Guild Wars 2

Since we have Arcane, which is meant to be a “colourless” form of magic, why not have a fifth attunement which gives us total flexibility over the elements. Selecting Arcane as your attunement will allow you to.

1. Choose from any of the four elements for a particular slot.
Each weapon slot would have the drop down top border arrow, like the utility slots. When you click on that arrow, the 4 elemental attacks, for that slot, of that weapon, appear. From there you can choose any 1 of those weapons slot attacks, for that slot. This way you can mix it up, with different elemental attacks, but still adhere to the current array of powers.

2. Elemental Attunement.
Arcane gives you Vigor.

3. Evasive Arcana.
Arcane gives you Arcane Wave at the end of your dodge roll.

4. Elemental Surge.
Arcane skills cause Confusion for 2 seconds.

5. Glyph of Elemental Power.
Arcane skills cause Confusion for 4 seconds.

6. Glyph of Lesser Elementals.
Psychic Elemental: Deals damage and stuns. (Looks like a small transparent, glowing purple brain, with energy tendrils.)

7. Glyph of Renewal.
Arcane glyph will revive an ally, and give them Ageis boon for 3 seconds.

8. Glyph of Storms.
Arcane: Eather storm.

9. Glyph of Elementals.
Psychic Elemental: Deals damage and confuses.(Looks like a huge transparent, glowing purple brain, with energy tendrils.)

The suggestion above is provided for entertainment value only, and is in no way intended to be include in the game. Haters gonna hate, after all.

While I would much prefer Arcane to give Quickness (Glyph and Surge) this is actually not a terrible idea and is honestly one of the better suggestions to tweak the class as opposed to just outright buffing coefficients or the speed at which our crappy AoEs cast and deal their damage at. The whole Arcane attunement thing is pretty brilliant.

Sounds like a fun idea, but tbh, I thought arcane attunement sounded more like a new elite skill :p, you know, another form skill add to the pile. Only difference is this one wouldn’t make us melee OR rob us of our utilities :p Just a standard tome of courage type elite skill: for 30 seconds, insert uber skills here. Maybe one of them can even give eles that much wanted quickness.

Personally, I think Arcane Attunement is a horrible idea. Why? It would either be underpowered or overpowered. It also seems to defy the nature of the elementalist (e.g. we are meant to cycle attunements yet arcane would an attunement we could stick with all the time). So it may be underpowered to people who like to swap because it would just be a clone of the others really. I would assume that the big skills would still share cooldowns so if you just cast meteor shower on fire and then swap to arcane to cast it, it would still be recharging. If it didn’t do that, it would be overpowered easily.
It could also be overpowered just by the ability to choose our weapon skills from 4 choices. Like for staff I could pick Chain Lightning, Lava Font, Flame Burst, Frozen Ground, and Healing Rain/Shockwave. If I had all those skill at the same time, I wouldn’t feel the need to change attunements as often. Yet at same time I’d be weaker because I wouldn’t get a passive effect like Flame Shield and I’d lose my 10% damage on lava font, maybe even quicker cooldown.
I’d rather each attunement be boosted than adding another.

Also, the Ether/Psychic stuff sounds more like Mesmer than ele.

However, I could see this being an elite skill. Or better yet, and elite skill that varies with weapon (we only got a handful, so not that outrageous). Arcane Attunement could take all our attunements and roll them into one. For example, on staff the 1 would bounce around like chain lightning, weaken like earth, heal like water, and AoE on each blast like fire. Of course some of the effect could be weakened to prevent it being totally OP, but I still think it has potential. For Dagger it would have a different 1 attack though, combining Vapor Blade, Dragon Claw, Impale, and Lightning Whip instead (no idea what that would look like).

So all for Arcane Attunement Elite, but not as a 5th attunement. [leaves imagines what a Static Wave Healing Shower would look like…]

If there were an elite arcane attunement, I’d like it if it worked like any other attunement and had its own set of spells based on your weapon. Five more spells to use at will is already pretty elite, it doesn’t even need to be full of superpowered skills. Maybe if it was a true “burst” attunement that would help people ignore the fact that it isn’t an “ultimate” like every other elite.

You know what, that doesn’t sound too bad either BMZ, an elite skill that actually felt ‘Elite.’ Make it a 3 minute cooldown and have it last 15 or 20 seconds. Because as it stands right now, I’d rather have a 4th utility over any of my so called “Elite” skills.

Tornado in sPvP would be the sole exception to this, but let’s be honest, you’re a sitting duck to anybody with a ranged weapon; don’t know why a GIANT FRIGGIN TORNADO doesn’t at least destroy projectiles…..but oh well…..not like Mesmers couldn’t still spam their GS auto-attack and wreck our face through it anyway.

Or hell, why not make Mist Form an Elite cantrip, and have it act like a combination of the Warrior’s Endure Pain utility and the Ranger Rampage as One elite skill? Allow you to be hit by snares/cripples because stability still allows that, but let the Elementalist take no damage and still dish it out.

Its not that the idea is bad, but it would change the play style of the class. It would sort of make elementalists no longer elementalists. Switching through attunements is both a limitation and an advantage, especially with the bonuses and simultaneous spells that activate along with switching. No attunement has everything that you need at any specific time, and that was done on purpose.

I get the feeling that a lot of players want to play the “wizard” class, but they don’t like the mechanics of it. It’s sort of like playing a warrior and saying “I’m not into this whole adrenaline thing.”

Bumping this because I like the idea of giving us that 5th attunement for a pool of specific spells to act as additional utility, since our control spells are already kitten poor in power compared to every other profession’s. I also especially like making it an Elite skill that combines effects of some (or all) of the elements skills for that particular slot (1-5) on the skill bar.

Arcane Attunement should’ve been our elite skill.

With it being announced already that Rangers were going to receive an overhaul of sorts in the November patch, and Engineers having their Kits looked at in terms of balance, are there any devs that can comment on when/if Elementalists might see changes or if stuff like Arcane attunement (either as a 5th attunement or as an elite skill) would be viable in their eyes for a future build?