Guild Wars 2

Large quantity is not always better! Imagine a warrior swapping between 4 weapons, each with 15 seconds cool down, and each weapon carries a specific theme (one dps, one healing, etc.) It would be absolute hell because as soon as you want a little bit of healing, you have to put a 15 second C/D on whatever you just had even if you only want to pop one skill on your healing weapon.

Take our 20 skills divided into 4 groups and compare it to how it would be like if a warrior for example had 4 weapon swaps. It would be crazy to keep track of, right?

“So just stop switching attunements so often!”

We are encouraged to switch attunements frequently due to boons given on swap and because to be considered high level player one must make use of all skills.

This isn’t a L2P issue. This is an organization issue. We have all of the tools we need at our disposal, but we just can’t reach them. It requires way too much work and concentration to balance use and timing of all 4 attunements. This is why people feel that elementalists require twice the effort for half the result.

How the change works: Weapons grant skills like any other class. Elements now have their own “kits” that have a 1 second cooldown on use. Each kit takes a utility slot.

Example: If I’m rocking dagger/dagger without a “kit” activated, I have 5 skills that aren’t element specific. When I equip my fire “kit”, my 5 skills change into new skills that are the same that we have now (Drake’s breath, burning speed, etc.).

This way we have much more control on what skills we want to use and when we want to use them. Also, we are not encouraged to spam all 5 skills in an attunement just because we have 20 to spare.
The way this is implemented obviously needs much tinkering/thought so give me your ideas and thoughts. I will be adding/deleting/changing things frequently.

There are multiple topics on the engineer forum asking for the exact opposite.

Well that’s silly considering the problems that having 4 weapon sets bring compared to how smooth the engineers have it. Could you show me one of these topics? I couldn’t find one.

I don’t like it. Attunement swapping does need some tweaking, but this is not it.

Call it bias, but one of the things I absolutely hate is how Engineer’s weapons are balanced around having Kits. I like running only Turrets (yeah I know they’re underpowered, but I like the style), and because of this I am stuck with a single weapon (among only three to choose from), which lacks versatility.

Even if Elementalist was to be changed to this, it would require enormous overhauls to the whole class. All attunement-based traits would have to be scrapped, every weapon ability would need to be rebalanced, not to mention the fact that this would make Conjures redundant. Also, what would F1-F4 become?

Elementalist needs to be balanced around its current design without attempting to drastically change core mechanics. It’s weaker than most classes, and requires a lot more effort for the return, but it’s a mechanically sound class.

Thank you Seginus for your post. It’s probably true that making elements like kits is a bad idea, but I still feel the attunement mechanic needs to be changed in some way.

Agh sorry Turbo no offense but this change would destroy the class for me. The attunements swapping is what makes the class for me, a high paced profession, all professions are different in games, some professions are made to be easier to play by design, and some classes are made for more effort.

I would dump the ele in a heartbeat if this went through, again no offense meant.

I really like the attunement swapping as is and would find the class boring without it.

Adding weapon swapping to it as well would be even better. Yes 40 abilities!

The other classes can switch from melee to ranged by changing weapons. We are stuck with whatever range weapon we pick. There isn’t any range variation regardless of attunement.

You know, if they just fixed conjures, all of the people who hate attunement swapping would be able to play it more like any other class, and you could have your swap between melee/range. Your change, OP, would completely ruin the class for those of us who enjoy the fast-paced attunment swapping gameplay.

Also, our abilities aren’t necessarily divided up based on their use and attunment. D/D, for instance, has no defensive skills in Earth, but 2 CCs, and a gap closer. Air has another gap closer, 2 CCs, Fire is straight damage, and practically every skill is an AoE or cone. As far as I can see, only Water has a specific purpose – chill and heal. Same, really, applies to Scepter, too. Only one defensive skill in Earth, then a blind in Earth and in Air, etc.

mechanic is ok… just fix bugs and balance it a bit and itll be ok

Problems apart , your solution would make it much worse.

So one big no to this!

Eles need fixes , but this is not it.

@Haette: Grass is greener on the other side effect.

ArenaNet has provided a clear option to players of one profession that prefer the mechanic of the other – play the other profession. Apart from the mechanic and the fluff of magic versus technology, the two play quite similarly.

Attunement swapping should NOT have to be a must to be an effective elementalist.

As opportunistic as it seems, it can carry some severe disadvantages. One of the more obvious disadvantages is linear strategies (if you can call it strategy).

If you want to play as a support, you should NOT have to sift through your elements to do so.

If you want to play tanky, you should NOT have to sift through all 4 elements to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Its a fact, Elementalists just play off cooldowns due to how many skills there are at our disposal. Elementalists mentality — Blow all your skills as often as you can.

Should spam = reward?
Should skill = reward?

The fix is simple… the skills within each element are not sufficient and do not fulfill their purpose to play a role(s) effectively.

ANSWER: Skill re-work. Keep the same visuals. Just change what they do.

Elementalist is probably the least straight forward profession in the game due to their mechanics. So, achieving a satisfactory standard for them will take longer.

gkrit.9416:

Attunement swapping should NOT have to be a must to be an effective elementalist.

As opportunistic as it seems, it can carry some severe disadvantages. One of the more obvious disadvantages is linear strategies (if you can call it strategy).

If you want to play as a support, you should NOT have to sift through your elements to do so.

If you want to play tanky, you should NOT have to sift through all 4 elements to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Its a fact, Elementalists just play off cooldowns due to how many skills there are at our disposal. Elementalists mentality — Blow all your skills as often as you can.

Should spam = reward?
Should skill = reward?

The fix is simple… the skills within each element are not sufficient and do not fulfill their purpose to play a role(s) effectively.

ANSWER: Skill re-work. Keep the same visuals. Just change what they do.

Elementalist is probably the least straight forward profession in the game due to their mechanics. So, achieving a satisfactory standard for them will take longer.

I rather like the attunement swapping, makes the class more unique. Just as my shatters and my virtues makes my mesmer and guardian unique. One can build around itt, but using the inherent abilities of the professions can yield good results.

Sure, one get a long cool down on the attunement last used, but then again you got 4 attunements in total that you are free to swap to fairly directly.

That said, some rework on the skills of each attunement might be OK, but I still like it that in order to be even more effective one should have to switch attunement, just as I need to shatter with my memser, or pop virtures on my guardian, and swap weapons (!) on both of them, to achieve full potential.

the problem with kits as they stand now is you lose all sigils and stats on your weapons when you equip the kit, since it works like a bundle. I dont know if you mean for them to be EXACTLY like kits, but I would be against it just because of how the bundle mechanic currently works in gw2. I dont want to be down stats and have no sigils just because of a mechanic! at least engineers can choose not to use the kits.

Ozymandias.5704:

gkrit.9416:

Attunement swapping should NOT have to be a must to be an effective elementalist.

As opportunistic as it seems, it can carry some severe disadvantages. One of the more obvious disadvantages is linear strategies (if you can call it strategy).

If you want to play as a support, you should NOT have to sift through your elements to do so.

If you want to play tanky, you should NOT have to sift through all 4 elements to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Its a fact, Elementalists just play off cooldowns due to how many skills there are at our disposal. Elementalists mentality — Blow all your skills as often as you can.

Should spam = reward?
Should skill = reward?

The fix is simple… the skills within each element are not sufficient and do not fulfill their purpose to play a role(s) effectively.

ANSWER: Skill re-work. Keep the same visuals. Just change what they do.

Elementalist is probably the least straight forward profession in the game due to their mechanics. So, achieving a satisfactory standard for them will take longer.

I rather like the attunement swapping, makes the class more unique. Just as my shatters and my virtues makes my mesmer and guardian unique. One can build around itt, but using the inherent abilities of the professions can yield good results.

Sure, one get a long cool down on the attunement last used, but then again you got 4 attunements in total that you are free to swap to fairly directly.

That said, some rework on the skills of each attunement might be OK, but I still like it that in order to be even more effective one should have to switch attunement, just as I need to shatter with my memser, or pop virtures on my guardian, and swap weapons (!) on both of them, to achieve full potential.

This is the mentality I feel people have been brainwashed into one way or another.

Why should you need to use ALL elements to be effective?

Elemental attunements are there to compliment a particular playstyle. Not dictate they way you use your elementalist. They are OPTIONS. However, too many options can complicate things.
You shatter your illusions at opportunistic moments to gain maximum effect. You’re not just spamming them wildly to output as much damage as possible or achieve as many effects as you can (cooldown being a factor).

Cooldown is not really a huge factor when playing Elementalist. Thus, the godly “Attunement Swapping is the always way… Learn to play” mentality came about.

Define > Design > Refine

This will take time.

Animosity.5231:

You know, if they just fixed conjures, all of the people who hate attunement swapping would be able to play it more like any other class, and you could have your swap between melee/range. Your change, OP, would completely ruin the class for those of us who enjoy the fast-paced attunment swapping gameplay.

Just curious, since conjures don’t really fit my current build, but what exactly is wrong with them. They seem ok for fleshing out overspecialized builds. Axe/Hammer/Greatsword add some mobility and melee damage. Hammer/Shield add some defensive abilities. Frost Bow adds some ranged abilities. What I don’t like is that people can pick up the spare weapon without me wanting them to (or even meaning to sometimes), but that just means they add some group support that doesn’t work in random PUGs or zerg encounters.

What’s the problem?

I agree that attunement swapping is rather problematic right now, but it’s only part of the greater picture of poor design.

I’d say the problem with the elementalist comes down to 3 core problems:

1) No weapon swapping. To me, as a heavy WvW player, this is the absolute biggest issue. It locks you into one role, meaning you’re choosing to either function in siege combat but be very ineffective in smaller group combat, or vice versa. I just don’t see the justification for this, sure some players might find it a bit overwhelming on top of attunements, but I think everyone would rather play a complex class than a weak one. Either we need weapon swapping, or the attunement system needs to be changed to be more equivalent to it, instead of just having the same effectiveness and role designation as any other classes weapon, only spread out over 20 spells instead of 5.

2) And this ties into the above, the attunements themselves, as this thread points out. You’re forced to dance through attunements constantly just to be nearly as effective at anything as another class, constantly locking you away from abilities you need and forcing you to make tactical choices where there’s no good option. At the very least, the attunement cooldown should be no longer than the weapon swap one, perhaps even shorter.

3) Finally, the spells themselves are just too ineffective and unyieldy. Damage is too low, cast times are too long, far too many spells which are supposed to be the core of our damage output are completely useless because they’re impossible to land against anything other than a training dummy, thanks to some combination of ground targetting with small areas of effect, long cast times/delays and easily visible target areas. Spells like phoenix/dragons tooth/trident and so forth need to either lock onto their target like other nukes, or be converted to instant casts with faster projectiles and larger areas of effect, currently they’re impossible to use reliably unless your entire build is build around CC locking and you’re lucky enough to fight someone without a counter to it.

Finally crowd control is either broken or short and easily countered, and heals and shields don’t come anywhere near close to cancelling out our absurdly low defense and health pool unless we spec so defensively that we even further neuter our damage output.

That said, the core concept of the class is a good one, but it falls apart in the details and needs some serious work to be made competitive.

Leave elementalist as is. Some if us like how the class plays. I don’t get why people come on here and try to push some other classe’s mechanics. If you think engineer is better then go play an engineer. I tried out all the other classes and like the elementalist the best. Its not for everyone but I don’t insist other classes should play like the elementalist.

Protip: want to be good at attunement swapping get a gaming mouse at least. I roll with a Razer Nostromo and Naga.

I know everybody hates the comparisons to WoW when playing ANY other game but I have to bring this up. I played WoW for something like 5 years and in that 5 years I played the same class as my main and never deviated because I fell in love with it at level 1. I was lucky and it was also the first character I ever made.

Race? Night Elf. Class? Druid. Spec? Restoration for the last 4 years out of 5 (started in late vanilla). What did you have to do in PVP to have to be as effective and annoying to the other team as possible? Shape-shift your butt off.

GW2 race? Sylvari. Primary profession? Elementalist. Style? Staff Water support. What do you have to do as an Elementalist in pvp to be as effective and annoying to the other team as possible? Attunement swap your butt off.

Simply shape-shifting into any random thing won’t be effective. Neither will swapping to any random attunement. You have to know which spell to use when and where and how to manage the cooldowns. Swapping attunements to get to these spells is just part of the class. It’s almost a personality thing that each class has, a certain vibe that goes with it. When you are one with the elements or animal shapeshifts, you can be extremely effective. You just have to mesh with the class well is all.

So my question is, why all the complaints about the attunement swapping? If you don’t like it, just like some people hated shape shifting, just find another class that doesn’t do that or ask for better balancing and number tweaks? I know it may seem like a dead horse and people feel that change should be implemented anyway, but it seems like the only class that has something this unique isn’t being given a proper chance by some.

Is to blame for what? It’s pretty effective, but it does require some thinking on the player’s part. If you want to pwn mindlessly, there’s the Warrior.

Seriously, I used to be one of the more vocal complainers of this porfession until I learned how to play it properly. Now, like many others, I agree that bugfixes and maybe a pinch more health is all the Elementalist really needs. The key to playing it properly lies in comboing and switching attunements. If you don’t do that then you’ll never reach the point where the profession seems balanced to you.

No weapon swapping. To me, as a heavy WvW player, this is the absolute biggest issue. It locks you into one role, meaning you’re choosing to either function in siege combat but be very ineffective in smaller group combat, or vice versa.

The weapon’s range doesn’t limit its uses. At least, not for the Elementalist. If played properly, the staff can still be very effective in close combat and even in 1 vs 1 situations. You’re confused with other classes who DO weapon swap here.

Just curious, since conjures don’t really fit my current build, but what exactly is wrong with them.

Their damage is too weak. The earth shield’s auto attack for example, deals less damage than the fire staff’s auto attack (which is ranged instead of melee, and has AoE to boot). Also, if you’re using a weapon with defensive staff, swapping to the shield will actually LOWER your defenses because you loe your weapon’s stats bonusses when you pick up a conjure weapon.

I don’t really think that the attunement system is flawed. It’s different that engineer sure, but the entire class is different than engineer. I also don’t understand why having to keep track of your attunement cooldowns and being forced to make tough decisions on when you switch attunements is a bad thing…doesn’t that just raise the skill ceiling? That’s good right? Ele is a pretty powerful class is played right…the fundamental mechanic is fine.

Conjures though, I think they need work. IMO, they are pretty crappy right now. There are some okay combos with lightning hammer and haste just so you get the blast finishers…but that’s really all I can think of. The fact that you get locked into the conjure’s weapon skills and then lose them until cooldown is up if you want to use your normal skills is terrible.

If our trait lines are any indication, only players meant to invest on arcana should attunement swap like crazy, while players investing on fire/ air/ earth/ water should want to stick with them for the best results, only changing to other attunements when in need, changing right back to their specced elements to yield more results than changing to the remaining others.

I personally prefer that playstyle. I like that we have the option to pick our favourite or our two favourite attunements, while attunement swapping being relevant but secondary, unless we specc for us to be crazily dependent on our main mechanic. Unfortunately, that option sucks due to bad traits.

You know, all/ most other professions work like that. Shatters will always be useful to a Mesmer, but they can be a secondary skillset while mesmers focus on keeping phantasms, creating clones, etc, depending on their build. Animal companions will always be there for the Ranger, but they can be secondary or drive the whole build. Virtues will always define the Guardian, but they’ll either be passive effects to several guardian’s builds most of the time, or really strong activated abilities to other Guardian’s builds.

Why must we, elementalists, depends on our main mechanic more than any other profession? Why must we not have the option to make half of the elements we like best inherently stronger than the remaining half of the elements we like the least?

Why can’t I be a mobile fire/ air burst-focused elementalist, or go fire/ earth for a more defensive condition-damaging elementalist? All other attunements would still be secondary options, but they could be, or not, relevant depending on my need. This would give more personality to the elementalists builds. It would make elementalists more unique compared to each other.

And for those that absolutely love dancing through all attunements equally? You’d still have the arcana traitline for that purpose.

But if you pick the 20% cooldown reduction and the +10% damage traits in those specific attributes, you can do just that right?

They’re weak traits compared to stuff like Elemental Attunement or the water regeneration traits. That’s the problem. (They’re also really boring, really uninspired traits).

Other professions get traits that give a +20% cooldown reduction to half of their weapons skillbar while still doing something else. We get a +20% cooldown reduction to 1/4 of our bars without any extra bonus. Yeah…

It doesn’t helps neither that our minor traits for those attunements are also very weak, to the point that, again, they’re better when you’re attunement swapping like crazy with 15 in arcane to make those effects linger for 5 seconds when you get out of their element. (But then, if you do that, will you really want to invest 5 points on every other traitline at all?)

We need something more sturdy and self-dependent. Something that actually makes us strong enough if we decide to stick to one/ two attunements over the remaining two for, like 75% of the time.

Most attunements of each weapon set are not specializes on one aspect but two or more; so your complain “if you switch out of your DPS attunement you do awful damage the next 15 seconds” is void.
Also the Conjure Weapon skills are your “weapon swap” and way to play more straight-forward; if you feel those skills don’t fill this role well enough point out why and maybe even make suggestions how to improve them.

The problem is thet with kits or weapon swapping you get a real strategically different set of skills, while swapping attunement you stick with skills using the same range, so it doesn’t really change anything strategically, but it rather enlarges your active skill set so that the impact of their cd is partially lifted.

So in my opinion it can only be solved in 2 ways:

a) letting us swap weapons, sending all our attunements in long cd, along with the weapon swap cd (as previously suggested by some one else i think, best soft solution)

b) changing radically how any attunement make every single weapon behaves, so that each attunement could bring new strategic choices, like using a real different weapons would do (too hard, time consuming to implement and balance now)

How I view this is more of a “I shouldn’t have to spec 20+ points in arcane to be an effective Elementalist,” and boy do I agree. There is so much switching that just seems to be switching for the sake of switching instead of switching for damage. Some of the videos of people are of them switching just because the attunement is off CD not because the abilities within the attunement they are switching are off CD.

@draxynnic: Exactly. Both sides see the benefits of the other but ignore the downsides.

The biggest one here being that with the “kit” setup, you have a mere 5 weapon skills without kits. It’s not as big a deal with engineers where almost everything is ranged, but it could become an issue when dealing with a dedicated short-range weapon like daggers. Then you realize that if you want your weapon bars back, you have less room for stunbreakers and utilities in general. My engineer often feels like it only has one utility slot because I almost always have a kit of some kind and a defensive cooldown.

All that, and eles would be left without a profession mechanic altogether. Our unique feature is that we have all these options on hand at all times in the first place, we’d need something entirely new to replace it.

From the engineer’s point of view, attunements are the fix for kits because they don’t eat up valuable utility slots or have stat/sigil issues. They also hide the weapon skins we worked hard for ._.

I do think there’s little incentive to specialize in any one/two elements. There’s a billion reasons to swap to and from elements but very few reasons to stay in each one after its cooldowns are blown. I think a lot of “on swap” traits could be moved lower in their trees and more “while in X attunement” could be moved higher up and buffed, giving a greater benefit for people who choose to specialize in an element.

Engineers use kits because its not their proffession mechanic, their mechanic is that even though they “lose” a slot to the kit, they actually still have a skill they can use on the toolbelt, meaning they dont really lose a skill at all. A great example is medkit, it means you have no healing skill when you dont have the kit on, but thats wrong, cause you get a GREAT heal skill on the toolbelt, have bomb kit on, but wanna stay at range? you can be in P/P and STILL have access to a GREAT skill in big ole bomb, so really, we have kits because we dont actually lose a slot to them.

I wish we could have one mega “toss the attunements” thread, so it could be rolled up into a “give us an 9th class that plays to archetype” thread.

Attunement switching is an extra button push. Some have gone with remapping them to ALT-1 to 4, which makes a lot of sense to (though I haven’t since I’ve gotten so used to F1-F4).

It’s ok not to like it and move on.

I didn’t enjoy Engineer, mostly because for the limited time I played it, it felt more like a grenades class than a Turrets class, and I already have something that tosses ranged damage

Does that mean I jump into the Engineer forum and tell them to rethink the class from the ground up?

@gkirt

“Its a fact, Elementalists just play off cooldowns due to how many skills there are at our disposal. Elementalists mentality — Blow all your skills as often as you can”

Bad Elementalists blow everything before moving on from a certain attune. There’s no reason to drop an Updraft/Earthquake, SA, Cone of Cold or Cleansing Wave if the situation does not call for it.

We have Attunement Rotation. Anyone can mindlessly swap attunements and blow cooldowns. It is in the order of what we swap to and when we swap to it that gives us our strength.

Personally, I love attunement dancing. The pace of the action on my elementalist makes every other profession feel miserably slow by comparison. I have no issues with CD. By the time I use a couple skills in the other three attunements, the one I started in is almost always up again.

Keeping in mind I have 30 in arcane and may be doing a lot of movement between some casts as a D/D ele.

I would love weapon swap, even if it had a 2 min cd on it.

Agreed. Sharing low power among 20 skills is not fun.

IMO the issue here is staff and the fact all but 2 skills on it are AOE, and even the 2 non-AOE skills (water 1, earth 1) are very weak. When wielding a staff, Ele’s are totally pidgeonholed into a support/AOE role.

Likewise with D/D, only 2 skills do damage at 600+ range. It’s a terribly limiting design.

Staff ought to get at least 1 skill that can do decent single-target dmg, good candidates would be air 1 & 2. Air 1 for e.g., the first hit could do double its current damage and then each subsequent hit do 50% of that. This would keep it as an AOE skill but prevent the current pidgeonholing.

D/D likewise, earth1 is a good candidate to be a 600 or 900 range skill.

There is certainly also a case for something to be done about not being able to build an Ele to specialise in a single attunement and the mandatory 10+ points in arcane.

A good solution I think would be to make the # of trait points in an Element also contribute towards reducing the attunement CD of just that attunement, so that you could for e.g., spec 30 fire, 30 earth and your attunement CDs for both fire and earth would be considerably shorter than air and water. Arcane would obviously continue to shorten all attunement CDs. In the current game, without points in arcane, your 30 points in fire will basically be inaccessible to you 3/4 of the time.

Right now the entire class is a bit of a mess as frequent attunement switching is mandatory, just to get the class to perform at all, yet the majority of traits benefit only a single attunement and without a major commitment to Arcane, these points are wasted most of the time.

The basic concept is good but skill/trait design is pretty poor.

@ hakurface
That’s where one of the problems with the elementalist arise. What are you going to do while you ait for the best time to use updraft/ earthquake? Spam weak auto-attacks? Switch attunements without using those skills? You’re much better using them, because by the time you switch through all attunements and come back, those skills will be fully recharged.

Outside of something like Scepter’s air, maybe Scepter’s earth, elementalists auto-attacks are lacking. Scepter’s air is built around its auto-attack, scepter’s earth is excellent at applying bleeding, and there might exist one or another good auto-attack for us elementalists, but overall, what you’re doing while playing an elementalist is using your skills 2-5 and switch attunements.

Also, to people who keep talking about weapon swapping. We won’t get them. Dot. I’m sure of it. We have conjures for that, and if conjures are ineffective, then it’s the conjures that need to be fixed, not weapon swapping that needs to be added. I would personally enjoy an option to allow us to swap between our conjures and our main weapon.

Getting some meatier DPS talents from our Air and Fire trait lines would be nice too, especially considering speccing into those pretty much cuts any defensive (this includes healing) stats between 30 and 50% (based on how you gear). Seeing as we don’t have cool stuff like 3 health bars (Necros), ridiculous utility and AoEs (Mesmers), and ways to drop target (also Mesmers), if you don’t spec and gear into full defensive build, you’re going to be a free kill to just about anyone because of the light armor and the lowest base hp pool in the game.

Side tracking here, but has anybody looked at the Elementalist/Mage mobs in Arah explorable? Why the hell can’t our Geyser and Vapor Blade be like that? Why can’t our Lava Font be similar to all of the fire elemental mobs (many lava fonts randomly scattered in a wide area).

I agree attunements are the problem, but in different ways. The cooldown is a big issue. I like Fire, it is my favorite type of damage. Yet if I swap to water I am locked out of fire for 15 seconds. That really sucks IMO. Sure my other attunements have good skills, but I can never just pop over to water to throw a heal on me, then go back to fire.
However, the cooldown is more of the problem than the swapping in general. Every profession swaps, but they have half the swaps with half the cooldown. I am not saying our cooldown should be 7 seconds, but 15 second is pretty high. So high in fact that it pretty much forces me to use Arcana to 10, which I feel is wrong. I think lowering the cooldown times would benefit everyone. It would make less players feel depend on Arcana while giving players who like Arcana really short cooldown times, maybe even under 7 seconds ay 30.

The other problem of attunements is that we are meant to use all 4, so 1 attunement will never be strong on it’s own. Even if we go all out fire with the best fire traits and geared all our other traits to fire support, I doubt we will have higher or equal damage compared to any other profession who ignored their swap.
What it really comes down to is that other professions can ignore their F keys and do just fine, but we can’t. a ranger never needs to use their pet’s control to benefit from it. A mesmer never needs to shatter their illusions, or even summon them, to do well. A guardian never needs to use their virtues to make use of them. For some like Necro and Eng they don’t really benefit from them if they ignore, but they also aren’t handicapped because of it.

It really seems like ANets expects two of our attunements to be just as powerful as 1 weapon of another class. Maybe it isn’t that way, but it at least feels that way at times. I’m all for lesser cool downs and making elementals stronger on their own, at least if you focus on it (aka, if you get 30 fire and 30 air, you could just use them and ignore rest without failing horrible because of it).

Ele attunements are class defining. The idea is to create a build that allows you to use them in a way that you like. For instance, many high damage builds rely on delivering a fast burst in one attunement (usually fire). In this case, the other attunements are meant to support this burst and buy time or allow escape for the next burst. Other classes do the same thing in a different way, but they have fewer options. Support specs will often rely heavily on water while switching to earth just after heals are exhausted.

Ele that relys heavily on a specific attunement will often reduce cd on those skills by 20%, which is very noticeable— especially since most encounters are basically a cd race.

Ele has a lot of problems, its true, but after really getting to know a weapon set and creating a few decent builds, I find that a smooth transition between attunements starts to happen. You start to really get a feel for what’s available and what to do. For instance, I no longer blast all cds in an attunement just because I’m afraid they won’t be available after I switch. Its hard to get over that, and the idea that you are locking out certain skills for a short time can make a guy nervous.

But an avoidance is just as good as a heal— especially when it buys time for a heal. Controlling an enemy is just as good as healing an ally when you can take some heat off your friend. If you are running out of burst too early, then you are probably choosing the wrong time/opponent to deliver it. There is always something to do, and sometimes you have to let the class sort of decide it for you.

Oh, and the reason people feel like ele requires twice the effort for half the result is because they do. We literally press more buttons because we don’t really have viable builds that rely on hacking away with our #1 weapon skills. I think the answer for that is to open up the amount of viable builds that ele can choose. Fixing our massive number of brutal bugs would go very far toward helping with this issue.

Creslin.1758:

I don’t really think that the attunement system is flawed. It’s different that engineer sure, but the entire class is different than engineer. I also don’t understand why having to keep track of your attunement cooldowns and being forced to make tough decisions on when you switch attunements is a bad thing…doesn’t that just raise the skill ceiling? That’s good right? Ele is a pretty powerful class is played right…the fundamental mechanic is fine.

Conjures though, I think they need work. IMO, they are pretty crappy right now. There are some okay combos with lightning hammer and haste just so you get the blast finishers…but that’s really all I can think of. The fact that you get locked into the conjure’s weapon skills and then lose them until cooldown is up if you want to use your normal skills is terrible.

^ This. The decisions for when to switch attunements isnt even very tough. Just prioritize your weapon skills over utility skills. What I mean by this is for example if you are getting hit and need to heal and water is off cooldown don’t use your #6 healing ability, switch to water and use those skills. When you need to heal again you will still have a healing ability available in every attunement, so it doesn’t matter if water is on cooldown or not.

Attunement cooldown is also fairly short when specced into the arcane trait line (which is an amazing trait line). Some people may see the required 10-20 minimum points as a class issue which I can understand (although I don’t really agree), the solution for that may be lowering base attunement cooldown, and making the arcane line decrease cooldowns by less, to roughly the same amount of time as now at high points.

What people don’t understand as ele is that, with the exception of scepter air and a few dagger attunements, using auto attacks severely hurts your damage. Except in cases where you can only auto attack (i.e. to not draw aggro from aoes), auto attacking can and should be avoided by using every other ability in the attunement and switching to another. Only auto attack when the condition or effect it provides is useful at the time (such as using fire scepter AA to burn for fire grab). Ele’s have 16 other weapon abilities. Use them all, their cooldowns aren’t very long and as long as you didn’t completely waste them on nothing you will usually not regret using them later.

I play the toon known as Shaniquia Johnson, a rather well known Elementilist on Blackgate. Ele was my first toon, and i love it. I think the Attunements are fine. I’ve come to this conclusion based on trying out many different trait specs, and gear and weapon equips. If you like to switch attunments rapidly, there is the Arcane Line to spec into. If you like strait damage output, there is the Fire Line and Air Line, if you want a survivability setup, the Earth and Water Line’s. Its all there.

My play style has evolved from a tanky build as i was leveling, using alot of fire, earth and arcane lines with WvW karma armor, to my current set up as a dps Ele in exotics. I found in my tanky setup with tanky traits spec’d, that i would stay alive for along time, but could rarely finish off killing other players. I then switched to my DPS setup, and have tried several variants of trait spec’ing to fully explore the available play styles. I personally enjoy the DPS aka glass cannon set up for a few reasons. With a staff, using the Arcane, Fire, Air trait lines i can set up a wide area of aoe dps dmg. It also allows switching between the attunments at a rapid enough pace to keep up with the aoe countdown timers. With a scepter and focus/dagger i can do excellent single target and limited AOE dps, and with the focus i have many excellent defensive abilities, and with the dagger many excellent offensive abilities. Using the focus and my skill abilities right side hot bar i have more than sufficient defense for most fights I’ve been in even tho my gear and trinkets are pure dps. Also with the scepter/dagger i’m allowed with my partial spec in Arcane to switch between attunments at a rapid enough pace to fully utilize all my abilities.

Reading some of the above critic’s posts above about attunment i couldn’t disagree with them more strongly. I think the Elementilist is well thought out class with its own unique play style that is radically different from other cloth dps casters i’ve played in DAOC, RIFT, Warhammer, Tera.

My only real comment about change to the class is that i have to switch weapons alot depending on what i am doing. I switch between Staff and Scepter/focus/dagger constantly depending on what type of fight i’m expecting to get into. I would like to suggest some way of swapping weapons that is easier than opening my inventory and clicking to swap. An out of combat weapons swap similar to other classes in combat weapons swap would be a nice asset to allow Ele’s to adjust for upcoming fights. In other games i’ve played 3rd party software was available to do this weapon/gear setup’s and swap on the push of a button, while not in combat. Due to the ANET’s no 3rd party software policy, i don’t see this being allowed, so i would ask the Ele’s class specialist to consider this, and bring it up on the next round table discussion.

Thank you for listening to my opinion, and thank you for 2 months of fun on the Elementilist Class.

I completely agree with Froze. The mechanics are actually interesting and a lot of fun to improve at. After the downed state fix, we just need all our bugs taken care of and I think people will really start to see how good this class can be because the number of viable specs will open way up.

This is an interesting issue, and is a very similar one to what summoners in final fantasy XI had.
There was really no reason to keep avatars out, as their abilities were on cooldown and drained MP to keep out, summoners essentially summoned; blew an ability; desummoned.

A “Fix” for this which worked relatively well, was to offer an incentive to keep the summon out. This is where this idea could tie in with the Elementalist.

In the case of FFXI this was a buff that would stack over time (varying from avatar to avatar) and apply to yourself and allies.
Elementalists could have a similar mechanic, if you stay in the fire element you get a stacking Might buff that reaches maximum power after staying in that element for a certain length of time.

You could also have something like, the longer you stay in a element the shorter the cooldowns become in that element as you become more attuned or something.

This way, attunement swapping is still viable for those who want to, you get short quick buffs, and access to many abilities, or you can specialise in a certain element and not lose out on as much.

Just a thought anyway.

I completely agree with the problem but not the proposed solution. I think that having to toggle between 4 attunements with the general play style of “blow your cool downs then swap attunements” is pretty poor yet it’s one of the only viable methods we have.

What I’d much rather see hapkitten trait changes that encourage:

1. Staying attuned to an element longer (such as “One with Air”).
2. Increased effects (stats/etc) for people spec’d deep into the tree (such as +3 for each point in the tree).

Idealistically the changes would want to encourage sticking to 1-2 elements at most (similar to the way other classes stick to 1-2 weapons at most).

This would not deter nor detract from the existing attunement swapping builds…but instead offer an alternative that encourages sticking to a few elements and having it stay viable.

I LOVE the way the class works, just fix the bugs, attunement swapping and memorising timings, love it

@Diogo

No it’s not good just to drop Earthquake or Updrate just because it is available. Updraft is unique in it’s own way as it is a blowback KD. It’s extremely effective at splitting up groups and setting up combos. It’s also better used as an opener and then being saved for after the fight if backup arrives to help the character you just downed in case Mist form is on CD.

I save Earthquake as a general KD to be used when a player is attempting to heal or if there is a mass group and Updraft is on KD. Like I said, bad Ele’s will blow these skills for no reason.

As far as Auto attacks go, I’ve downed plenty of people with Lightning Whip / Dragons Claw because they were so low, that I don’t have to swap Attunments. There’s nothing wrong either with spamming a few auto’s before switching to another Attunment. This helps to keep the flow and CD’s a little more balanced. If I’m in the middle of a fight and just landed a point blank RTL, which is currently one of the safest ways to use it, I’m gonna follow up with around 2 LW’s and a SA if the situation calls for it. I’m then going to switch to Earth and start CE. If I happen to be running Lightning Flash it’s gonna be a good day. I’m then gonna follow up with 2 and a few auto’s to apply a few more quick stacks of bleed.

Vapor Blade is an awesome skill and should be used 3 times as 6 stacks is around the most you can get with it.

So again, it’s not about blowing your CD’s and then immediately Attune swap. It’s about knowing what to use and when to use it as the situation calls for it.

I kind of see there is an a slight issue with the current state of elemental skills and the core mechanic. It definitely needs some tweaks.

To give you some background, elementalist is my 3rd level 80 toon to date. I have played a decent amount of all other classes other than engineer. So I have a small basis for comparison. My greatest amount of experience is with staff. I also play a lot of wvw and live in Australia so lag issues can be killer landing ground target skills.

Issue: Elementalist skill and utility
- There is some truth in the statement that elementalists have to use 20 skill to get the effect that other classes can get with 10. Those that think otherwise or think that elementalists have the advantage are kidding themselves. Elementalists are balanced around this, unfortunately there is little to no additional reward for playing it right as an elementalist. While we have greate versatility as an elementalist we get less bang for each of out skills are the weapon set we choose very much specialises us to a role that once we commit to in combat we can’t change. Most of our attacks only do 1 thing or have 1 utility, this is not something that other classes suffer from. Look at the damage/utility set up for other classes (not just mesmer) and compare with the amount of bang per click you get for each skill.

- Our auto attacks are for the most part subpar damage wise. The debuffs that some provide are so short lived that they won’t remain even on the target for even half an attunement cycle. It would be nice if some of the debuffs lasted just a bit longer.

- Combo fields are very short lived and elementalist lacks many ‘finishers’ meaning it is very hard to utilise and get finishes out of our own combo fields. I would like the skill cap of playing an elementalist to mean more by getting these combo’s right. As it stands this is incredibly difficult at the moment.

- Versatility, elementalists on paper have a lot but in practice it is hard to make great use out of it. Sure knowing when to swap and to what element is a skill, but the reward is rather low, particularly when playstyle is very limited by weapon choice. D/D is no use in a seige for example and scepter has limited use.

- Incredible hard with staff to land ground skills on a moving target. A lot of our damage seems to be weighted to 2-5 skills. I would rather they reduced the damage on those and added more interplay between skills 2 -5 of an element and the auto attack for that element. At the moment this just isn’t the case. Other classes weapon sets offer a lot more interplay of abilities on a given weapon. Classic example is Guardian spin to win or Guardian Hammer combo. Something like (particularly for staff):
Skill 1: auto
Skill 2: Field
Skill 3: blast
Skill 4: cc utilty
Skill 5 defence/heal

Skills 2 and 3 should be easy to combo and skill 1 should have good interplay with skill 2. It would be nice if the field in skill 2 lasted long enough to get an attunement swap to combo in a different element for a different kind of effect.

Issue 2: Attunements & trait lines
- While I do agree that class core mechanics should play a strong part, I agree with the suggestion that elementalists are pigeon holed into having to use it. Other classes (with the possible exception of engineer, i can’t say as no experience with), can emphasize or reduce their reliance on it through traits. Elementalists do not really have this choice, it is pretty much mandatory.

- Over reliance on Arcane trait line in most builds. Few argue that you can make a good elementalist build without a 20 – 30 point investment in arcane. This alone should set off warning bells that something isn’t quite right with how attunements are working at the moment. I feel this is partly because other attunements are grossly lacking in return on vestment and partly because we do not have the choice to de emphasis attunement swapping. It would be nice if we can build a coherent and as effective build focussing on 2 elements which you spend 80% or more of your time in with the other 2 elements only for some situations. There is no effective capacity to build a 1, 2 or 3 element focus build and be as effective as someone who constantly cycles.

Issue 3: Slot skills and elite skill
- Most seem to agree that our elite skill choices are overall bad. I tend to agree. I did like a suggestion that we have an option of having Arcane attunement as an elite skill (not a fifth atunement) as suggested in another thread. I would even go for ‘elemental form’ with abilities associated with whatever element I was in. As it stands most people would rather a 4th utility.

- Conjured weapons, if these are supposed to replace our ability to change range like weapon swapping they are poorly lacking. While they can be traited in different trait lines it seems like a lot of investment for a small up time or highly situational skill (much like most elementalist skills).

Weapon choices
- Weapons define range of play in a hard manner for elementalist. Staff lacks single target damage. It lacks the ability to handle highly mobile opponents as landing ground target skills which comprise of most of the damage just doesn’t work. Its feels like it requires your opponent to sit in an aoe while getting auto attacked to do the same damage as other classes are capable of with just auto attack for the most part. It lacks decent burst and combo’s are incredibly hard to pull off. The auto attack animations are also incredible slow and some skills either require a large wind up time or require the elementalist to stand still to cast meaning it lacks mobility.

I can’t say I have enough personal experience with the other weapons sets but there are numerous threads on these forums and Gw2guru that deal with the strengths and massive short comings they have.

Dagger has no ability to contribute during a seige. Elementalists are too squishy to land short range attacks on a gate for very long.

Scepter seems to be a mix between staff and dagger with strengths and disadvantages of both (slow wind up on some ground target skills etc).

Summary
Feels like elementalists are forced into their core class mechanic to be effective, this is highlighted by the heavy investiture that most ‘effective’ builds require into the arcane trait line.

Elementalist weapon choices force a lot of specialisation of a class which is otherwise pigeon holed into cyclic play. It seems a mishmash that is unforgiving especially with a very low health pool and easy to counter play survival mechanisms.

Elementalist slot skills need work, particularly the elite and conjured weapons skills.

DiogoSilva.7089:

If our trait lines are any indication, only players meant to invest on arcana should attunement swap like crazy, while players investing on fire/ air/ earth/ water should want to stick with them for the best results, only changing to other attunements when in need, changing right back to their specced elements to yield more results than changing to the remaining others.

I personally prefer that playstyle. I like that we have the option to pick our favourite or our two favourite attunements, while attunement swapping being relevant but secondary, unless we specc for us to be crazily dependent on our main mechanic. Unfortunately, that option sucks due to bad traits.

You know, all/ most other professions work like that. Shatters will always be useful to a Mesmer, but they can be a secondary skillset while mesmers focus on keeping phantasms, creating clones, etc, depending on their build. Animal companions will always be there for the Ranger, but they can be secondary or drive the whole build. Virtues will always define the Guardian, but they’ll either be passive effects to several guardian’s builds most of the time, or really strong activated abilities to other Guardian’s builds.

Why must we, elementalists, depends on our main mechanic more than any other profession? Why must we not have the option to make half of the elements we like best inherently stronger than the remaining half of the elements we like the least?

Why can’t I be a mobile fire/ air burst-focused elementalist, or go fire/ earth for a more defensive condition-damaging elementalist? All other attunements would still be secondary options, but they could be, or not, relevant depending on my need. This would give more personality to the elementalists builds. It would make elementalists more unique compared to each other.

And for those that absolutely love dancing through all attunements equally? You’d still have the arcana traitline for that purpose.

I agree. Attunement Swapping is not the problem, it is a great mechanic. The problem is build diversity. Perhaps this could be achieved by giving a special trait bonus when you max two elements. (as in, 30 points in fire, 30 points in water, etc)

Examples:
- If you are in one of your maxed attunements, you also get the bonuses of your other maxed attunement.
- Switching between maxed attunements does not trigger the cooldown.
- A special combo trait for each element combination

Something like this would throw build diversity wide open. Suddenly there would be 6 additional dual-element builds (plus variations). Lots of play styles, 1 class, same mechanic.

I dont get what you are on about, nothing is to blame for everything. Attunement swapping is how the elementalists is designed, in practice all it really means are having 4 weapons in one. It is not to much to manage at all, sure it takes time to get used to and has a steep learning curve but its not hard once youve got it.

But i wont say its perfect, far from it in reality. Right now the most general approvement i can wish for is a smoother flow while going through your spells, being able to manage it all benefits alot from getting the expected response from skills and not being left idle in any situation, this is what bothers me most right now and this is what i would like to see fixed.