Guild Wars 2

Welcome to my vision of a new unique mastery for one my favorite professions in Guild Wars 2. I have thought of fun and new ways to expand the Elementalist the future of Guild Wars 2 and the following post is the result. The original idea for this Elite Specialization was posted by me about a year ago, but is fine-tuned with new insights in lore and content. For immersion purposes in the world of Tyria I added some Lore behind this Elite Spec and how it would be achieved. I hope you like it and be sure to leave some constructing feedback.

[ TL;DR ]
The new Elite Specialization I thought of is called the Aspect. The whole idea behind it is that the Elementalist acquired deep knowledge of the aspects from Glints crystals. Because the air magic nature of aspects the Aspect, as the Elite Specialization is called, can manipulate the other magic types to tap into other properties of that type. Does this make the normal Elementalist useless? Definitely not! The regular Elementalist is a jack-of-all-trades and the Tempest is leaning more towards party support, whereas the Aspect would be focused on a more aggressive and offensive playstyle with either Direct-Damage or Condition damage.

As a new weapon I couldn’t choose between a main-hand focus or a Trident with a two-handed focus (named an Oracle) as a third option. The overall attack range would be similar to the scepter or maybe between dagger and scepter. As monks don’t usually fight long range. This would also balance the more offensive nature of the Elite Specialization by increasing the risk of damage. For weapon skills I designed them to be leaning more towards offense (power and/or conditions) and crowd control.

A new Elite Specialization also comes with an addition to the current class mechanics. For the Aspect this would be an Crystal Essence Bar. Think of it like the Warrior, Necromancer or Revenant have but with a different touch to make it feel unique. The unique part being that it interacts solely with the new Elite skill called ‘Glint’s Revenge.’

Glint’s Revenge’s design is drawn from ‘Elemental Lord’, which is a skill from Guild Wars 1. Having looked at its icon and skills I tried to recreate them with a Guild Wars 2 flavor which also fits the overall design and class mechanic of the Aspect itself. The skill mechanics are also quite unique for this Elite skill. I think through proper balance in damage output, cooldowns and use of the Essence Bar this Elite skill can still be the center of this Elite Specialization. Something similar to Revenant’s Mallyx Elite skill.

[ Aspect Elite Specialization ]
The previous version of this Elite Spec was an empty shell with no lore and no relation to tyria at all. At a certain moment it dawned on me how this Elite Spec could fit in the world of Tyria and the story up until Heart of Thorns.

Lore
The Zephyrites are a secluded, zen-like organization composed primarily of humans of Canthan or ELorian descent that live in a fleet of airships, the largest of them being the Zephyr Sanctum, that roam the skies of Tyria. Their magin incorporates power from the Aspects – three forms of air magic that are stored in crystals recovered from Glint’s corpse in the Crystal Desert.

After the Festival of Four Winds the Zephyrites set off on what was a long journey west, however the Zephyr Sanctum was Blown up by their recent convert, the Sylvari Aerin, as they entered the skies above the Maguuma Wastes, leading four of their airships to crash into Dry Top. The Master of Peace fled with the last remaining egg of Glint. After defeating the Elder Dragon champion Mordremoth and Glints’ egg hatching the Zephyrite knew they had to learn to defend themselves.

With the Master of Peace dead and the remaining Masters injured they needed to act to protect their once so peaceful and pacifist way of life. The Zephyrites rose to the conclusion they would study the aspects from Glints’ crystals and learn how to use them offensively for the greater good. They knew Glint would not approve of this, but she would understand.

The best students from the Masters of the Sun, Lightning and Air temporarily took daily management into their hands and chose a small group of Zephyrites to study the Way of the Aspect. In the deepest secret this courageous group of Aspect Monks, as they are called, travelled to the northern part of the Crystal Desert and study the hidden lair of Glint herself to unravel the true source of her magic.

To strengthen the bond between the Zephyrites and the Tyrians the newly appointed leaders of the Zephyrite contacted the Pact with a proposal. Because the Aspect Monks were making great progression in unravelling the secret to the real power of aspects they proposed that the Pacts’ best Elementalists are allowed to study the power of the aspects on one condition. They need to help the Zephyrites with the remaining challenges which required a strong force to collect the final pieces of the puzzle.

Storyline
The player is summoned before the Pact Commander and presented this proposal of the Zephyrites. After agreeing to help the Zephyrites they player joins the Zephyrites to meet with their new leaders and start their training.
The following challenges had to be met during the training to successfully aid the Zephyrites cause and master the different aspects.

• Meet with Ogden Stonehealer to learn about the healing properties of magic crystals. Collect the catalyzer needed from his hidden cave in the Deldrimor Front.

• Defeat Jormag and recover an ice crystal imbued with Jormag’s magic, so Ogden can finish his study on healing properties of crystals.

• Heal the Masters by collecting all the ingredients needed for the crystals to cure the Teragriff poison.

• Collect shards imbued with the power of the 3 Elder Dragon champions.

1. Mordremoth last Avatar in the Maguuma Jungle (hidden seed imbued with Mordremoth’s earth magic)
2. Imbued Destroyer Queen in Ember Bay (lava shard imbued with primordus’ fire magic)
3. Kralkatorrik in the Crystal Desert (crystal imbued with Kralkatorrik’s magic.)

• Bring the imbued magic crystals to the 3 Masters of the Zephyrites to cleanse the magic shards from their corruption with Glint’s light magic crystals.

• Learn the final steps in mastering the power of the aspects from the Masters.
Ascend to the Aspect of Glint by defending Aurene from danger again. During the fight Aurene feels and absorbs the pure power from her mother’s magic and grows into an adolescent dragon.

[ Class Mechanic ]
For the specialization mechanic, a Crystal essence bar is added to the players HUD. This is a bar below the attunements, like a Warrior, a Necromancer, a Thief and a Revenant have. With the Aspect this bar interacts with the Elite skill which will be mentioned later in this section. The bar is filled with elemental essence from using spells in different attunements. When full essence is reached, the player has two options:

1. Leave the bar filled to get a small increase in stats to attunement specific stats from the 4 attunements. Power for Fire, Vitality for Water, Precision for Air and Toughness for Earth.
2. Use the F5 skill and try to control this immense magic power with Glint’s Revenge.

Glint’s Revenge
The Aspect tries to control the immense energy stored after gathering crystal essences. Not being able to fully control this amount of power, the elements merge into an unstable and chaotic state. This results in losing stored crystal essences with each attack. Activating this skill grants the player a dragon aura from Glint herself.

1. Essence Blast (Arcane):
   Channel a ball of crystal essence and fire it towards your target. This is a slow attack, but being of the Arcane type it always crits. To compensate its strength its base damage is lower than normal and uses more essence than the other skills.
2. Telekinetics (Earth):
   With deep wisdom of manipulating earth magic the Aspect can pulse a confusing shockwave to nearby enemies’. The confusion pulses a total of three times.
3. Null Field (Water):
   Having learned the healing properties of the crystal magic the Aspect uses the cleansing power of water to reduce the effectiveness of condition damage in an area.
4. Disposition (Air):
   Having mastered the aspect of air enables the Aspect to move fluently through the air for small distances. This spell can be cast two times within 3 seconds before going on cooldown.
5. Obsidian Flame (Fire):
   Having felt the true heat of fire the Aspect can merge the corrupt magic of Primordus with all fire and engulf its target in intense dark flames. This casts eight stacks of burning on the enemy.

[ Weapons ]
Focus (Main-hand)
Through fantasy and fiction, the focus has always been an item used by magician-type characters. When I saw the design for the focus ‘Anomaly’ it seemed awesome and unique to be able to wield it in both hands. Also, the power from aspects come from Glints’ crystals. Making a main hand focus from such a crystal would fit into the lore from which the Aspect can draw its power for and collect crystal essence with. Thus, the idea to wield a focus in the main hand.

Seeing what the developers did with a staff for the Daredevil. It seemed like the most fitting weapon how I imaged the Aspect would be a focus. Alternatively, a similar mechanic to the thief’s dual wielding could be applied. Dual wielding different weapons would generate a different 3rd skill. The difference in this case would be what the Off-hand weapon would be. This mechanic would only be applied when the Aspect is dual-wielding Foci. As the 3rd skill would become a stronger version or something like that.

Trident (Two-handed)
Another magical weapon would be the Trident. As it is already a weapon the Elementalist can use underwater and the animations for a staff are already present the clipping issue should be minimal. Although it looks cool I don’t think there would be much difference between the staff and trident for the Elementalist, unless it can be used like a javelin and be thrown.

Focus (Two-handed)
This one is a bit tricky. Currently, as the focus is positioned as a one-handed weapon it might be difficult to make it into a two-handed weapon. I think too many factors to the item must be changed for this to work. This could maybe be a new weapon type. Like a spheric object which the character keeps afloat. Or even maybe multiple floating object like “Scepter Earth Skill 2 – Rock Barrier.” The Aspect would then use these objects in different attacks. Also, the objects could either regenerate and thus be expended on certain heavy attacks or be available always. The issue with this option is, even though I really would like this, it would have to be a new weapon type with all the development drawbacks coming with it.

Either one of these three variants would fit the Aspect Elite Specialization and not require too much effort from developers to implement. At least that goes for first and second options.

[ Weapon skills ]
Below I have thought of certain skills with the main-hand focus in mind, but these could as well be applied to the Trident or 2-hand Focus. Looking for possible skills, I looked at GW1 Elementalist skills. I noticed the developers re-use some skills from the previous game, so this was a good starting point. After that, I looked at other digital media like games, anime etc. Since we don’t really want to have the same skills on different weapons I slightly combined different attacks and thought of some unique ones specific to the focus. The last 2 skills in each attunement are the current off-hand focus skills. In the brackets behind each skill I noted references to existing versions of these skills which I know of. Furthermore, I did not limit the list to only 3 skills, because that would limit the creation of new skills which could be derived from these.

Fire
- Fireballs: channel fire through the focus and shoot damaging projectiles. (Similar to Fiery Greatsword Skill 1, but faster bursts. )

- Blazing Pillars: summon 3 increasingly larger eruptions from the ground which hit foes in an aoe. (Eruptions could be similar to the Fire Mining Pick when using it.)

- Reactive burn: channel a flaming circle in front of you. When it gets destroyed it explodes in a cone. (Spell summoning, Fairy Tail and Mage Energy Barrage, Dragon Age Inquisition.)

- Flaming Wings: cast a fire whip from each hand, jump your target and slash it with both whips. (Natsu, Fairy Tail) or jump towards a target area with flaming wings behind you, crashing in the target area result in a fire field.

- Burning Slash: after a brief channel slash a vertical beam of fire downwards on your foe. (Sasuke’s Chidori beam, Naruto Shippuden.)

Water
- Water Bomb: channel water through your focus and shoot bubbles to you foes which explode on contact. (Squirtle’s Bubble Beam, Pokemon)

- Ice Shrapnel: freeze water in a ball and hurl it to a location. Before landing, explode in a cone of frozen shrapnel.

- Ice Floor: cast a trail of ice on the ground slowing foes down who move on it. After 1 second on the floor the foe gets knocked down. (slippery floor. general cartoons.)

- Frost Step: propel the caster through the air leaving a trail of water behind. (Similar to Burning Speed, but creating a water field and healing at the end.)

- Water Dome: cast whirling spheres of water around you which absorbs projectiles and converts them into healing in a small aoe. (Neji’s Chakra Rotation, Naruto or Gaia energy balls, Rappelz)

- Shattering Prison: envelop your foe in ice for a short time (<1sec) after which the prison shatters chilling the foe and shoot damaging shrapnel in a 360 radius.

Air
- Air blades: throw bursts of compressed air towards your foe. (Young Karka attack.)

- Crescent Turbulence: cast a crescent form of wind in high velocity towards you target pushing foes hit back. The closer the target the more it’s pushed. (Hinata’s Vacuum Palm, Naruto.)

- Suction: focus air around your target/location and pull all foes caught towards the center. (Guardian greatsword 5 or a Mesmer skill.)

- Wind Cut: channel a whirl of air around your focus and shoot it in a straight line. The longer channeled the further and stronger the projectile. (Krillin’s Destructo Disc, Dragon kitten.)

- Thunder Burst: Cast a lightning strike on the caster channeling its energy to nearby foes. (Similar to Scepter Lightning Strike, but targeted on the caster grant movement speed and shocking nearby foes.)

Earth
- Earth Gauntlet: cover your arm in rock hitting your foe. (Green Lantern Summon First)

- Mud Slap: throw a sticky slab of mud towards your enemies’ face blinding them for a period of time.

- Seismic Slam: slam the ground with your rock-hard fists creating shockwaves in 3 directions in a cone in front of the caster. (Giant Stomp, GW2 Giants)

- Fissure: stomp the ground with your foot creating a fissure in a line. Enemies walking on this fissure are crippled and are damaged when it collapses at maximum range. (Elder Titan’ Ultimate®, Dota2.)

- Magnetic Attraction: magnetize your target pulling nearby debris towards them. This does a small amount of damage but hits a couple of time.

- Earth Wave: summon a wave of earth which propels the caster towards the enemy. (Taff Earth Stomp, Avatar: The Legend of Aang.) Implemented in Tempest’ Earth Overload

[ Skills ]
Healing:
- Essence Shift: the Aspect is a magic presence and is able to provide nearby allies and itself the ability to heal a small percentage of the damage done in a short period of time.

Utilities
- Solar Flare: emit a bright light from your body blinding and damaging foes caught in its aoe. (Arcane Shield or Magnetic Wave with a fiery touch.)

- Mirror of Ice: reflect a portion of incoming damage back to the attacker.

- Thunderclap: crack the lightning energy stored in your body and electrify nearby enemies. Making them vulnerable.

- Earthen Shackles: summon shackles from the ground on you target immobilizing them for a short period of time.

[ Elite ]
Increase resilience to condition damage and increase the condition damage of allies and the player by an amount of time. Also increases the outgoing condition duration. This Elite skill has a major trait which increases its effectiveness based on the amount of crystal essence stored before activating.

[ Traits ]
I did not spend too much time on the masteries, because it would take a lot of time and would become quite complex to balance it out. With the current Trait system, there are three major trait lines focusing on a specific part or skill of the specializations mechanics and three minor traits focusing on the overall mechanics. The Trait tree is called ‘Aspect’

Minor traits
- Unlock the ‘Essence Bar’ and enable the use of the Focus in main-hand or Trident. (or two-handed Focus.)

- Increases Essence absorption by a small percentage.

- When the Essence bar is full the Aspect receives an influx of power receiving two seconds of quickness. Cooldown 20 seconds or when the Essence bar is depleted completely.

Major traits
- Top: this line focusses on improving the weapon usage. Reducing cooldown and improving certain skills.

- Mid: improves utility skill effects and grants certain effects as a passive/active skill with a cooldown.

- Bot: focusses on the Essence bar and Glint’s Revenge. Reducing the essence cost of skills and granting additional effects to the skills.

Well… you just can’t design an e-spec around the fact that you’ll be forced to take a specific elite skill. An elite spec need to work with the core profession, only new mechanisms can be forced to the player. You should have put glint revenge on F5.

Also… to much lore… seriously, there is not a lot of lore behind actual e-spec, it’s better this way.

Dadnir.5038:

Well… you just can’t design an e-spec around the fact that you’ll be forced to take a specific elite skill. An elite spec need to work with the core profession, only new mechanisms can be forced to the player. You should have put glint revenge on F5.

Also… to much lore… seriously, there is not a lot of lore behind actual e-spec, it’s better this way.

Thanks for the reply. You got a point there with the design around the Elite Skill. Would be kind of limiting to some players. Will see to solve this issue.
As for the Lore part, I read on different media that some players find the actual lack of lore of the current e-specs breaking the immersion in the world. Going by the events in HoT the lore would bring the immersion back to this e-spec.