Guild Wars 2

Welcome to my vision of a new unique mastery for one my favorite profession in Guild Wars 2. When ArenaNet announced they were working on the first expansion it gave me motivation to think and write what future expansions might hold for the Elementalist.

When they released the details for the Tempest I knew more than half the ideas I had were not implemented. After a short break of, cough 4 months cough, I finally purchased Heart of Thorns and continued to fill the blanks in my concept. Especially, when I read how the developers do read the forum to gather cool ideas and such gave me a boost to finish this forum post. This is the result of my brain crunching. I tried to make it as readable as possible instead of just a wall of text. If it’s still too much try reading the TL;DR at the end. Hope you like it and constructing critisism is always welcome.

The Elementalist!
In this section I will just sum up the main features of the Elementalist as released in the base game. Feel free to skip this part if you are already familiar with the profession and the Tempest Elite specialization.

Class Mechanic
The class mechanic for the Elementalist are attunements. With the choice from the main types of magic, Fire, Water, Air and Earth, it enables more multiple attack combinations with 20 weapon skills at their disposal. Each type has its own mastery and role for the Elementalist with a 5th mastery for general improvements called “Arcane.”

Specializations
The Fire mastery is used to give the Elementalist a broader range of improvements and boons for the use of the Fire Attunement. With more offensive boons and burning conditions together with improving the Conjured weapons. Next to Fire, for offensive tactics, Air focusses on spike/burst damage and the mastery improves Glyphs and movement speed of the Elementalist.

The masteries for Earth and Water focus on providing more defensive options. For water this means mainly healing, but also stacking vulnerability on enemies. Earth on the other hand boosts Signets and improves the bleed condition on attack in this attunement.

Arcane skills are only usable as utilities, because they always crit or mitigate damage completely. Furthermore, this mastery line provides general boosts to these types of skills and to switching attunements.

Weapons
The Elementalist is only able to wield 5 physical weapons, namely: a dagger, scepter, staff, trident and focus. Each weapon provides a different playstyle for players. As you read in the previous section an Elementalist is also able to use Conjured Weapons. These are summoned weapon which can only be used periodically and have limited use. For Conjured Weapons a Shield, Axe, Longbow, Hammer and Greatsword are available. This enables the Elementalist to wield a broad range of weapons from close range to long range and defensive to offensive.

Tempest Elite Specialization!
The Tempest is the latest mastery and was introduced in Heart of Thorns. The class mechanic attunements are the same but can be overloaded. This grants the Elementalist 4 active skills which, after a brief channel, can provide extra utility to the party. This mastery also gives the Tempest access to another off-hand weapon, the Warhorn, for support and condition application. For the remaining Utility, Heal and Elite skills the Tempest can use offensive shouts.

With the introduction of the Warhorn the remaining weapons available for the Elementalist profession are: Sword, Mace, Torch, Shortbow, Pistol and Rifle. I won’t mention the underwater weapons, since that is only used in a small part of the gameplay. So, let’s continue to the fun part!

Avatar/Sage Elite Specialization!
The name is debatable. I was searching for some lore of ancient or name worthy mages or elementalists in the Guild Wars (2) Lore, but had no succes in finding any information thus these 2 names. The link leads to a description of what an “Avatar” is.

Class Mechanic
For the specialization mechanic I had a few designs which, to be honest, were not all usable or just rip-off from other professions. One that I did like was the Essence bar.

This would be a bar below the attunements, like a Warrior, a Necromancer, a Thief and a Revenant have. With the Avatar 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 small benefits to your stats from all 4 attunements. The stat boost will be applied to related stat for each attunement. Power for Fire, Vitality for Water, Precision for Air and Touhgness for Earth.
2. Use the Elite skill and try to control this imense arcane power.

How the essence bar will behave depends heavily on the masteries the Avatar has. To compare it with other profession that have access to a bar. A Thief spends initiative for certain attacks, a Warrior gets certain passive boons or a powerful attack, the Revenant’s Energy bar is used for Upkeep skills and the Necromancer uses it for its profession specific skill, the Shroud. I think to make the Avatar unique in this fashion the Elite skill would use the essence in powerful attacks.

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. Thus, the idea to wield a focus in the main hand.

Seeing what the developers did with a staff for the Daredevil. It seemed logical the most fitting weapon how I imaged the Avatar would be a focus. This would make the Avatar really unique in the sense that the elementalist has mastered this weapon throughout the years. And make the Elementalist have a really unique feature worthy of its profession. 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 Avatar is dual-wielding Foci.

Focus (Two-handed)
This one is a bit tricky. Currently, as the focus is positioned as a one-handed weapon it might be difficulty to make it into a two-handed weapon. I think too many factors to the item have to be changed. This could maybe be a new weapon type named Oracle. Like a spheric object which the character keeps afloat. Or even maybe multiple floating object like “Scepter Earth Skill 2 – Rock Barrier.” The Avatar 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 at all times.

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

Up next are the weapon skills.

Weapon skills
Below I have thought of certain skills the focus in the main-hand would have. Thinking of 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 took a look at other digital media like games, anime etc. Since we don’t really want to have the same skills on different weapons I combined attacks from different and also 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, since I want to keep this post more open instead of shoving everything in a precise fitting box.

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 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)
- 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 get’s 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 a whirling sphere of water around you which absorbs projectiles and converts them into healing in a small aoe. (Neji’s Chakra Rotation, Naruto)
- Shattering Prison: envelop your foe in ice for a short time (<1sec) after which the prison shatters chill the foe and shoot damaging shrapnel in a 360 radius.

Air:
- Air blades: throw bursts of compressed air towards you foe. (Young Karka attack.)
- Crescent Turbulence: cast a crescent form of wind in high velocity towards you target pushing foe hit back. The closer the target the more it’s pushed. (Hinata’s Vacuum Palm, Naruto.)
- Air Funnel: create an absorbing funnel of air redirecting part of the attack back to the attacker.
- 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 it’s energy to nearby foes. (Similar to Scepter Lightning Strike, but targeted on the caster grant movement speed and shocking neaby 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.
- 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.)
Earth Wave was implemented in Tempest’ Earth Overload!

Skills
Healing:
- Essence Shift: the Avatar 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 small period of time.

Utilities (Chaos-type 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 stored in your body and electrify nearby enemies.
- Earthen Shackles: summon shackles from the ground on you target immobilizing them for a short period of time.

Elite:
Finally the time has come to unveil the Elite skill for the Avatar. As mentioned before this will play a large role in the Avatar specialization mechanic.

- Elemental Lord: the Avatar tries to control the immense energy stored after gathering elemental essences. Not being able to fully control this amount of power, the elements merge into an unstable and chaotic state. This results in losing elemental essence with each attack.

1. Essence Blast (Arcane):
   Channel a ball of elemental 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 magic the Elemental Lord can pulse a confusing wave to nearby enemies’ brains. The confusion pulses a total of three times and lasts 1 second per pulse.
3. Null Field (Water):
   Gathering knowledge of the elements the Elemental Lord learned how to reduce their negative effects on himself. By using the cleasing power of water the effectiveness of condition damage gets reduced in an area.
4. Disposition (Air):
   Being one with the elements enables the Elemental Lord 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 Elemental Lord can extract the warmth out of it and engulf its target in intense dark flames. This casts three stacks of torment on the enemy.

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 focussing on a specific part or skill of the specializations mechanics and three minor traits focussing on the overall mechanics.

Minor traits:
- Unlock the ‘Essence Bar’ and enable the use of the Focus in main-hand. (or two-handed.)
- Increases Essence generation by a small percentage.
- When the Essence bar is full the Avatar 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 focus. 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 Elemental Lord and his skills. Reducing the essence cost of skills and granting additional effects to his skills.

Final Thoughts
1. Why I chose for the Focus as the weapon is because it’s normal that a new Elite Specialization gets a new weapon. So I thought to use an existing weapon in a new way. A sword, mace, pistol or rifle would really overhaul the complete playstyle of an Elementalist. And a scythe is something we can only hope for in the future. The scythe would be the runner-up for a weapon, but would change the majority of the skills completely also.

2. The reasoning behind the whole Avatar concept is that I was looking to elevate the general potential of an Elementalist. With Aang becoming a real avatar and mastering all elements as an example.

3. I was experimenting with different other elements like Telekinetics, Dark and Spirit magic, but all of these were already in use one way or another in Guild Wars 2. So I had to look for a creative way to add a new flavour to the profession. Resulting in Chaos magic by combining all elements in an unstable state.

4. If you guys and girls have ideas for another name which potentially fits the Lore more just post it in the comments.

5. Hope you enjoyed reading this post and would like to hear and read what you thought of this concept or certain parts of it.

TL;DR
The new Elite Specialization I thought of is called Avatar or Sage. The whole idea behind it was to create an Elementalist which through deep study of the arcane arts has mastered the elements on another level. 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 Avatar would be focused on a more aggressive and offensive playstyle.

As a new weapon I couldn’t choose between a main-hand focus or a two-handed focus (Oracle?). The overall attack range would be similar to the scepter or maybe between dagger and scepter. For weapon skills I designed them to be leaning more towards offense and crowd control.

A new Elite Specialization also comes with an addition to the current class mechanics. For the Avatar this would be an 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 ‘Elemental Lord.’

The Elemental Lord 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 Elementalist 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 in the way the Mallyx Elite skill from the Revenant works.

Reserved for future posts

I know you kinda see the conjured as a extra weapon in the context from:
“With the introduction of the Warhorn the remaining weapons available for the Elementalist profession are: Sword, Mace, Pistol and Rifle. "

But know you mis then the torch & sb, conjured frostbow looks mostly the same in skils as the Longbow from ranger; fast shoot, 1 aoe, 1 knock-a-like (deep freeze), only the multi-arrow is from the sb of the rannger (would be weird if that has a stealth).

so beside the focus a torch can be a handy weapon aswel, seeing the fire from it on the warrior and the fire from the gaurdian (what kinda looks like ice) so then you can have 2/4 attunments already because you can see ice aswel as the snowblind fractal final boss, wind can be tricky but like you mented aang before so that prince with electricity and you have a option with lightning in air so only earth is left what is pretty easy done for example a quicksand option to close range and a entangle for example.

and if they cant make a scepter 2-handed keep in mind the thief kan just set only a mainhand weapon to have a different 3th skil option so best they make it availble then to set the S in mainhand as a new weapon insteed a new ofhand weapon.

But mostly i prever a good extra ranged weapon hearing not allot of layers like the staff to play with, and knowing al that aoe to cast I can understand them aswel so a longbow option/shortbow with addited skils for gaurdian, warrior & ranger beside some new but with just 1 or 2 aoe the attunment would be then more likely to start playing with.

but thats just another idea probally

Pyter Lionheart