Guild Wars 2

The search bar in the forum doesn’t seem to want to work for me so I apologize if this idea has been presented already but I haven’t seen it in the handful of Google searches I did so here goes:

I’ve heard that ArenaNet purposely designed the Elementalist to not be the best at any particular role instead opting to make them the most versatile class in the game. While that’s all fine and good and the whole four attunement thing certainly lends to that idea, the inability to switch from long to close range and vice versa quickly and easily seems contradictory to it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the conjured weapons (my build focuses on them at the moment in fact) but most people probably don’t have room on their utility bar for that luxury.

Of course, giving Elementalists the ability to swap weapons outright would be madness! They already have twice the amount of weapon skills as any other class (not including Engineer bundles) so giving them two times more would be ridiculous. Awesome, but ridiculous. Instead, I propose a system in which the four attunements can be split up between two sets of weapons.

What do I mean by this, you ask? I’m getting to it, just calm the kitten down! Let’s say I’m running your typical D/D fire and earth combo field extravaganza but would love to back it up with the longer range staff abilities, just in case. (By the way, there is no 1,200 range conjured weapon, so no help there.) Rather than being stuck in near melee range, I think Elementalists should be allowed to assign the four elements to each of their weapon sets while only allowing a maximum of four total attunements. So, on my D/D set, I would only be allowed to use fire and earth spells, and if I switch to my staff, I can only use water and air. This way, we would still only have 20 weapon skills as normal, but we would now have the ability to switch from close to long range or combine the abilities of multiple weapons like every other class.

Of course, if you like the current setup of having all four attunements on one weapon set (I know how much you guys like your lightning whip) you would obviously be able to assign all four elements to a single weapon set as normal. (Incidentally, I’d prefer if we were allowed to keep our other weapon set equipped to save bag space simply losing the ability to swap weapons in this case, but I won’t be heartbroken if we couldn’t. Or maybe this could be where that out of combat weapon swapping everyone has been asking for could come into play?) The point is to give us the OPTION to swap out our skills if we choose. More options typically leads to more build diversity.

It should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, I’ll also add that a one/three or three/one element split should be allowed as well because… why not? After all, the Elementalist is supposedly the most versatile class, so why not make them as versatile as possible? Imagine how many combinations of weapons/elements there would be (or just do the math I guess…) and how much our build diversity could potentially skyrocket if we were able to combine our skills in so many ways!

I’ll even take it one step further, although I don’t expect this to happen: Allow Elementalists to double up their elements. Do you like the fire skills of the staff AND scepter? Assign fire to both! Of course, there would still be a hard limit of four attunements, so by doubling up on fire, you’d have to sacrifice water, air or earth. The problems I foresee with being able to “specialize” in certain elements that way is that it may make us TOO good at certain things. Having two sets of fire and air abilities for example may be giving us access to too much damage to be balanced. I honestly haven’t really worked out the logistics of this scenario so I don’t know how game-breaking it could potentially be. I’m just spitballing…

As for underwater abilities, seeing as the trident is our only option, this system clearly wouldn’t work. However, I think our underwater abilities are pretty versatile as they are. Although, I certainly wouldn’t say no to an extra usable weapon type! I also wish we could use ether renewal underwater, but that’s not really relevant to this conversation…

I think that’s pretty much it. I’d be interested to know your guys’ thoughts and, of course, if anyone discovers that allowing an Elementalist to use Phoenix on top of Frozen Ground would cause the universe to implode or something, feel free to point it out. I haven’t looked at every combination of the different weapon skills, but I can’t imagine there’s anything there that would break the game. Although it’s possible a slight skill tweaking might be necessary.

Better yet, if anyone has suggestions of how to refine the idea to balance it better (as it is admittedly a bit rough) I greatly encourage that as well!

The one problem that I can foresee at this point (other than possibly feeling the need to build more than one legendary) is how the attunement cooldown may make combos harder to pull off with weapon swapping. What I mean is, let’s say you DO want to cast Phoenix on top of Frozen Ground: You start off in water attunement on your staff, then switch to your scepter. However, the last attunement you used on you scepter was earth, so you’re forced to switch to fire putting earth on cooldown. But what if you NOW want to use Churning Earth on that ice field? It would be gone by the time you can switch back. Of course using Churning Earth first probably wouldn’t work since the long channel time would make it difficult to switch to fire and pop Phoenix before the Frozen Ground is gone.

The point is it would add complications to an already complicated playstyle, so if you guys have suggestions of how to overcome these problems, feel free to voice them. The only one I could think of is to give us a two or three second grace period on weapon swap to switch attunements without activating the cooldown. However, you would only be allowed to switch one time during this grace period.

Anyway, feel free to discuss or ignore me entirely, whatever…

As a start, if you change your weapon, you start with the all skills with full cooldown if you are in the combat.

rhodoc.2381:

As a start, if you change your weapon, you start with the all skills with full cooldown if you are in the combat.

I think that would be penalizing weapon swapping to the point of uselessness.

No. I’ll explain.

I main an Elementalist. And 99.9% of the time, I’m soloing content and there’s not a soul around on my server.

I play scepter/dagger as it puts me mid-range which works against a majority of the enemies.

While I tend to spend most time in Fire and Air, I do sometimes switch to Earth for the interrupt and blind. Not to mention my Elite is the Elemental and the Earth one is great for a solo since it will pull the enemy to hitting him and not me and I’ll use that when I’m struggling or know a fight will be tough. And I will switch to water if I need the regeneration it provides through switching to it and through Skill #5, Cleansing Wave which heals and removes a condition. And I’m pretty darn good fighting in Water attunement and I’ll typically change out of it once my health goes up and typically to Earth for it’s defense adding until Fire is out of cooldown (I’m pretty good at getting my health up quickly once I’m in water).

And staff wise I tend to use all four attunements as well so your solution just cripples me if I want to take advantage of having a staff as back up.

Not to mention when I’m fighting Dredge, I tend to go more Fire and Earth and I wouldn’t want to have to reset that up every time I change enemy type (I tend to focus on the blinding aspect of Air and Dredge are immune to blind and at least Earth’s blind will hurt them if I forget and activate that skill anyway)

It’s better than the staff’s water heals which either heal for little (healing rain) or require you to pretty much be stationary (geyser).

And for me when I’d want to be ranged is when the enemies are hitting hard and I just need some time to heal.

So tying my hands by forcing me to lose the highest DPS attunement in order to switch would be counter intuitive and would hurt me more than help me.

eles will use scepter + dagger/focus, dagger in fire and water attunement (heal, fire grab does nice dps and there is an aura and fire field) and focus for air and earth attunements ( swirling winds, interrupt, invulnerability and reflect projectiles) making eles more survivable and useful in groups but OP…

Seera.5916:

No. I’ll explain.

I main an Elementalist. And 99.9% of the time, I’m soloing content and there’s not a soul around on my server.

I play scepter/dagger as it puts me mid-range which works against a majority of the enemies.

While I tend to spend most time in Fire and Air, I do sometimes switch to Earth for the interrupt and blind. Not to mention my Elite is the Elemental and the Earth one is great for a solo since it will pull the enemy to hitting him and not me and I’ll use that when I’m struggling or know a fight will be tough. And I will switch to water if I need the regeneration it provides through switching to it and through Skill #5, Cleansing Wave which heals and removes a condition. And I’m pretty darn good fighting in Water attunement and I’ll typically change out of it once my health goes up and typically to Earth for it’s defense adding until Fire is out of cooldown (I’m pretty good at getting my health up quickly once I’m in water).

And staff wise I tend to use all four attunements as well so your solution just cripples me if I want to take advantage of having a staff as back up.

Not to mention when I’m fighting Dredge, I tend to go more Fire and Earth and I wouldn’t want to have to reset that up every time I change enemy type (I tend to focus on the blinding aspect of Air and Dredge are immune to blind and at least Earth’s blind will hurt them if I forget and activate that skill anyway)

It’s better than the staff’s water heals which either heal for little (healing rain) or require you to pretty much be stationary (geyser).

And for me when I’d want to be ranged is when the enemies are hitting hard and I just need some time to heal.

So tying my hands by forcing me to lose the highest DPS attunement in order to switch would be counter intuitive and would hurt me more than help me.

Maybe you didn’t read the whole thing, but I also include a paragraph in which Elementalists would be allowed to assign all four attunements on one weapon set (which is the way it works now) at the cost of giving up their ability to swap weapons. All I’m suggesting is giving us the CHOICE to weapon swap if we want to. If you like the current system, by all means stick to it and switch your weapons the long way keeping all four attunements on both sets, but give other people who don’t typially use all four attunements on one weapon set the option to split them up. No one would be FORCING you to split attunements between weapon sets and, as far as I can tell, everyone wins. Or maybe I misunderstood what you were saying?

I read the entire thing and I saw that. But it does seem to punish those who use all attunements and have a nice combo between them and rewards those who do not with a weapon swap.

Now between your idea and the other posts, if they do decide to add it in and gave a poll, I’d choose yours. Easier to balance, keeps Elementalists from having way too many more skills than other classes. Even though the other would cater to my current play style more.

And the more I think about it, the more it’s not a horrible idea. I did start off as a Staff Elementalist for the range because it allowed me to be farther from my enemy since I’m new to MMO’s and then when I finally decided to gear up and find a good build, a friend helped designed a build that was Scepter/Dagger. So it’s not like I can’t change play styles. Scepter/Dagger has me a lot closer than Staff did. At least to ranged opponents. Harder to keep the melee ones at ranged distance. Humans find change hard and it would be a second play style change for my main.

I can see myself doing Fire/Water on Scepter/Dagger and Air/Earth on Staff, I suppose. As long as the cooldown for the weapon swap wasn’t too terribly long as compared to attunement swapping. Since I do attunement swap pretty quickly between Fire and Air/Earth.

As to underwater combat, I’ll take a second weapon whenever ANet is ready to give us one. Trident does nothing for me and while I can take on more than one opponent for the most part on land, I can rarely do that underwater. Especially against the tougher opponents which can be hard to do in the higher level areas where there really isn’t anyone else around to help out.

I’m not sure if “punished” is the best word to use lol. After all, it was never my intention of making weapon swapping the “best” option, just an additional option. Like I said, I didn’t go over every combination of weapons/skills but I would hope that, if this system was implemented, using a single weapon set would still be perfectly on par with a dual weapon set. It’s just a matter of sacrificing a bit of the admittedly good synergy among the current weapon skills for the ability to switch to close/long range at the drop of a hat if that’s more important to that particular player or in a particular situation. So, ideally, people who don’t want to change the way they play wouldn’t feel obligated to. And if we can score some additional build diversity at the same time, so much the better.

Bismuth pointed out that Elementalists might opt to have a focus on their second set for the additional defensive capabilities, which he believed would make them too powerful. Too me, on the other hand, I see it as sacrificing the exceptional might stacking you get using the dagger on the off-hand (churning earth and earthquake in a ring of fire, anyone?) for obsidian flesh etc. Trading offense for defense seems perfectly balanced to me!

The cooldown for weapon swapping would definitely require some thought to make sure it isn’t too long or short. But they could always throw in a trait to reduce it.

As for the underwater stuff, I agree I’d love an additional weapon choice there too, but honestly, of the few classes I’ve played, I don’t think any of the underwater skills are quite up to snuff with the on land stuff. Here’s hoping ArenaNet never releases an all underwater dungeon or something lol. To be fair though, I used to hate the trident too, until I started being REALLY aggressive with my attunement switching and found it to be a lot of fun. Well, relatively fun anyway… Sure it requires quite a bit more speed, timing, skill and familiarity with the class than most of the alternatives but, hey, welcome to being an Elementalist! I do wish they hadn’t nerfed the damage on Whirlpool, though. Dropping a champion to half health with one cast was pretty nice! I’m starting to see why it got nerfed…

Anyway, I’m glad the idea is growing on you. It makes me a little more confident that I’m not an idiot to think it could work. One down (well, two including me) 3,499,998 to go!

I actually just had a thought: what if instead of an actual weapon swap, we simply select our attunement as normal and automatically swap weapons as we do. So, if fire and earth are assigned to Scepter/Dagger and water and air are on Staff, rather than switching to the staff and THEN picking an attunement, switching to water or air would automatically use the Staff skill set and switching to earth or fire would switch back to Scepter/Dagger. That way we wouldn’t have to worry about introducing a new weapon swap cooldown nor would there be a problem with swapping weapons and having the wrong attunement activated when we do. We’d basically just be mixing and matching our weapon skills.

The current attunement swap cooldowns would still obviously take effect as normal.