Guild Wars 2

This is an attempt to work out a comprehensive fix to the Elementalist class as a whole.

I’m sure many are aware of both sides of the many issues that plague Eles, and I think I’ve got it nailed down as to what the problem is. Homogenous skills. If you look at the Eles skill selection, each 1-5 regardless of weapon set all do about the same thing. There’s some low impact damage, a smattering of movement effects, an assortment of CC, and all sprinkled over all four attunements.

Why not make the Ele live up to its original idea as a Jack of All Trades? My solution would be to take each weapon, and each attunement and really distill the skills down to necessary effects that fit with a theme.

What I mean by this is to start with the attunements, and figure out what each should do in each weapon set. For example, Fire is supposed to be AoE damage. On D/D that means PBAoE, on Staff long range AoE, S/F mid-range AoE that presents obstacles to enemies. Air would then be all about single target damage, with more cleaving effects in D/D, Water would be the healing and some CC attunement, while Earth would be all about defense, bleeds and cripples.

Now you might say, that’s how it already is. And what I’m saying is, completely (or nearly so) remove the damage from Water and Earth attunements, except perhaps a light damage AA that inflicts a condition. Then add more damage to Fire and Air to compensate, and distinguish between AoE and single target/cleaving on those two.

We’ve seen that the problem with the Ele is the trait system that makes the strongest build (in this case the D/D bunker) always the most resistant to nerfing, while all other builds suffer more. If you buff damage, the D/D gets it, if you nerf survivability, the D/D still possesses the most out of any other viable builds, etc., etc.

So what I am proposing is that the devs make the attunements unique, or more so, to add flavor to the profession. This would also make Eles less reliant on stance dancing for mediocre damage output and instead use attunement switching for specific roles.

How I would personally do it is the following:

1. Fire becomes the go to AoE damage attunement. As an example: Dagger #1 would be changed to a Fire Nova emanating from the Ele, Dagger #2 would have a larger spread (I.e an actual cone), Dagger #3 is fine, except maybe make the fire trail wider. Dagger #4 is fine as a damaging fire field, and Dagger #5 becomes akin to a Guardian’s Binding Blade, throw out some fiery daggers, causing burning, with a sequence AoE pull that ends with a fire blast. The damage on all these skills would be increased due to the loss of damage from Water and Earth. Burning is located here.

2. Air becomes the high damage single target attunement, with most of the skills being channeled lightning effects allowing movement while casting, and anyone passing through the lightning gets damaged. Blind, Daze and Vulnerability conditions are located here.

3. Water becomes the healing attunement with any area skill inflicting Chill on foes. The Water AA heals the caster, and any friendlies caught in the splash while damaging foes. But the other four skills are all healing/CC focused, with zero damage.

4. Earth becomes the defensive attunement, focusing on offensive debilitating conditions, blocks and reflects. Some damage output could be gained from this attunement, especially a build focused on condition damage, but the primary goal of this attunement in any weapon set is defensive. Most of the skills in here would either tack on conditions like Bleed, Weakness and Cripple, or cause status effects like Knockdown or Launch. And at least a couple Earth skills in each set would be of the “magnetic” type allowing reflects such as Magnetic Aura, or purely last ditch defense like Obsidian Flesh. The Earth AA might be a small damage skill that stacks Weakness and Crippled; in effect an offensive CC. Again, all these changes would affect each weapon set.

5. The #3 skill on each weapon set should possess some sort of movement, ideally with either a Leap Finisher effect or Blast Finisher effect. Skills like Burning Speed and RtL for example would all go on #3. Water could get a “Ice Slide” skill, and similar skills would be altered for Scepter and Staff.

6. The #4 skill on each weapon set should ideally have an aura component appropriate to each attunement. In this way, a Staff or Scepter user would also have reliable access to a shocking aura effect for example. This could be ameliorated or removed entirely if #7 is done, since Eles could then use auras much more reliably and frequently via combo fielding.

7. Access to more combo fields and finishers. Its pretty obvious that a skill like Shatterstone or Ice Spike would be very appropriate as a blast combo finisher, whereas a skill like Unsteady Ground makes perfect sense as a Smoke field, especially if its AoE is made similar to Frozen Ground.

I’m sure there’s many other ways to better improve the Ele, but the short list above is what I came up with in a short period of brainstorming. And before all the haters and trolls cry “OP” at the top of their lungs, the tl;dr version is this:

Make Fire and Air damage, Water healing/Chill, Earth defense/condition spam. Water and Earth would possess little to no damage.

In this way, someone can run a “bunker” build by focusing on Earth and Water for point holding, a DPSer by focusing on Fire and Air, or a hybrid of various sorts by combining attunements. But by giving each attunement a specific function, rather than the hodgepodge of damage, defense and CC across all attunements, you force Ele players to think and play much more tactically, rather than skill spamming as quickly as possible. An Ele will have to think before switching out of Earth attunement for example, and be situationally aware as to whether more enemies are incoming, can he get away with DPSing, etc. With changes like the ones above, it would also be MUCH easier to balance, as each attunement has a specific function, just like the weapons on other professions.

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

Blackhat.4016:

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

No I didn’t forget, it seemed obvious. If you consider that to be effective at damage, an Ele generally in D/D is using Fire and Earth on cooldown. Well if you move all the damage to Fire, with Earth becoming defensive, then obviously the cooldowns would be reduced for both, since neither depends on the other. And with increased damage and reduced cooldowns, there would no longer be a necessity to spam. Yes, your damage would mostly come from Fire and Air, but I think that’s a small price to pay for true versatility.

And some of those other changes may be necessary, but I think with my proposed changes you’d be fine with health totals for example, because now you’d have dedicated CC (Water) and defense (Earth) on hand.

Kaleban.9834:

Blackhat.4016:

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

No I didn’t forget, it seemed obvious. If you consider that to be effective at damage, an Ele generally in D/D is using Fire and Earth on cooldown. Well if you move all the damage to Fire, with Earth becoming defensive, then obviously the cooldowns would be reduced for both, since neither depends on the other. And with increased damage and reduced cooldowns, there would no longer be a necessity to spam. Yes, your damage would mostly come from Fire and Air, but I think that’s a small price to pay for true versatility.

And some of those other changes may be necessary, but I think with my proposed changes you’d be fine with health totals for example, because now you’d have dedicated CC (Water) and defense (Earth) on hand.

If you included CD reduction in your suggestion then forget about what I said.

The other problems would need to be solved though. Otherwise you don’t encourage players to play non-bunker builds, you only make it less painful. I don’t see enough reward yet to get rid of the – by far superior – bunker traits and choose offensive traits instead.

There are 2 other problems though:

• No “trading potential” if you are in water/earth:

You can’t fight back once you switch to one of these attunements. A smart opponent will go all in once you are in water/earth and you can’t do anything about it. Yes, you can heal some of the damage dealt to you or mitigate parts of it but usually your opponent will win the trade. Switching to fire/air would be an option as well but your opponent could just disengage and suddenly 2 attunements are on CD while you basically achieved nothing other than reacting to your opponent.

• No game mechanic to back up non-bunker builds:

This is a general problem eles have. There is no “back-up plan” if you use an offensive build other than your high CD cantrips.

The only 2 professions who can go full offense without being punished for it really hard are mesmer and thief. Why? Because they have stealth, low CD invulnerability, illusions, really high mobility, etc. They have the potential to mitigate 100% of the damage dealt to them if properly played. Eles don’t have these kind of things. You have boons (mainly protection which you will find in bunker builds) and healing (again, bunker builds).

What that means is you either kill your opponent really fast or you are going to die if you run an offensive build.

fire, water, air, earth, now i want a 5th element… the element of surprise! in this atunement you never know what you will get from your 1,2,3,4,5 skills :p

nicknamenick.2437:

I find this funny to read..
I hope Anet will buff warriors and necro’s first, Ele is fine as it is right now.

Obviously warriors and necros need a buff more than eles but that doesn’t mean ele is “fine” right now. You have 1 (!) good build. All the other builds are not as far from “warrior tier” as you might think…

Btw this is the ele forum, not warrior or necro.

It’s good for each Attunement to stress one thing over another, but not to this extent, and not when Attunement swapping has such a high cooldown. Elementalists without a heavy investment in Arcana already run into problems with locking themselves out of DPS to heal or CC and this would just take that problem to superlative levels.

If the Attunement swap cooldown were dramatically decreased and Arcana granted something different, then this might be an acceptable way to rebalance the weapon spells but I suspect they would be much harder to balance overall.

I’m not really following this.

It’s basically saying “Give us more damage, more CC, more healing on shorter cooldown…just isolate it to specific attunements.”

If anything, this would make Arcane line more mandatory as you’ll want to be able to swap into these attunement specialties more often. Perhaps you can lay down some more theoreticals on me?

It’s a fun thought exercise but I don’t think it’s likely to come about.

Leo G.4501:

I’m not really following this.

It’s basically saying “Give us more damage, more CC, more healing on shorter cooldown…just isolate it to specific attunements.”

If anything, this would make Arcane line more mandatory as you’ll want to be able to swap into these attunement specialties more often. Perhaps you can lay down some more theoreticals on me?

It’s a fun thought exercise but I don’t think it’s likely to come about.

I will break it down for you

Kaleban is saying

main hand dagger -> move #2 to #1 and add an aoe pull for the fire
increase damage

All Earths

all earth skill weapon set much have either reflect and invulnerability or both. Most skills should have offensive cc and conditions

Water
No damage
Extra Healing
Good chill condition application <- very dangerous since skill takes times longs to go off cd

Air
will do more damage and all weapon set will have access to blind

Basically, he replacing some of the weak skill in the elemental with long cd spells that are more powerful than the current state

Seems somewhat OP even from an Ele perspective. It would mean the damage increase would have to be very very minimal as most of us with valk’s knight mixes etc alrdy do around 4-6k crits on our spike. Giving attunement swaps such a low cool down would give us absurd damage with the increase, aoe and single target, then we also have sustainable healing and CC. I can understand the need for Low cool downs as it makes the gameplay more engaging and active though sadly this may push us back into OP specs.

So far the changes havent really changed much for a lot of us lol, let us see what Anet has in mind.

PistolWhip.2697:

Seems somewhat OP even from an Ele perspective. It would mean the damage increase would have to be very very minimal as most of us with valk’s knight mixes etc alrdy do around 4-6k crits on our spike. Giving attunement swaps such a low cool down would give us absurd damage with the increase, aoe and single target, then we also have sustainable healing and CC. I can understand the need for Low cool downs as it makes the gameplay more engaging and active though sadly this may push us back into OP specs.

So far the changes havent really changed much for a lot of us lol, let us see what Anet has in mind.

Dude, we are talking about Kaleban here

He believes that all elementalist have at the moment is good healing and mobility.

I think Kaleban created a burst weapon spec. Spam air → swap then spam fire then kill. If the opponent is not dead, use earth to run away. Heal and wait 10 seconds before doing the insane combo again.

loseridoit.2756:

main hand dagger -> move #2 to #1 and add an aoe pull for the fire
increase damage

By the OP’s logic, all CC would be in the other attunements, and a pull is a form of CC.

All Earths

all earth skill weapon set much have either reflect and invulnerability or both. Most skills should have offensive cc and conditions

Reflects, invulnerability and CC on shorter cooldowns…now its limit is main limit is the 15sec cooldown on earth attunement. If that’s your breakdown, then it’s simply overpowered.

I was hoping more for a theoretical build and how it’d be used. That’d outline the limitations and use of the suggested change.

Leo G.4501:

By the OP’s logic, all CC would be in the other attunements, and a pull is a form of CC.

i was scratching my head

As an example: Dagger #1 would be changed to a Fire Nova emanating from the Ele, Dagger #2 would have a larger spread (I.e an actual cone),
agger #5 becomes akin to a Guardian’s Binding Blade, throw out some fiery daggers, causing burning, with a sequence AoE pull that ends with a fire blast.

Reflects, invulnerability and CC on shorter cooldowns…now its limit is main limit is the 15sec cooldown on earth attunement. If that’s your breakdown, then it’s simply overpowered.

I was hoping more for a theoretical build and how it’d be used. That’d outline the limitations and use of the suggested change.

I didnt say all skill should have invulbility and reflect. I said all earth weapon set should have at least one invulnerability and reflect or both. <- which is my breakdown

Still OP but it will change the dynamic all all elemental playstyle for the most part

Magische Boek.2530:

fire, water, air, earth, now i want a 5th element… the element of surprise! in this atunement you never know what you will get from your 1,2,3,4,5 skills :p

haha. this made me laugh.

“Surprise attunement skill 1” – Pocket Sand! shishishaaaw!!!

Leo G.4501:

I’m not really following this.

It’s basically saying “Give us more damage, more CC, more healing on shorter cooldown…just isolate it to specific attunements.”

If anything, this would make Arcane line more mandatory as you’ll want to be able to swap into these attunement specialties more often. Perhaps you can lay down some more theoreticals on me?

It’s a fun thought exercise but I don’t think it’s likely to come about.

Well, like I said in the OP, something this big would have to be knocked about at ANet before simply laying it on the public. It would be akin to the Mesmer update in GW1.

But so far, from what I’m reading people are concerned about the burst potential, the usual suspects claiming OP, etc. The way I look at it is basically that by scattering unspecialized skills across four attunements, ANet forces an attunement swapping skill spam on cooldown style of gameplay. While I have no problem with this, its a bad situation when the whole class dynamic allows for no other competitive style.

And technically speaking, I’m not asking for more of anything. Take you average Ele “rotation” utilizing skill combos and switching across all four attunements. You’re using double or triple the skills of other classes, to accomplish almost the same effects. You’re locked out of two or even three attunements due to the CD, you’ve done your “burst” and stuff is still coming at you, because despite what all the usual suspects would have you believe, Ele damage is mediocre at best. But the point is that the damage you would normally get from Fire→Earth is put entirely into Fire, while Earth is replaced with defensive skills, to give the Ele something to bring it in line with defenses such as Death Shroud, Stealth and blocks.

What I’m saying is to move all (or the majority of) damage out of Water and Earth into Fire and Air. This will make the offensive power of the Ele easier to balance. CC goes to Water, defense to Earth, with exceptions as noted in my OP. This will make the defense easier to balance as well, because the skills are much more specialized and their effects much more specific. It would mean that sometimes an Ele would not even need to switch to Air for example if not facing a single target (or targets strung out in a line), or if there’s no need to CC an enemy (such as in the case of bosses) then switching to Water or Earth is pointless.

As for Arcana, remove the CD reduction (adding some other benefit in its place) and get rid of attunement swapping CD entirely (or make it like kit swapping). This would enable the Ele to switch attunements as needed, which will be decided not by the need to spam skills like crazy just for low damage, but as the situation demands, making for more tactical gameplay. For example, say the Ele is in Staff Fire nuking a trebuchet, and sees a couple of enemies advancing on his position. He switches to Earth to put up a magnetic aura in case of ranged damage (putting the skill on cooldown), then seeing he’s probably outnumbered switches to Air to escape. He could switch to Earth or Water to CC them then back to Fire to try and kill the incoming enemies, but then some of the survival skills are on CD. If the Ele gets overwhelmed and needs CC, he could switch back to Water but those skills might still be on CD. So this allows ANet to balance individual skills without having to worry about cross-attunement abuse.

My overall aim for this type of change is to make the gameplay of the Ele less spammy, and more like playing a chess match, having to out-think one’s opponent. Obviously ANet would have to balance skill effects and cooldowns but the point is by isolating and specializing the attunements, you make the Ele a more versatile class without making it overpowered. Take the Mesmer’s Phase Retreat for example. Generates a resource (clone), moves the caster, is a combo finisher, and the clone itself causes damage. A fine multipurpose skill. My proposal is that this type of functionality be spread across the four attunements the Ele has, making the player responsible for DPS, healing, CC and defense via active specific skill use from each specialized attunement, and not secondary or tertiary effects on watered down skills spread across the attunements.

Kaleban.9834:

My proposal is that this type of functionality be spread across the four attunements the Ele has, making the player responsible for DPS, healing, CC and defense via active specific skill use from each specialized attunement, and not secondary or tertiary effects on watered down skills spread across the attunements.

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds? Simply removing Attunement cooldowns seems like it would require watering down all the Ele’s weapon skills rather significantly.

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds?

If the skills are correctly designed it wouldn’t be a problem.

Compare it to other classes with weaponswap. As example: A warrior switches to his rifle or a shield+X. He can still do something until he swaps back to his GS. Water shouldn’t be 100% healing skills with 0 dmg. ^^

And if everything fails you could just add a utilityskill that completely resets all of your attunment cooldowns like the mesmersignet for shatters.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kaleban.9834:

My proposal is that this type of functionality be spread across the four attunements the Ele has, making the player responsible for DPS, healing, CC and defense via active specific skill use from each specialized attunement, and not secondary or tertiary effects on watered down skills spread across the attunements.

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds? Simply removing Attunement cooldowns seems like it would require watering down all the Ele’s weapon skills rather significantly.

Dude we are talking about Kaleban here. He does not have a concept of balance. I do not think he even understand the current state of the game at all. Arguing these against his points is pointless since he has very firm beliefs and is unwilling to change them. This thread is another post for his own ego. His ego is strong.

So, I going to write a prophecy

To defeat the troll called Kaleban.

People must ask his not the weakness of the elementalist buts its strength.

Also, he must list the weakness of other classes.

With these two conditions, the troll will be defeated

Galrond.5972:

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds? Simply removing Attunement cooldowns seems like it would require watering down all the Ele’s weapon skills rather significantly.

If the skills are correctly designed it wouldn’t be a problem. Every attunement should be a whole style for itself. Means fire pure AE dps, Air single target dps, Earth bunker, Water healer.

Compare it to other classes with weaponswap. As example: A warrior switches to his rifle or a shield+X. He can still do something until he swaps back to his GS. Water shouldn’t be 100% healing skills with 0 dmg. ^^

And if everything fails you could just add a utilityskill that completely resets all of your attunment cooldowns like the mesmersignet for shatters.

Do you realize, Anet will have to water down all skills or increase skills cast time because elementalist are no longer locked into attuments. Look at the kittenty skills an engineer has and that will be the future of a elementalist if this proposal goes through. In fact, the state might be worse

Mesmer signet for shatters is a 90 seconds cd with a 1 sec and a half cast time. I do not think will be useful for sustain battle.

Anet might end up nerfing the cd stat for the arcana tree a bit because 4 second attainable swap will be abused for might stacking. Based on the 10 cd base,

Yeah, 7 seconds at lowest. Means 1 Second per 10 points.
Or just 10 seconds without any option to reduce it. The arcana tree could either provide additional stats per attunement (like our conjures do) or change your stats depending on the attunement. Like the water trait. 5% of precision into healing power. Just better. ^^

Attuneing to fire turns 30% of your toughness/vitality it into additional power. Earth takes precision and turns it into toughness etc.

So you could actually use the aspects of other attunements somewhat efficiently without wearing full celestial gear.

I like Galrond’s idea here. It gives versatility but with balance. It means Ele’s will have increased damage but also be more vulnerable during fire attunement. The opposite in earth, very good suggestion imo.

Blaine Tog.8304:

How do you propose making this work without forcing the Ele to lock himself out of a given facets of combat for 9-15 seconds? Simply removing Attunement cooldowns seems like it would require watering down all the Ele’s weapon skills rather significantly.

But that’s just it, I don’t think it necessarily would mean that conclusion. As I pointed out in my above post, when you look at other profession’s skills, they have multiple parts to them, such as CC, straight up damage, condition application and so forth.

And for professions that have a weapon swap, but only five skills for a given range (i.e. Hammer being melee, Rifle being ranged) each skill needs to have multiple parts to it.

The Ele on the other hand is locked into a range, with the same skill design as other professions but on 20 skills instead of 5. For balance purposes, this necessarily means each individual skill must be about a quarter of the strength.

If you remove the multi-purpose nature of Ele skills, and instead spread them across attunements, then you have individually more powerful skills, however their effects are highly specific.

Which means you can then remove attunement CDs because each attunement provides a specific function. You wouldn’t go into Air attunement when facing 2 or more foes, likewise going into Fire makes little sense when DPSing a boss. An Ele would switch to Earth to absorb or reflect a big hit, and Water for healing and Chill.

Your assertion about watering down Ele weapon skills only fits IF the same multi-purpose skills exist on each attunement and weapon. By separating out each aspect of a skill and placing it in the appropriate element, then there’s no reason to attunement hop to maximize DPS, because it would no longer be possible. If you wanted to AoE DPS, Fire is the only option, single target, Air is the only option, etc.

In the long run, this type of system would make ANet’s job balancing the skills much easier, as they wouldn’t have to worry so much about the interplay of skills. And it would open up the opportunity for more build options, as balancing the trait system would also be much more specific. For example, you wouldn’t need to worry about the interplay of Piercing Shards, Weak Spot and using Churning Earth because CE (or the skill that replaces it) would no longer deal damage.

Now it sounds like you’ll have taken all the nuance from the Ele. What makes the Guild Wars 2 system so interesting is precisely how many uses every skill has. Let’s take the Mesmer’s Temporal Curtain, for example. You can use it for general map travel, speeding up a zerg or friendly NPCs, slowing enemies (for either chases or escapes), dragging enemies onto a point, scattering enemies FROM a point, pulling foes off walls, pulling mobs without aggro-ing them, breaking channeled skills, and even as a low-cooldown projectile-reflecting wall if you trait for it. Then you can combine it with the #5 skill for AoE condition removal or a double-tap of Sword 3 for 15+ seconds of Retaliation.

What makes this skill interesting isn’t that it can do all these things but that it forces the player to choose how to use it dynamically. If you water down the Ele’s skills to the point where they each do exactly one thing, they may be easy to balance but you’ve also given the player zero choices. Most of the time, there would be one spell which they objectively should be using; the only possible differentiating factor would tactical requirements, but even then the correct skill to use would be set based on the objective. As it stands, an Ele that wants to DPS down a boss may have a few favorite rotations but there’s flexibility in how to achieve maximum DPS based on playstyle. He doesn’t have a skill called “Single-Target DPS” and another called “AoE DPS,” which is what you seem to be pushing for.

Because let’s not sugar coat it: what you’re talking about is the watering down of skills. You want the existing power to be redistributed so all the damage power is together in Fire and all the CC power is together in Water etc etc, but this would require lowering the Attunement cooldown, which is a significant buff on its own. Power would necessarily have to be taken from the weapon skills themselves, leaving the Ele with less overall damage, support, and control than it currently has as payment for having smoother access.

As it stands, an Ele that wants to DPS down a boss may have a few favorite rotations but there’s flexibility in how to achieve maximum DPS based on playstyle.

What flexibility? Maximum DPS achieved trough rolling trough every achievement and droping every skill that deals more or less damage.
Or maybe just siting in fire and spaming 3 skills with a 30/30/0/10/0 build. Not sure, since we have no damage meter.

Yeah, I can chose if I roll trough fire/water/air/earth or start with earth/air/fire/water…etc. Our cooldowns are simply too high.

But the first part already describes what you are afraid of. Watered down elementalist skills. Every attunement is the same with a different color and a different boon. So we are forced to roll trough the attumenents and hit either our DMG or CC skill and switch to the next one.

The sticking to fire option would be the result after the changes, but it should be more independent from other attunements. The change would improve our power! Simply because every attumenent would have its own purpose, like greatsword for damage or a shield for protection.

I think the way the skills are now is probably how it should stay. That is, every attunement has where it shines but is generally versatile. Fire might be the go-to for high damage skills, but you can also get some utility with blast finishers or mobility skills or even an evade, Water is mainly heal and support with CC but it also gets good damage oriented conditions (vulnerability) and gives you good burst capabilities when traited/attunement rotating right, etc etc…basically, they all do a bit of what you need with their own specialties.

What I think should change, IMO, is how traits augment your attunements rather than how the attunements should be reformed for specific purposes. It’s a good thought exercise to ponder the purpose of the playstyle, but do we really want to change it? Granted I’m not one of those that enjoys the attunement dancing madness like most do, but it is a playstyle and people enjoy it. Shifting all the focus of each attunement around so you don’t need those other skills kind of destroys that and can also harm those that like to stack boons on their allies (removing the cooldown on attunement swap? And still get 6sec of protection from earth or regen from water?)

The way I see elementalist, I see so much potential for variety if only the devs would make it so. Every time I play my mesmer, I’m reminded of just how varied play can be by just swapping around a few traits and utilities…

Some redesign philosophies I’d like for the lines:
Fire = burning, melee, conjures, fields and spell slinging
Fields is general combo field up-time, possibly lengthening all combo fields’ duration (not just fire fields) and/or decreasing the cooldown on spells that create fields (Mesmers can stack 20% cooldowns for phantoms/illusions).
Spell slinging meaning the volume of spells cast in general. With fire traits, you could enhance your spells to trigger more spells (yo dawg, I hear you like spells :P) casting explosions when you take hits, trigger flame bursts when you fall below a certain HP %, cleansing flames when you have 3 or more conditions, lava fonts when downed, etc etc. Also, a cool thing I just thought of: Conjure Recall, explode in flames to summon yourself next to your conjured weapon…would be a nice addition to mobility in general.

Water = vulnerability, chill, healing, cantrips, and auras
Pretty much what it does now minus cleansing. Cleansing would be something more inherent to Elementalist as a whole, having options in any attunement for it to varying degrees.
Auras, with the exception of Magnetic Aura, would be the focus of some of this line’s traits, granting more of them, increasing their duration and adding extra triggers to aura effects.

Air = stun/daze/knock, crit, speed, glyphs and attacks of opportunity
A trait to enhance the duration of CC in general would mesh well with attacks of opportunity which would trigger on CC’ed opponents. Just like you can but a hurting on someone now if they happened to be locked, it should be enhanced further (further than that Grandmaster trait does) leading to Air being the better traitline for spiking if done properly.
Also, this should be the place where most of the ‘on critical’ effects should be to synergize with the other few that’d be in a couple other trait lines.

Earth = conditions, combos, signets, synergy and defense
Conditions: just like fire would be apply spells with your spells, Air apply stuff on your crits and Water apply extras with your auras, Earth should apply conditions on your conditions….sort of like Warriors can immobilize when they cripple which is a very good trait…
Combos: sort of like it is now, but perhaps a bit moreso…remove the blast finisher from Evasive Arcana and put it as a trait in earth: dodge rolls are blast finishers.
Synergy and Defense: just meaning that earth should be strongest and most versatile. It’d have traits that’d synergize with various aspects of elementalist like auras, combo fields and CC but with a more defensive curve like applying protection with auras, your blasts on dodge rolls, and stone armor when you get CC’ed.

Arcane = Not quite sure what this one should be since much of what it is, I think should be distributed to the rest of the attunements (like water’s cleansing should be). Perhaps rolling traits like Sunspot, Elec discharge, Healing ripple, Earthen blast into a single minor master trait (basically casts a spell on attunement swap) and focus Arcane on all attunements + weapon specific bonuses (blasting staff isn’t bad, but the other 2 are bad/not useful and there isn’t anything for focus).

Galrond.5972:

What flexibility? Maximum DPS achieved trough rolling trough every achievement and droping every skill that deals more or less damage.

Still better than having one designated button that everyone has to use.

Still better than having one designated button that everyone has to use.

So it’s better to hit Nr2. then F1-4 then Nr2. again for a different color, than just hitting Nr2?
Or hiting 2-5, using the attunement for another 2-5 instead of just rolling 2-5?

Doesn’t seem to be much difference, besides that I have to reach the F keys first. also it sounds like pretty kitten design. “No! Your class can’t just click the same button again! You have to click another button first unlike every other class!”

Blaine Tog.8304:

Still better than having one designated button that everyone has to use.

That’s already how it is, with all professions. Each skill does something specific, take Temporal Curtain for example. The skill itself either gives a boon to an ally or inflicts a condition on a foe, but in either case, it only does one thing to whomever steps across it. The extras all come from other options, such as the sequence skill Into the Void, triggering combos from OTHER skills on it, or using traits to extend its functionality.

And those types of options could be present on the “updated” Ele skills as well.

Every Ele player in the game uses Churning Earth as a big nuke, there’s no alternate way to use this skill. It does act as a blast finisher, but adding a bit of Might from a 30s CD skill is VERY tertiary to its primary function.

And with the skills being as underpowered as they are, every Ele player is forced to use optimal rotations to even approach being competitive. With a change as I posit however, that doesn’t need to change. An Ele could use Eruption as a blast finisher in a Lava Font or Geyser just like now, but the Eruption would not do any damage, just cause bleeding or possibly CC conditions while the Lava Font does the real damage. The kicker to a system like this would be that the Ele could be much more versatile and not have to worry about putting an attunement on cooldown, and make it more in line with other professions who mostly have to worry about skill cooldowns only.

In my opinion, there are many more upsides to having 20 unique skills that do something specific, as opposed to 20 skills that all more or less do the same thing (i.e. some damage, some CC, etc.) Yes, even now certain attunements are more focused one way or another, I’m simply suggesting taking that focus to its logical conclusion to both enhance gameplay in multiple aspects as well as simplify balancing long term for ANet.

Elementalist wasn’t originally advertised as jack of all trades. That title was given them quite recently, instead of making the elementalist live up to its original description.

I agree that the elementalist needs some love, but OP’s ideas won’t work.

The suggestion is way too complex to be implemented. Try some simpler fixes.

Right now Ele feels more like a rebound guy than a ‘Jack of all trades’. I for one am tired of this class(and of the whole game concept as well). Just installed GW recently.

ThiBash.5634:

The suggestion is way too complex to be implemented. Try some simpler fixes.

How is it more complex to make the skills simpler and more specific, access to each attunement at will relegating cooldown balancing solely to skills, and making each attunement provide a specific function that follows a logical theme?

In my mind that’s much simpler and easier than trying to memorize the different attributes of multipurpose skills across 20 skills per weapon.

Instead of just leaving it at “its too hard” why not suggest some simpler fixes?

Memorizing 20 skills was never the problem, the trait arrangements are. It leaves you with not much of a choice playing anything besides aura builds due to its low survivability. Eles become pretty rare in Pvp since the update and if you meet one, chances are they play bunker. Their attempt to buff Signet Eles was a fail in my opinion. Its not really a alternative to aura builds.

But i agree with you, somethings gotta happen. Speaking of ‘Jack of all Trades’, this roll is given to Thiefs at the moment. The explosive thief population in pvp right now proves my point. Moveability, Survivability even AoE dmg (talk about Splitterbomb), they overtop Eles by miles.

Kaleban.9834:

How is it more complex to make the skills simpler and more specific, access to each attunement at will relegating cooldown balancing solely to skills, and making each attunement provide a specific function that follows a logical theme?

I think the reason your suggestion seems a bit out there is because a lot of traits, playstyles and effects would be orphaned.

What do you do with boons on swap? Spells on swap? There are traits like improved damage to vulnerable foes while attuned to water, good lot that’d do if water has no damaging skills and just a 20% increase to vulnerable foes regardless of attunement seems a bit strong for an Adept trait.

Leo G.4501:

I think the reason your suggestion seems a bit out there is because a lot of traits, playstyles and effects would be orphaned.

Exactly. What the OP is asking for is a complete overhaul of the class and that, to me at least, is way to complex an operation for Anet to undertake. Feel free to debate its merits though. Just don’t expect it to be implemented as a whole. That’s just unlikely to happen.

Leo G.4501:

I think the reason your suggestion seems a bit out there is because a lot of traits, playstyles and effects would be orphaned.

What do you do with boons on swap? Spells on swap? There are traits like improved damage to vulnerable foes while attuned to water, good lot that’d do if water has no damaging skills and just a 20% increase to vulnerable foes regardless of attunement seems a bit strong for an Adept trait.

That’s a valid concern, but I disagree on the impact. Boons on swap can be handled like many other traits, internal cooldown. Weapon swap sigils already have a 9s icd, so no issue there. And exactly how many bunker eles do you see taking the improved damage while vulnerable trait? I’ve actually used it, however its not used while casting Cone of Cold or Vapor Blade, its used after inflicting vulnerability, channeling CE or Fire Grab, and switching to Water at the last moment. So even if there were no damaging skills in Water, but ways to inflict vulnerability, then this trait would still be viable, although not as useful as others. The VAST majority of players out there take the same traits over others, because they’re so much stronger and more useful in a larger variety of situations.

I get that some people don’t like change, I know I don’t like it when skills and traits are nerfed into utter uselessness because of the whining of a vocal minority. The traits in general on the Ele are overall pretty useless except in a very few cases. Heck, just look at some of the Ele’s minor traits and tell me when these are useful in a majority of situations:

Flame Barrier
Zephyr’s Speed
Enduring Damage

Or some of the major traits:

One with Fire
One with Air
Soothing Winds
Tempest Defense
Grounded
Stone Splinters
Shard of Ice
Stop Drop and Roll
Soothing Wave
Vigorous Scepter
Windborne Dagger
Arcane Energy

The point is, everyone can sit here and say how difficult it is to make changes (it isn’t) but for a long term solution for a profession like the Ele with a profession mechanic that just screams for specialization ANet will have to take a good long look at the current playstyle and make some decisions. Bottom line is, anything they do to the class in its current state will always make bunkering the go to build. Its a critical problem of class design. By making Water and Earth specialized defensive attunements available on demand, then any build becomes viable because they’re not paper targets when they get focused.

Kaleban.9834:

That’s a valid concern, but I disagree on the impact. Boons on swap can be handled like many other traits, internal cooldown. Weapon swap sigils already have a 9s icd, so no issue there.

I had a feeling you’d mention that.

Personally, I dislike internal cooldowns but you can manage to live with them if you need to. This is fine for sigils or certain traits with powerful effects, but when I swap to air, I want my lightning strike. I don’t want to have to guess if I’ll get a lightning strike, I don’t want to have to keep up with how long it’s been to guarantee I get my lightning strike, and having the game keep up with that via (how fast X skill recharges) is one manner in which the game helps me micromanage stuff that should need micromanaging.

Internal cooldowns should be used as sparingly as possible, IMO. Use them when an effect is too strong and needs dialing down or so that multiples of an effect cannot occur. Don’t inject it into skills as a feature though.

And exactly how many bunker eles do you see taking the improved damage while vulnerable trait? I’ve actually used it, however its not used while casting Cone of Cold or Vapor Blade, its used after inflicting vulnerability, channeling CE or Fire Grab, and switching to Water at the last moment. So even if there were no damaging skills in Water, but ways to inflict vulnerability, then this trait would still be viable, although not as useful as others. The VAST majority of players out there take the same traits over others, because they’re so much stronger and more useful in a larger variety of situations.

But water also has decent reward attack powers to take advantage of this trait. I don’t see why you’d think Cone of Cold isn’t used by this trait. Just swap to Water, cast it while you’re waiting for your soothing mist to proc, there’s a good chance the target is vulnerable considering the magnitude of skills that apply it. There’s also Ice Spike which is a very good damage attack.

I get that some people don’t like change, I know I don’t like it when skills and traits are nerfed into utter uselessness because of the whining of a vocal minority. The traits in general on the Ele are overall pretty useless except in a very few cases. Heck, just look at some of the Ele’s minor traits and tell me when these are useful in a majority of situations:

Flame Barrier
Zephyr’s Speed
Enduring Damage

Or some of the major traits:

One with Fire
One with Air
Soothing Winds
Tempest Defense
Grounded
Stone Splinters
Shard of Ice
Stop Drop and Roll
Soothing Wave
Vigorous Scepter
Windborne Dagger
Arcane Energy

Which is why I’d think it’s more beneficial and more likely to shift around the traits instead. Consider that the recent Warrior update deleted one trait, combined 2 and added two new traits, altering the traits for Ele seems more logical.

Leo G.4501:

Which is why I’d think it’s more beneficial and more likely to shift around the traits instead. Consider that the recent Warrior update deleted one trait, combined 2 and added two new traits, altering the traits for Ele seems more logical.

Oh I absolutely agree that traits need to be looked at in depth., and on every profession. Minor traits need to be useful regardless of build, either making them work regardless of attunement, or in the case of my proposed changes, making offensive traits (like Electric Discharge) work in Fire and Air, with defensive traits working in Water and Earth. In fact, making traits work with two attunements would make more sense, because then it roughly equates to other profession’s traits working per weapon set, half the available skills each.

But the problem is, and the whole reason I envisioned such a change in the first place, that any change made to the Ele profession is always going to favor the bunker build types. And the reason is that the Ele has no inherent defense like Death Shroud or Stealth or lots of blocks, so Eles to survive (ESPECIALLY in D/D) are pretty much required to build tanky with lots of boon support including plenty of Vigor and Protection uptime.

If ANet made changes like I posited, than Water and Earth become the Ele’s active defense attunements, giving any build regardless of weapon or trait selection defensive capabilities to match other professions.

Yes, there are some simpler ways to go about it, such as giving the Ele more combo field access, such as Smoke and Dark, and making skills like Ice Spike, Meteor Shower, Shatterstone, Frozen Burst, etc. and any others that explode or cause movement in some way into combo finishers. Having more access to Blindness as an active defense would be a step, and having access to Stealth (i.e. invisibility) seems fitting for a wizard type anyways.

Honestly, I don’t know which way is the best way. To me, giving the Ele specific capabilities and specializing the attunements for certain tasks seems the most fitting, given every other RPG type I’ve ever played. Yes, GW1 had plenty of attack skills in each trait line, but then you had in general seven other bodies to tank for you! And even then, thematically Earth was always used as a tanking/farming build, Water as a snarer in GvG, Air as a blindbot, and Fire was kind of meh, although the E/A Starburster was fun in Alliance Battles. Which is why I think the GW2 Ele needs to have these boiled down to their essence rather than the general homogenity of skills and effects as they are now. Plus, as I mentioned above, by specializing the attunements, traits will follow suit, and more builds will open up because defense and survivability will no longer just be a function of healing damage in Water.

But the problem is, and the whole reason I envisioned such a change in the first place, that any change made to the Ele profession is always going to favor the bunker build types. And the reason is that the Ele has no inherent defense like Death Shroud or Stealth or lots of blocks, so Eles to survive (ESPECIALLY in D/D) are pretty much required to build tanky with lots of boon support including plenty of Vigor and Protection uptime.

Not true, at least before the nerf of mist form, i played DD with berserker and divinity armor a lot. And it worked fine. I remember when i read announcement of the mist form nerf, immediately it was clear to me that this frivolous decision would force eles to play bunk style even more. I still cant get behind that decision.

Evasive Arcane is essential for staying alive. So in order to survive, i have to invest 30 trait points in the arcane line. This could easily fixed by moving EA from grandmaster to master or even to adept. Regardless of that, there is till the 30 trait point water line you have to invest for survival.

So the easiest way to make the ele more versatile would be to increase the basic armor value. To compensate for that, they could remove the heal abilitys in Evasive Arcane. Make EA less essential. I also wouldnt mind replacing the whole conjure weaponry to something useful, no one plays them anyway (except for Fire Sword of course).

I’ve been playing yesterday and today the CoE dungeon with some hardcore players. One of the guy (not an ele), when playing glass-canon could deal over 40000 dmg in one hit to the golem boss. (he said his maximum hit ever was over 45000 dmg) This is no bullkitten, the boss which normally takes 3-4 minutes went down in a few seconds.

As I was witnessing that, I realized that on my first attack I was hitting only 450 dmg (I play half-bunker, in order to die in 4 thief hits instead of 2)…

On his class, after maximizing weakness condition on a boss, he was basically doing 100 times (!!!) the amount damage my “amazing” ele could slowly do with his first skill. Or if you turn this around, well over 10 times my crits on a meteor shower.

And they nerfed the ele!!!
Just to give you an idea how much the balance in this game is a total disaster.

That said, I don’t think Anet really played their game enough recently, because this is true imbalance, not: Ride the Lightning is going to 1500 instead of 1200 range and we should make it work twice less often —- when meanwhile you have people that are permanently invisible killing people in 2 hits bashing one key.

Xillllix.3485:

I’ve been playing yesterday and today the CoE dungeon with some hardcore players. One of the guy (not an ele), when playing glass-canon could deal over 40000 dmg in one hit to the golem boss. (he said his maximum hit ever was over 45000 dmg) This is no bullkitten, the boss which normally takes 3-4 minutes went down in a few seconds.

Well what hit was doing 40,000 damage?

If it’s Hundred Blades, that’s actually 8 hits.

Technically, I could do over 50,000 damage in ‘one hit’ on Elementalist from almost 1200 range away. If the target is big enough, that’s a single cast of Meteor Shower

Leo G.4501:

Xillllix.3485:

I’ve been playing yesterday and today the CoE dungeon with some hardcore players. One of the guy (not an ele), when playing glass-canon could deal over 40000 dmg in one hit to the golem boss. (he said his maximum hit ever was over 45000 dmg) This is no bullkitten, the boss which normally takes 3-4 minutes went down in a few seconds.

Well what hit was doing 40,000 damage?

If it’s Hundred Blades, that’s actually 8 hits.

Technically, I could do over 50,000 damage in ‘one hit’ on Elementalist from almost 1200 range away. If the target is big enough, that’s a single cast of Meteor Shower

I don’t know what it is but it’s something out of the ordinary. It literally destroys the CoE Golem boss in a few seconds. Maxed out glass-canon elementalists would still take a few minutes.

While I think the idea in theory is pretty cool, I feel like it’ll make us less versatile in a way. Atm you can dps in every attunement, even if it is paltry. If you could do no/very little damage in two of the four specs, you’d be posing no danger to your opponent when in those elements.

I know I shouldn’t compare gw2 to other games, but this fit really well; in another game that is not to be mentioned, there’s a druid class. If your idea was to be implemented, it would be very much like it. Change into one attunement to heal, another to ‘tank’, etc. And while that seems great, it’s not. I played one for a long time. As an ele you’re much more versatile, being able to do a bit of everything in every attunement.

That being said, something very close to your idea could happen if they redid a lot of the traits. It’s been mentioned here already a bunch, and for good reason. It’d be great if you got a significant boost when you were in fire and earth, for example, but when forced out of those elements you were a bit weaker. Water’s already there, but earth, fire and air could get the same treatment, then we’d have one hell of an awesome class.

Kaleban.9834:

That’s already how it is, with all professions. Each skill does something specific, take Temporal Curtain for example. The skill itself either gives a boon to an ally or inflicts a condition on a foe, but in either case, it only does one thing to whomever steps across it. The extras all come from other options, such as the sequence skill Into the Void, triggering combos from OTHER skills on it, or using traits to extend its functionality.

Your point is pure sophistry. The skill has a bunch of effects packed into it which means there are a bunch of different ways to use it. This creates room for personal expression of play and skill ceiling since a) two Mesmers might use it differently in different situations to achieve their goals, and b) there are better and worse ways to use it, ways to show your mastery of the skill as well as your own playstyle.

I’m not saying every skill has to be like that, but most of them should be. You certainly shouldn’t have all of them do exactly one thing.

Kaleban.9834:

Every Ele player in the game uses Churning Earth as a big nuke, there’s no alternate way to use this skill. It does act as a blast finisher, but adding a bit of Might from a 30s CD skill is VERY tertiary to its primary function.

Ok first, I’m not going to let you dismiss the blast finisher so easily. Those three stacks of AoE Might it provides still lets you express your mastery of the Ele. A better Ele will be able to get a little more damage for himself and his team than a lesser Ele would’ve. But even then, you don’t just have to use it for Might. You could use it in a buddy’s Water field for a good AoE heal, a Dark field for AoE Stealth, or an Ethereal Field for AoE Chaos Armor, and any Mesmer will tell you how strong that is.

That said, you’re oversimplifying Churning Earth by a lot.

Pros:
1) Gives a cripple field.
2) Blast finisher
3) Huge damage (I believe our highest single-hit damage)
4) Applies many Bleed stacks
5) Huge AoE
6) Can Lightning Flash during channel to move AoE

Cons:
1) Long channel time
2) Moderate cooldown
2) AoE emanates from the Ele

It’s the definition of a high-risk, high-reward skill. Skillcap comes in managing the cons in order to maximize the pros, as well as ability to take advantage of the Blast Finisher and make use of Lightning Flash tricks. But there’s still room for self-expression. One Ele might use Lightning Flash at the very last moment while another might intentionally start in the center of a group after he’s pretty sure all interrupts have been used to cause a scramble off a point. Heck, if you’re chasing a group and can get ahead of them, you could even use the Cripple Field to shut down their escape.

Cripple on churning earth is so pathetic it doesn’t even count.
I personally wouldn’t count lightning flash as a pro either, since that’s burning up a cantrip to do it, and kind of necessary if it’s for pvp. Points 4 is kind of part of point 3 as well…

I do like using it as my last blast finisher on a field though, since the field presence is registered when the skill starts rather than when it ends. Feels nice healing and doing damage at the same time if there’s a water field around ^^ The delay also makes it one of the few finishes that could actually let people see it and gather towards you to receive the benefit.

Blaine Tog.8304:

That said, you’re oversimplifying Churning Earth by a lot.

Pros:
1) Gives a cripple field.
2) Blast finisher
3) Huge damage (I believe our highest single-hit damage)
4) Applies many Bleed stacks
5) Huge AoE
6) Can Lightning Flash during channel to move AoE

Cons:
1) Long channel time
2) Moderate cooldown
2) AoE emanates from the Ele

It’s the definition of a high-risk, high-reward skill. Skillcap comes in managing the cons in order to maximize the pros, as well as ability to take advantage of the Blast Finisher and make use of Lightning Flash tricks. But there’s still room for self-expression. One Ele might use Lightning Flash at the very last moment while another might intentionally start in the center of a group after he’s pretty sure all interrupts have been used to cause a scramble off a point. Heck, if you’re chasing a group and can get ahead of them, you could even use the Cripple Field to shut down their escape.

And you’re overemphasizing CE by a lot. A cripple field that really has no value if used in conjunction with Lightning Flash. A Blast Finisher that isn’t taking advantage of the fields you put down if you use LF. Huge damage, lol. It makes the screen shake, but damage? No. Bleed stacks? One condition removal, which of course tend to come off cooldown well before CE is ready to go again. Huge AoE, which of course people can just stroll out of due to the 3.25s cast time. Unless you use LF, which again diminishes many of the skills pros in the first place.

Also, now that the Ele has been nerfed so much, about the only profession the Ele can get ahead of to use the Cripple Field as an “escape shut down” is the Necromancer.

Its a high risk, no reward skill, which is the same vein for many of the Ele skills due to having double the skills of other professions with the same homogenity of non-damage variables like conditions and status effects. To keep “balance” requires the watering down of ALL Ele skills and traits, since making them even close to comparable to other classes would make the Ele far too powerful. This is a problem with how skills on the Ele are the same, design-wise, as any other class.

Its akin to designing the Warrior to do less damage than a Ranger unless the Warrior ALWAYS blows every weapon skill CD on both weapon sets as soon as it is up. That’s not tactical or engaging gameplay, that’s simplistic min-maxing on every encounter.

And, moving all damage out of Earth and making them defensive skills doesn’t necessarily mean that CE has to be removed, nor a lack of “self-expression” with the skill. I’d envision CE as a shorter cast PBAoE field, that persists for, say 8 seconds after casting. It would pulse every second or two, applying Weakness, Crippled and maybe a few Bleed stack(s), and Knockdown. And would double as a Smoke Field. So you lose the majority of damage, but gain a powerful field, and very strong offensive CC, which is in line with my view of Earth as “active defense.” It could still be used as a chokepoint holder, a means to help lockdown a boss, could still be used with LF for a variety of options, and also as a defensive measure by combo blasting in the field. The stats on this skill could then be balanced without regard to other damaging skills, and moderate the Ele’s overall defensive abilities.

Like I’ve said, I understand that many don’t like change, but what is going to be the end result a year or two from now of the Ele profession, when its pretty obvious that the ANet devs just don’t know how to handle it? When their stated intent is to nerf bunker and bring other build options up, and their changes nerf bunker very little while wrecking any other build option, its plain that the basic design for the class is either not understood or too difficult to manage within the framework of the other professions. A change like I propose makes balance easier, gives more depth and variety to Ele gameplay, and in the long run probably more fun for everyone. But by all means, argue to the contrary while people are shelving their Eles left and right for other, easier classes.

One major problem with this approach is it actually discourages attunement switching. Why switch out of Fire in a fight with lots of trash mobs? Why switch out of air in a boss fight?

One of the more enjoyable aspects of ele to me is that I really have 20 weapon skills instead of 5 and it’s super cool to switch attunements every 3 seconds.

Your proposal takes some (not all) of the motivation away from that play style.

juno.1840:

One major problem with this approach is it actually discourages attunement switching. Why switch out of Fire in a fight with lots of trash mobs? Why switch out of air in a boss fight?

One of the more enjoyable aspects of ele to me is that I really have 20 weapon skills instead of 5 and it’s super cool to switch attunements every 3 seconds.

Your proposal takes some (not all) of the motivation away from that play style.

No that’s a fair point. My response would be that it entirely depends on what skills ANet would put in Water and Earth. For example, right now what is the most damaging skill you can use against a karka?

Magnetic Aura. A defensive skill, with an offensive twist.

Take your typical D/D build. Switches to Water for heals and maybe a Frozen Burst or Frost Aura, Air or Fire for a somewhat reliable movement skill and damage, Earth for some CC such as a knockdown or Cripple, and some blast finishers.

With my proposed changes, you’d still be doing all of that. Doing damage in Fire and Air, switching to Earth when you need some CC and defense, switching to Water when you miss or are out of dodges, then to another attunement with whichever movement skills you need, etc., etc.

Point is, even if its just lots of trash mobs, the Ele is low health and armor. You WILL need to switch to Earth for defensive measures, or Water for healing. Against a boss, you’ll need to do the same thing, and heck, you’ll switch to Fire or Earth just to lay down some combo fields for your teammates (especially if they add Smoke or Darkness fields to Earth and/or Water). As it is now, you have to quickly rotate through your attunements to maximize damage. With my proposed changes, you’d still quickly roll through attunements but with a specific purpose to each skill, rather than simply spamming 16 skills to aggregate the damage.

Kaleban.9834:

And you’re overemphasizing CE by a lot.

Nope, just being thorough and showing how even one of our more straightforward skills has a skill floor and room for expression.

Kaleban.9834:

A cripple field that really has no value if used in conjunction with Lightning Flash.

Yep. But it’s still there. So sometimes you’ll be able to take advantage of it, other times you won’t. It means you’ll be able to use the spell a little bit differently each time.

Kaleban.9834:

A Blast Finisher that isn’t taking advantage of the fields you put down if you use LF.

So flash into someone else’s field.

Kaleban.9834:

Huge damage, lol. It makes the screen shake, but damage? No.

Objectively, yes. According to the Wiki, it hits for ~1000 base, AoE while the Thief’s Backstab hits for 800 base. Now the thief is far more to have been built glassy but that’s somewhat beside the point. Furthermore, the point I was making was that it’s one of our biggest single-tick hits.

Kaleban.9834:

Bleed stacks? One condition removal, which of course tend to come off cooldown well before CE is ready to go again.

So conditions are useless? You’re going to discount them entirely, from everyone ever, just because condition removal exists? Any time you force your opponent to do something to deal with your actions, you’ve won a small victory. Now that he’s blown his condition removal, maybe you hit him with a Chill or a Weakness or a Burning, or you let your Condition-heavy friend lay into him.

It’s additional depth the skill has. That’s my point.

Kaleban.9834:

Also, now that the Ele has been nerfed so much, about the only profession the Ele can get ahead of to use the Cripple Field as an “escape shut down” is the Necromancer.

In a chase from a zerg, any sort of AoE cripple can be all you need to kill someone with the force of your zerg. Get ahead of a fleeing group, drop your cripple field, and that group is going to have to blow something to escape. Chances are good they’ll be running low on escapes by that point, too.

Again, my point is the additional depth. It may be situational, but it’s a chance to show your mastery of the skill.

Kaleban.9834:

This is a problem with how skills on the Ele are the same, design-wise, as any other class.

It’s also a fundamental assumption built deep into the design of GW2. The game goes very far out of its way to prevent too much optimization for any one aspect. No one’s allowed to take their role to the extremes of other games.

Kaleban.9834:

But by all means, argue to the contrary while people are shelving their Eles left and right for other, easier classes.

I’m not saying the Ele doesn’t need changes. I’m saying I find your changes problematic on a fundamental level. Please don’t conflate my disagreement with your approach for sticking my head in the sand.