748:

So, basically it would be like being able to weapon swap between 4 different weapons instantly back and forth with no cooldown whatsoever.

No thanks.

It would be more like engis swaping between 4 tools. (Bombs, grenades, flamethrower, mortar).
You – “But what about the utility skills?”
Me – Tool Belt skills.

How about Druid’s AF is infinite and 0 CD?

How about Revenants’ skills with 0 energy cost?

How about Warrior’s Rage skill is always active/always full?

How about Necro having infinite Life Force?

How about Mesmers clones/phantasms never dies even when pressing shatters?

The list goes on.

Only if I get insta weapon swap. O wait, don’t we have a few sigils that react on weapon swap? Sigil of Renewal, Sigil of Battle, Sigil of Mischief, etc will certainly not break the meta.

I’ve never been a fan of attunement cooldowns, but to change it now would be a bit late.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

True.. boredom is subjective. But ….‘incredibly bizarre’? Incredibly?!

You’ve got me curious. Putting pve aside for now, does it really benefit a raid party or a fractal party or a dungeon party or in pvp if one or more members only uses 1/4 of their weapons and spends part of their time not contributing any dps/healing/control while their skills are on cool-down? Wouldn’t it affect the efficiency of the team and does that matter? I really am curious what people’s thoughts are on this.

I didnt consider PVP as im really inexperienced in it so my opinion wouldnt hold much weight. I was mainly focusing on PVE and dungeons though as thats what the OP’s topic seemed to be focused on.

And yes, if your party members in dungeons and fractals dont NEED any support to survive, you are actually harming the group by using every spell when its off CD. The reason for this is instead of providing solid dps, which will make the boss die faster therefore eliminating its threat and speeding up the run, you are proving a boon that noone needs. The exception applies when the boon will allow them to have sustained dps without needing to dodge or heal, and therefore the tradeoff between your own dps loss and the groups increased dps is worth it, like a guardians aegis. But in general for elementalist its better just to focus on doing damage as thats what they excel at.

Switching out of fire attunement for a staff ele will drop your dps so heavily its down to levels of pre-HOT necro, and if your party doesnt need heals to survive, why do it? Healing them when they dont need healing is pointless. Giving them boons like protection is useless if they dont need it to survive either. Lowering your own dps to provide control is also less helpful when there are tons of other classes which can achieve the same effect without the dps drop.

Raids are different as each member will have a set specific task and will be built for that task. If you are a dps ele in a raid though, you are again going to want to sit in fire and not change for the entire encounter. Lava font is almost spammable and auto attack in fire does more damage than almost all other staff skills.

zombyturtle.5980:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

True.. boredom is subjective. But ….‘incredibly bizarre’? Incredibly?!

You’ve got me curious. Putting pve aside for now, does it really benefit a raid party or a fractal party or a dungeon party or in pvp if one or more members only uses 1/4 of their weapons and spends part of their time not contributing any dps/healing/control while their skills are on cool-down? Wouldn’t it affect the efficiency of the team and does that matter? I really am curious what people’s thoughts are on this.

I didnt consider PVP as im really inexperienced in it so my opinion wouldnt hold much weight. I was mainly focusing on PVE and dungeons though as thats what the OP’s topic seemed to be focused on.

And yes, if your party members in dungeons and fractals dont NEED any support to survive, you are actually harming the group by using every spell when its off CD. The reason for this is instead of providing solid dps, which will make the boss die faster therefore eliminating its threat and speeding up the run, you are proving a boon that noone needs. The exception applies when the boon will allow them to have sustained dps without needing to dodge or heal, and therefore the tradeoff between your own dps loss and the groups increased dps is worth it, like a guardians aegis. But in general for elementalist its better just to focus on doing damage as thats what they excel at.

Switching out of fire attunement for a staff ele will drop your dps so heavily its down to levels of pre-HOT necro, and if your party doesnt need heals to survive, why do it? Healing them when they dont need healing is pointless. Giving them boons like protection is useless if they dont need it to survive either. Lowering your own dps to provide control is also less helpful when there are tons of other classes which can achieve the same effect without the dps drop.

Raids are different as each member will have a set specific task and will be built for that task. If you are a dps ele in a raid though, you are again going to want to sit in fire and not change for the entire encounter. Lava font is almost spammable and auto attack in fire does more damage than almost all other staff skills.

Hmm.. A lot to think about there. Thank you.

Speaking of PVE, what are the ramifications there, especially for a solo player?

piza.9310:

Only if I get insta weapon swap. O wait, don’t we have a few sigils that react on weapon swap? Sigil of Renewal, Sigil of Battle, Sigil of Mischief, etc will certainly not break the meta.

sigils have cooldowns built in now too.