Guild Wars 2

Character animations are much harder because you have to sync a lot of things. Ground animations are WAY easier to pull off.

Again though, there isn’t a lot of variety in character animations. They don’t have one animation for each attack in the game, most character attack animations are re-used by 4-10 different skills across the game, just with different “flair” going on around you, different projectiles, different procs, etc.

For example Mesmer sword Blurred Frenzy, Guard Zealot’s Defense, Thief Pistol Whip (the second half), and Warrior Flurry all use the same character animation, just with different “flash” layered on top of it and different mechanic effects.

Chances are if they make an Ele sword, it will have at most one unique new animation (maybe on more than one skill), the other skills will use the existing ones. Assuming it’s mostly a melee sword set, I would bet on having at least two of the elements using the standard “123 combo” animation that most swords use, just with different impacts to them, and maybe the remaining ones just using a spammable “swing” animation with effects flying off. At least 1-2 elements will get the Burred Frenzy animation, at least one will get Savage Leap, probably a few will use a scepter animation to wave the sword around, that sort of thing.

Now hopefully the particles flying off the weapons will give each a unique appearance, and the hitboxes of the effects and procs they give off would give each a unique gameplay impact, but I’m not expecting twelve, or even three completely new animations for an ele mainhand sword, just as an example.

Ohoni.6057:

I think that indefinite off-hand weapons would be a far preferable outcome to genericizing all attacks across elements.

Zero interest.

To me, both sound like bad options…

I could see that idea coming up as a kind of transform, however. Say, an elite which has an F5 skill that goes into a melee mode. Said melee mode has five skills which are broadly similar in effect, but you can still switch attunements while in this mode and whichever attunement you’re in provides flavour to the skills you use. So your main attacks are fixed, and share cooldowns between attunements, but the secondary effects may vary according to attunement. For instance, a PBAOE may be pure damage in fire, inflicts chill when in air attunement, heals allies when in water, and blinds when in earth. Such an elite specialisation probably would be limited to offhand only, but could be an interesting expansion nonetheless.

Coldtart.4785:

I thought they swapped cuz they came up with this bizarre idea that for HoT every class should get either a 2 hand or off hand weapon.

I suspect it’s because MHs are the hardest to balance. 2Hs have all the skills in one go, so they don’t need to worry about how they’ll combine with offhands. OHs are, of course, combined with MHs, but they generally don’t have as much impact, so they probably figured that the chance of a new OH having unexpected gamebreaking synergies with an existing MH was lower than the reverse.

I could see that idea coming up as a kind of transform, however. Say, an elite which has an F5 skill that goes into a melee mode.

I was actually brainstorming something similar for Thief, but don’t like it for Ele. The thing is that if they went this route, you wouldn’t get the fun visuals of having the weapon be equipable, like if it were a Sword you couldn’t use Bolt or Faron’s sword or whatever.

It might make an interesting trick involving Conjured weapons though, maybe have some mechanism by which you could activate Conjured weapons, and the attacks would remain the same, but with shifted visuals and procs based on attunement. Like Ice Bow would be a Lightning Bow when in Air Attunement.

I suspect it’s because MHs are the hardest to balance. 2Hs have all the skills in one go, so they don’t need to worry about how they’ll combine with offhands. OHs are, of course, combined with MHs, but they generally don’t have as much impact, so they probably figured that the chance of a new OH having unexpected gamebreaking synergies with an existing MH was lower than the reverse.

And also just because MHs offer three skills rather than just two (or twelve instead of eight, for Eles), which makes them slightly more work at a minimum. Two-handers obviously offer more, but are also a bit more impressive for the buck. I mean, Druid staff and Reaper GS were just massive shifts to both classes. Thief staff too, but Thief @Hs are more practical than for other classes.

draxynnic.3719:

I suspect it’s because MHs are the hardest to balance.

…or maybe it’s because main hands have auto attacks and Anet were afraid they’d accidentally give ele a weapon with good autos.

Without tempest the profession has literally no sustain to survive GW2 content post HoT launch and this still require huge amounts of toughness/healing power.

The base sustain of other professions has gone up considerably : guardian (symbols+more aegis) and they promised to even buff core guardian sustain next patch( while nerfing dh sustain) – warrior ( defense line) basically the perfect all-rounder of Gw2 – ranger ( buffed shout-warhorn-nature magic -HoT pets ) – and the rest did receive good buffs to their sustain.

By comparison, the sustain of core ele is close to zero, we did not receive any buff to core ele to keep up with post HoT power creep, therefore the next elite that won’t be based around self-healing….will surely suck at 100%

Supreme.3164:

Without tempest the profession has literally no sustain to survive GW2 content post HoT launch and this still require huge amounts of toughness/healing power.

The base sustain of other professions has gone up considerably : guardian (symbols+more aegis) and they promised to even buff core guardian sustain next patch( while nerfing dh sustain) – warrior ( defense line) basically the perfect all-rounder of Gw2 – ranger ( buffed shout-warhorn-nature magic -HoT pets ) – and the rest did receive good buffs to their sustain.

By comparison, the sustain of core ele is close to zero, we did not receive any buff to core ele to keep up with post HoT power creep, therefore the next elite that won’t be based around self-healing….will surely suck at 100%

And see i though tempest was effectly gw2 first healing class in pvp and pve i guess though aura heals reg/vigor are not sustain?

They don’t have to make next elite spec a sustain machine if they give it a good amount of hard mitigation. Core ele could give enough heals + soft mitigation to make a dps spec with hard mitigation (so you don’t just facetank + heal all damage) do quite well.

Next specialization would be a trap ele! Hope we get atleast an elite skill below 40 seconds cooldown.

BlackBeard.2873:

They don’t have to make next elite spec a sustain machine if they give it a good amount of hard mitigation. Core ele could give enough heals + soft mitigation to make a dps spec with hard mitigation (so you don’t just facetank + heal all damage) do quite well.

We have been asking for hard mitigation for close to 5 years now…what does make you think anet will comply in the next exp?

Supreme.3164:

BlackBeard.2873:

They don’t have to make next elite spec a sustain machine if they give it a good amount of hard mitigation. Core ele could give enough heals + soft mitigation to make a dps spec with hard mitigation (so you don’t just facetank + heal all damage) do quite well.

We have been asking for hard mitigation for close to 5 years now…what does make you think anet will comply in the next exp?

I didn’t say they WOULD give any hard mitigation, just that an elite would work without making tempest 2.0, aka arcana 3.0. I have exactly 0 faith in the ele developers to make something fun and interesting. I mean, look at tempest, it was such a failure conceptually:

- Lots of heals, cleanse, and boons on a class that has always pumped out lots of heals, cleanse, and boons. Tempest didn’t really change what ele could do, it was just the same thing with a different skin.
- Put a FIVE second, melee-only channeled ability on the squishiest class that lacks hard mitigation. Then, because this was so stupid, tacked on a million additional effects to make those channels (overloads) usable. Overloads don’t have that name b/c they are super-strong release of elemental magic, but because they are overloaded with effects in a desperate attempt to make a stupid concept work.
- Auras were tacked on last minute, thus cannibalizing an excellent contender for future elite spec (the auramancer) in order to kinda make tempest usable.
- Warhorn being pulled out of their ….you get it… last minute because they didn’t actually think through weapons and needed to rush something out. The only reason warhorn sees any use is because they have made OH-dagger damage so bad. It really is a bad weapon with skills that make no sense (you outrun most of your slow as crap skills).

And then we look at the changes they have done and still not fixed…worst of all being RtL which has drastically reduced the fun of ele, makes off-hand dagger not really viable, and the justification for its CD (a sustain bruiser build that could RtL away, heal up, and RtL right back) no longer even exists. This is an especially large smack in the face given the state of druid’s Ancestral grace, which uses the same tech as RtL, but is also an evade, also a blast, also a heal, and on only an 18s CD with no double-CD bullcrap.

I know next elite spec will be a complete disappointment. But I also know it COULD be a lot of fun if they had a proper understanding of the class.

By comparison, the sustain of core ele is close to zero, we did not receive any buff to core ele to keep up with post HoT power creep, therefore the next elite that won’t be based around self-healing….will surely suck at 100%

Well, understanding this, I imagine ALL future Ele elite specs will have some amount of sustain built in, although maybe in different ways for each spec. Either that or they nerf Tempest sustain a little and transfer that back into the core class, so that new specs will need less of it. This is hardly an insurmountable problem.

Hoping for 1H sword so I can craft Bolt — the best legendary ever

As long as the profession mechanic can work at range AND melee, I’ll be happy lol. Also, it shouldn’t just be a defence or power based trait line. It should work for all attunements. Give us some traits that help condi damage. Give us some that help healing. You get my drift. Only making the trait line work with defence specs is why we have to spec Earth and Water. The synergies are just too good. It also doesn’t help that damage and CC is so abundant right now that you can’t spec outside of defence trait lines unless you have a myriad of sustain skills, which Eles do not have much of. We have skills that let us tank damageor remove conditions, but not many that let us completely avoid it altogether.

And these aren’t the only problems with Ele. Like why isn’t there baseline stability on Overloads, even though an absurd amount of CC was added to the game? Unless you’re traited for it, a single CC is completely destroy the whole Tempest mechanic. CC doesn’t take Berserkers out of Berserk Mode. CC doesn’t take Chronomancers out of Continuum Split. Even Daredevils, with their super crazy awesome third dodge (yes, I’m being sarcastic) isn’t stopped by a CC, with a couple exceptions. But Tempests, if you Overload and you’re hit by a single CC, you have to go to another attunement and wait 4 seconds and then hope you don’t get CCed again.

It kind of feels like Tempest was made to be almost purely defensive just so that Overloads could be achieved, but they could have just made the Tempest mechanic good and then make the traits work with all different trait lines other than Water and Earth… How much of Tempest works with any Fire skill or trait? Let’s see…there’s healing on auras, and there’s Fire Aura on Focus 5… and that’s it. Nothing that applies weakness on burning…or something that works with burning. What about Air? This line is about power damage and crit damage. But how much of Tempest helps crits give crits or increase crit damage? Well, you have a whole 5 seconds of 10% increased damage after Overloading. But that doesn’t actually helps crits specifically, just damage overall, but only for 5 seconds and after casting for 4 seconds. So once again, nothing to help Air. There’s also Arcane, which also helps crits and crit damage (Don’t know why, don’t ask), and there actually are some traits that work with Tempest! Vigor on crits could give you a little endurance, increased boon duration is useful with Warhorn, and reduced attunement CDs makes also lowers the CD after Overloading. Seriously, use Arcane as an example for how to make an elite spec. There’s something that works with every other trait line. There are crit traits, condi traits, boon traits, power damage traits, defence traits. Hell, just make Arcane the next elite spec!

So how much of Tempest helps Earth and Water trait lines and specs using them? Quite a lot! Earth has protection on auras and protection reduces damage to 40% with Tempest, there are traits to help keep an enemy still or slowed down to make hitting them with Overloads easier, and there’s Stone Heart and Diamond Skin to help reduce condition or power pressure. Let’s look at Water. Well the main, and almost required synergy of Water and Tempest is Cleansing Water with Invigorating Torrents. This makes all auras cleanse conditions, and auras are a big part of Tempest. The Cantrips trait also works with IT. Water is also the healing trait line and Tempest has one particular trait that is a must with any build (mainly because the other two are absolute crap, especially for a GM spot): Elemental Bastion. So with Earth and Water, auras grant a cleansed condition, some healing, and 3 seconds of protection, all on top of what each aura does. And since you force us to Overload in, or near, melee range, we have to spec as defensively as possible and spec for healing because that’s all that Tempest can do. The trait line does not support speccing outside of Earth and Water.

/endrant Got that off my chest.

TL;DR: Tempest sucks. Damage specs suck with it and you can’t spec anything else ’cause powercreep and whatever.

I like tempest quite a bit. It’s not god-mode, nor should it be.

However I also believe it could use a few quality of life changes (example the stability on overload trait should award more than a single stack of stability to make it more effective and worth the trade for regen/vigor trait).

I’m curious on the new elite. I hope it doesn’t punish aura switching like Tempest does (if you switch auras too fast you miss the overload, and if you use the overload you can’t switch back as fast).

@Zintrothen: In PvP, yes, elementalists are pushed into defensive playstyles. In PvE, though, you can more easily go more offensive and rely on the defenses that the tempest traitline offers to cut back on defenses elsewhere.

I find it’s reasonably easy to get Tempest to synergise with Air Magic traits in PvE. Zephyr’s Boon is an obvious potential choice, and you could possibly add Tempest Defence as well, but all of the master and grandmaster air traits can potentially support a tempest build (Inscription only if you’re running glyphs, I guess, but that isn’t uncommon). If it does turn out that there’s a trait that you’re not using to best effect… well, that happens with all builds.

When it comes to fire traits… I think that might actually be an issue with fire traits rather than with Tempest. With the exception of the minors, the fire traits don’t give you much benefit unless you’re attuned to fire. I suspect any traitline is going to struggle to synergise well with fire traits as they currently stand.

@juno: Agreed, a new elite spec should be more attunement-switching-friendly. A lot of people are rightly annoyed that the old attunement-switching playstyle has been powercreeped out of viability: if they really can’t or won’t make core builds at least vaguely equal to elite spec builds, they need to make an elite spec that facilitates rapid attunement-swapping pronto.

Guizao.4167:

Jhoul.6923:

draxynnic.3719:

Jhoul.6923:

I doubt I’m the only one that noticed that in LS2 the “Master of Wind” used skills that eles have never been able to use?… and he did not use any weapons.

The Zephyrites use the skills from the Aspect Arena in combat.

I could see these being used as the basis for a new elite specialisation, with some tweaks. However, I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see PCs being able to fight without weapons – the weapons are built into the game mechanics.

I know, I just used it as an example for not limiting the class, just because we are the “mage” of the game don’t mean we can’t change armor or fight like other classes.

We’re not the only ‘mage’ of the game. They spread ‘mage’ into 3 pieces: mesmers, elementalists and necromancers. The three altogether composes what we know as a traditional mage.

GW2 elementalist from my understanding of playing it is more or less dragon age’s version of a mage that uses only elemental skills. right down to some of the skill names.

Most of those names predate Dragon Age by a looooong time. Even the general concept of the four-pointed magic system used in Guild Wars and Dragon Age (white magic, dark magic, mind/arcane magic and elemental magic) predates both franchises, although it isn’t as common as M:tG’s five-pointed system.

About the only thing in GW2 that reasonably could have been taken from Dragon Age is skill combos, and even there GW2’s system is very different – Dragon Age combined specific spells to generate a new effect that was specific to that combination of spells, while GW2 is based purely on fields and finishers and the system doesn’t care how those fields or finishers were generated.

I’d like to see a trident user elite spec.
Range all over the place, from pbaoe to 1200 units.
Each element doing vastly different roles than other weapon sets. Water being the main dps/mobility an elementalist would stay in longer than other elements.

The other elements being skills that overlap with the water skills to create special combos.
For example a certain air skill when comboed with a certain water skill would make a freeze happen. And a certain earth skill when comboed with a certain water skill would make mud based stuff happen. Fire+water make a smoke field. Stuff like that.

Redfeather.6401:

I’d like to see a trident user elite spec.
Range all over the place, from pbaoe to 1200 units.
Each element doing vastly different roles than other weapon sets. Water being the main dps/mobility an elementalist would stay in longer than other elements.

The other elements being skills that overlap with the water skills to create special combos.
For example a certain air skill when comboed with a certain water skill would make a freeze happen. And a certain earth skill when comboed with a certain water skill would make mud based stuff happen. Fire+water make a smoke field. Stuff like that.

Trident on land would be a pretty cool melee/PbAoE spec. Sword, Trident, Spear.

Simply having an elite skill with a cd in the 40 second range would be great. I originally thought rebound would have been an awesome 40 cd AOE projectile reflect for 3 secs + an AOE launch 300 range that would have been fun. Very op but fun.

Doesn’t seem that OP to me – it’d basically be this with 60% longer recharge in exchange for a short projectile reflect.

I would like to see an elite spec that has an active defense.. Major traits like: attacking a target with burn while in fire attunement grants 3-5s regen and regen stacks, attacking a target with bleeds when in earth gain 1s stability or protection and attacking a target in air with vulnerable weakness the target. Hopefully the next elite spec will be burst or condition damage base making fire/arcane traits optimal with a low cd elite skill unlike the ones we have. Fire traits have always been the low rank outside of pve.

don’t see why the next elite spec can’t have a bunch of active defense

reikken.4961:

don’t see why the next elite spec can’t have a bunch of active defense

Because Anet are the ones designing it.

Tempest is the most well-done Elite spec and improved it’s class the most compared to the others. So I guess it’d make sense that the next one would be worse since it could fail to match it’s brilliance. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Doggie.3184:

Tempest is the most well-done Elite spec and improved it’s class the most compared to the others. So I guess it’d make sense that the next one would be worse since it could fail to match it’s brilliance. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Nope – only in pve. PVP it’s just drags ele down to the button being totally useless without healing power.

Mr Godlike.6098:

Doggie.3184:

Tempest is the most well-done Elite spec and improved it’s class the most compared to the others. So I guess it’d make sense that the next one would be worse since it could fail to match it’s brilliance. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Nope – only in pve. PVP it’s just drags ele down to the button being totally useless without healing power.

Well sPvP is considered cancerous for a reason. Balance is messed up in all kindsa degrees there, which is why I haven’t played it too much since beginning of 3rd League when I was done with all the chivos so idk how bad any nerfs have gotten since then.
The spec was pretty much god-tier back then though and my primary class used so some nerfs were justified, like Diamond Skin.
Been having fun with Tempest in T4 fractals mostly nowadays.

While I enjoy Tempest, I do think it possibly shouldn’t have been the first elite specialisation for elementalists, or at least not without ArenaNet being more serious about avoiding powercreep than they were..

Most elite specialisations don’t interfere with the core playstyle of the profession, but add other tools. Tempest, however, does. Core elementalist playstyles were about rapid attunement-switching, while to use the tempest’s main feature requires staying in an attunement for ten seconds, and then being locked out of that attunement for twenty seconds if you do switch as soon as you can after overloading.

So people who liked that core style have a choice between having to play a build that’s now no longer competitive (because of powercreep, and nerfs that were made to tone Tempest down) or to play a build that goes against what they enjoyed in core elementalist. That tempest seems to be largely fixed into a support role in PvP doesn’t help, nor does the fact that overloads are highly susceptible to CC in a meta with substantially increased CC over pre-HoT days. (You can pull off an overload in sPvP, but it’s a very different playstyle.)

The next elite spec really needs to be something that can synergise with the core GW2 elementalist playstyle and give those players something back. It’s a playstyle I never fully mastered myself, so it’s no skin off my personal teeth, but I can definitely understand why people were, and continue to be, upset.

I came here to post a similar thread.

I cannot see anything they add being more useful than overloads, unless it is just a stronger, more OP overloads which likely won’t happen.

Doggie.3184:

Mr Godlike.6098:

Doggie.3184:

Tempest is the most well-done Elite spec and improved it’s class the most compared to the others. So I guess it’d make sense that the next one would be worse since it could fail to match it’s brilliance. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Nope – only in pve. PVP it’s just drags ele down to the button being totally useless without healing power.

Well sPvP is considered cancerous for a reason. Balance is messed up in all kindsa degrees there, which is why I haven’t played it too much since beginning of 3rd League when I was done with all the chivos so idk how bad any nerfs have gotten since then.
The spec was pretty much god-tier back then though and my primary class used so some nerfs were justified, like Diamond Skin.
Been having fun with Tempest in T4 fractals mostly nowadays.

Diamond skin nerf cannot be justified looking at the current state of the game , we have specs like condi berseker, condi crhono and condi reaper, specs capable of huge condi burst that can completely kill you instantly on most professions when caught off guard.

Diamond skin was nerfed with the balance of the previous meta in mind, where ele could get away with the lack of a full condi resistance 24/7 as the sporadic condi clear available normally to ele ( 1-2 condis cleared every 10 with arcana/water) was enough to keep you alive vs condi specs.

In truth, ele can only sustain himself vs sustained condi application, there is very little vs condi bombs, maybe this was by design

Elementalist: Flexibility, jack of all trades, large skillsets. High AoE potential. High skill floor – hard for new players to jump in and high skill ceiling.
Weakness: Recovering from burst damage, but water attunement can help sustain the damage. Versatility is strength but also weakness – higher cooldowns on weapon skills. Inability to deal with booned enemies.
Official design: Versatility through weapon skills – we want to maintain that. Defense against sustained DPS is good and they are very supportive in most roles they assume. Low base HP is an intentional design so we can give them more support. Poor defense against spike damage is also intended so they have to wary about spike damage. Escapeability: too much in the past and helped them against spike damage. Inability against booned enemies is a specific hole in the role since they can AoE from ranged.

But wars were supposed to be weak to condis also….now they have almost perfect condi protection and they don’t need to invest every possible trait/utility to it.

The current iteration of diamond skin forces eles even more into a bunker role, low evasion/in combat mobility make sure of that so no…diamond skin nerf cannot be justified anymore…like other nerfs that the profession has suffered.

Still I have no hopes for the future, ele is seen as the strongest pve class therefore… it won’t receive anything worth playing for fun in pvp..ever again, simply because I suspect that the balance in this game it’s strictly related to the popularity of each profession and to avoid major backlash from an angry pve community ( which is the biggest group in this game ) anet will avoid any major re-balance for the class.

Mark my words ele community : the ele next elite will be absolutely garbage, you will still be forced to play tanky mama to stay alive…but they’ll give you some OP trait to let you play a more offensive ele with less investment in healing power/toughness…this just for the launch, to let you buy the expansion…then few months later they’ll nerf the trait to useleness and you’ll go back playing tanky healer dps that can be kited/CCed easily…you will still do some dmg..but then that dmg will be nerfed..so will your sustain.

The next elite specialization will be ele d/d 2.0..just for few months, then it’ll be nerfed hardcore and reduced to a slightly better dps variant of tempest..with less dps and sustain but loads of sparkle to cover all it up..call me a prophet

I’m actually extremely displeased with the current state of Ele. Healbot is boring and Fresh Air is way too risky in such that it is a detriment to yourself and your team even when played perfectly. For PvE it’s great, but WvW (large group) is Staff waterbot and CC, PvP and WvW (solo or small scale) roaming shares some similarities in combat damage mitigation and DPS vs other class/comp matchups. It’s just bad.

In my humble opinion I think the Elementalist neceista few touches something deeper … who uses the weapons first invoked? No one. why? because they are useless, the engineer can “euiparse” kits that are much more useful than the short time you can have an invoked weapon. In my opinion weapons they should disappear invoked absolutely no use to swim in the game. The early game damage / healing Elementalist was a bit above the rest of the classes. Slowly I get a nerf, causing the Elementalist remains delegate support in melee and damage range (although there are many other classes that do a lot more damage to range and have mobility, Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer, Dragon Hunter, Revenant .. .) Actually, I think they should retouch the basis of healing and damage elementalist if you want to relocate in an acceptable situation. On the other hand it misses things are still no such sunsets … which is the elite arcane? we will have it someday? Overloading did not seem a good idea. Not quite enough damage (bearing in mind that there are classes that can block much more than hard overload damage (such as a thief, revenant or guardian) With blocking an elementalist? With its arcane shield? That estunea elementalist when other classes every 2 or 3 seconds you peuden leave stun like a thief? few rompestunts can equip an elementalist to be useful? And the damage condition? where is that megastack damage condition that can make a revenant or one necromancer or fantastic and indestructible warrior with his infinite stun with the club and its damage condition with fire, also the fantastic thief jumping from one side to another and putting infitos bleeding? … Gentlemen … by Anet Please review the elementalist .. well.

For my taste should not make new specializations … should simply extend to 4 branches that can be selected in the game as it had before. That way if you could put the Elementalist focused more damage or healing depending more branches. Put another specialization siginificara that colo quen in a position to Elementalist or more support or more damage. Causing again get just one goal. Is very likely to increase the capacity of the horn and the horn currently not used for anything .. it does nothing better focus.