Guild Wars 2

Even though I say that, I actually only take a look at the “flaw” on the design ideas in my mind by the way of my most played weapon which is scepter as elementalist, I think pretty much all of the weapons/classes could use similar “improvements”, but as I know only elementalist well enough I’ll only discuss that.
Please leave comments on what you think.

Air: This attunement was the biggest disappointment for me as an old GW1 player. #1 is supposed to be a “I’m doing a lot of dmg to you and I’m here if you need me” type of spell, and the dmg ramp up is there so you could avoid the bigger parts of the damage by los or dodge.
Only thing is, the damage is barely nice at the end and the cast time is so “fast” that you can’t be expected to be lossing every 4seconds. #2 shouts filler and #3 is just a blind.
So what was supposed to be “superior single target damage attunement” is just “press #2 and run around doing a bit of dps", sure the single target dps is best after cooldowns, but its very, very boring (and not even that much better than water #1).

My fix: Just took the “perfect” system from GW1 and modified it for GW2, not a bad thing imo, if it works.
Elemental Attunement 25% armor pierce for weaponskills.

1. 1sec cast, fast projectile, ½second cd and high base dmg, lowered damage scaling.
2. ½sec cast, nonprojectile, very high base damage, 5stacks of vulnerability for 4-6seconds and 3-4second cd, lowered damage scaling.
3. instant cast, nonprojectile, very high base damage, 20second cooldown, blind, lowered damage scaling.

What this would change:
With high base damages and lower dmg scaling both cond and power specs could use this attunement for direct damage, cond would get less out of it, but still get somewhat reasonable numbers.
You would get 3 options in air, #1,#2,#3 for very nice burst that all land nearly at the same time, very hard to predict, but once used your dps would be low.
#1, #2, #1, #3, #1, #2, #1 for more sustained bursty dps, easier to read because after first bolt you could try to strafe the next 3 thus evading lot of the damage.
Cond spec could use air for stacking vulnerability, less noticable with current trait system because you could also be running power spec with 30fire and get +30% duration.

Fire: Its fairly well made attunement and I would only change #1 because currently its there only for burn debuff if you need one for firegrab.

My fix: Elemental Attunement 20% range and aoe for weaponskills (base values lowered to compensate).

1. 1sec cast, ground target, 300-400 aoe, 1sec burn, -50% of the dps of air #1+#2 spam single target, possibly 3-4target cap to prevent being overly powerful vs large stacks.
2. Ground targetable and fast enough that a target caught in the middle would need either a dodge, swiftness, extremely fast reactions or been moving while casted to evade.
3. Maybe slightly faster travel.

What this would change:
Fire would be truly an aoe attunement, you could still use DT+phoenix for single target burst, but unless you have 2+ targets you would be doing less dps than in air and superior if there was 3, even after using DT and phoenix, you might want to stay if there was 3+ targets in a clump, like minion necros, mesmers or just stacking melee at a point.

Water: First two spells seem a bit strange, why would you want vulnerability in your defensive attunement and why doesn’t #1 have any kind of defensive utility?
My fix: Elemental Attunement, 10-20% of damage dealt by weaponskills heals you, obviously necro stuff but I could not make up anything better that would synergy nicely with Lingering Elements.

1. each projectile would put 1seconds of weaken.
2. 6sec cd, instead of vulnerability would inflict 2-3second chill.

What this would change:
Power builds would get decent passive healing and some kiting ability/control support and single target weaken until swapped out of attunement (low duration).
Condition builds would get higher duration for weaken that would still be useful after swapping away and longer uptime for chill, again not so good with current traits.

…

Earth: Defensive bleed attunement? So stand there and #1 until hell freezes.
My fix: Elemental Attunement +50% condition duration for weaponskills, current durations balanced around this.

1. increase +power boost, only 1 bolt per attack, 3stacks of bleed per bolt.
   #2 much higher toughness maybe around 300?, lower duration to 4-7seconds, on second use add 2-3stacks of bleed per bolt with 7-9sec duration, low base damage, high damage scaling.
   #3 200-300aoe ground targetable blinding field for 3seconds, 20second cd.

What this would change:

I feel that being a projectile spell #1 should not have the added “weakness” of being 3bolts per cast, bleed damage for power elementalist build would be aimed more against bunker guardians etc, so being weak against retaliation would be counterintuitive. Damage would be balanced so that it comes out slightly lower than air #1+#2 spam even against low armor targets with power build.
With the Elemental Attunement buff you would still have somewhat strong bleeds with power build, but stacking more duration would not make it overpowered, calculated from max +duration traits/gear keeping 13ish stacks (seems pretty standard on cond specs I have tested across the classes).

Having high damage scaling would give power builds an option of an additional burst with #2, while keeping the damage low enough for cond builds, would give extra bleed burst for cond builds, or might be saved for decent defense boost as well.

Instead of a “hope it hits” non controllable aoe blind, you would get one that actually can help against a burst and decent for supporting downed/stunned ally.

Complete effects:
As you might have noticed I would make Elemental Attunement do something, and you can actually use them somewhat usefully with Lingering Elements, +20% more radius for Churning Earth? 20% lifesteal for first few damage spells from air/fire? 50% longer chill/burning? 25% Armor Pierce for fire aoe combo?

Also I wanted staying in an attunement to be an option depending on the situation
As power scep Fire for lots of minions/melee. Air should always come first in single target dps for low armor targets. Water if you are waiting for some help or glyph heal etc. Earth if you have only bunker Guardian to attack.
As cond spec, Fire for aoe burn mayhem with +50% duration, Air for vulnerability stacking or decent burst vs glasscannons if you have earth on cd, Water for defence again here, Earth for main dps.

While at the same time keep the fast swap possibilities like DT+phoenix, #1#2#3 from air, #2 burst from earth, heal/chill from water if part of the combo missed and target did not die so you can wait for next (slightly weaker because of 20sec cd spells) cycle.

The combo would be much more complex this way than updraft/signet of earth, DT, phoenix, firegrab+arcane spells and much less weaker against a single dodge/stunbreak/immune etc, it would also be significantly longer so the damage would not be all up front in 2seconds, of course the damage should lowered somewhat so failing to dodge/strafe few of the spells would not mean immediate death, but strong enough that if target would just be standing there it would surely mean death, especially if you “wasted” two slots for arcane spells.

I wanted to make cond builds more viable because currently swapping away from earth just means that you lost most of your dps as cond ele, now swapping away would certainly mean loss of dps, but you would gain some other condition of value, aoe burn from fire would still do decent aoe dps, chill/weaken from water would make you very defensive and you could stack decent amount of vulnerability to help your team dps in air.

Its quite possible that I have not thought out every change fully, but this is the basic idea that I think should be behind every weaponset in the game, not just 1-2 spells for damage and rest maybe useful if that and #1 autoattack filler with no real meaning besides cond builds.
Because we only have 5spells per weaponset, most of them should have some kind of dual purpose imho, like the air spells being somewhat same that they are now, but could be used as vulnerability stacking for cond build, reactive blind, or a part of nuke combo.

-Thank you for reading, please leave comments on your ideas about the skill design.