Guild Wars 2

So after much time spent rolling an ele and reading the forums and watching ele gameplay, I have decided on a very simple (seemingly) fix for the problems that everyone rolling in an ele would face. Everyone who uses one know 1 very basic fact: getting hit means dying very quickly. The ele doesn’t really need more damage output or more armor. Proper gear selection and runes will compensate that area. However, getting caught with the wrong skill sets due to the current situation, because of the weapon selection, can be the killer for an ele, even an experienced one. Ele’s are very limited to a specific fighting range, due to being stuck with only one weapon choice during combat: long, medium, or close range. Ele users know fully well what this means, so I will not explain the mechanics of it here.

To help correct these problems and make ele’s more fun to play and have better survivability, give us the option to swap weapons during combat. And to maintain game balance and keep ele’s from becoming OP, allow only 2 opposing attunements per weapon slot. For example, slot 1 staff, with fire and water spec usage, and slot 2 with d/d air and earth spec. This will allow the ele to have choice of battle range during dynamic combat situations, (in any pvp, wvw, or pve), and keep the attunements in balance for the ele and the zerg or server as a whole. This can also help to add some variety of gameplay, especially in wvw, where ele’s are in demand for healing and aoe damage.

As ele players, we love our class, but also hate the lack of range options and survivability. I feel that this, more than anything else, is the root cause of ele anguish. I have may other alts in different classes, and I must say, the lack of in-combat range changing for my ele is depressing. Please consider this suggestion.

So like I could run a d/d elementalist then switch to s/f and die in that instead.

Having the ability to swap would help a lot. The main function of swapping is that you can also change your range from long-range to melee combat. Attunement swapping just doesn’t give you that ability. All our attunements let us do is swap to another type of combat, but we’re stuck at the same range. It’s the main reason that Staff Eles get slaughtered once someone closes in.

FrownyClown.8402:

So like I could run a d/d elementalist then switch to s/f and die in that instead.

Well said.

As Staff, I don’t even know if I’d switch any of my attunements around. I don’t think this would fix as much as you might think it would.

Kamui.3150:

Having the ability to swap would help a lot. The main function of swapping is that you can also change your range from long-range to melee combat. Attunement swapping just doesn’t give you that ability. All our attunements let us do is swap to another type of combat, but we’re stuck at the same range. It’s the main reason that Staff Eles get slaughtered once someone closes in.

Yes, and most of the staff skills are extremely slow in respects to say, d/d. I love using my staff for attacking towers, but when they come in/out to counter attack, I get slaughtered instantly bc of the slow casting rate. Would love to be able to switch to d/d in those instances, instead of trying to get out of combat to troll through my weapons to switch. I either have to run, or run. In either case, my only option IS to run. Not enough armor to try and make a stand with a slow casting rate.

What would help is bump up our base survivability and that would just be a start…

FrownyClown.8402:

So like I could run a d/d elementalist then switch to s/f and die in that instead.

Switching from d/d to s/f in a sudden close combat situation is ludicrous. Should be the other way around.

I’m all in favor of an in-combat weapon swap, heck I’d even be happy with an out-of-combat weapon swap.

Riondron.1069:

And to maintain game balance and keep ele’s from becoming OP, allow only 2 opposing attunements per weapon slot. For example, slot 1 staff, with fire and water spec usage, and slot 2 with d/d air and earth spec.

^But this? Could you clarify? Seems like having access to just 2 attunements on a weapon would throw off its synergy to the point of being unplayable.

xbaunx.6438:

I’m all in favor of an in-combat weapon swap, heck I’d even be happy with an out-of-combat weapon swap.

Riondron.1069:

And to maintain game balance and keep ele’s from becoming OP, allow only 2 opposing attunements per weapon slot. For example, slot 1 staff, with fire and water spec usage, and slot 2 with d/d air and earth spec.

^But this? Could you clarify? Seems like having access to just 2 attunements on a weapon would throw off its synergy to the point of being unplayable.

my suggestion here, is just to answer the likely reason as to why anet didn’t give us two weapon slots in the first place. I’d doubt that they would be willing to let us have 40 useable weapon skills, as opposed to the 20 we have now. Just imagine what 40 skills would allow an ele to do, as opposed to all the other classes: the ele would nearly dominate the game entirely.
This way, we still have only 20 skills by attunement, to maintain the balance. I’m not looking at the individual weapons abilities, but at the picture as a whole. The most likely scenario, based on combat experience, would be to pair fire and water with a staff for attacking towers, and possibly d/d with air and earth for up close and personal combat. The staff would give the wall clearing and gate healing, and the d/d would give the lighting whip and earth protection.

But like I said, these are just suggestions, based on my own experience playing all classes, and many hours of WvW combat.

None of this really addresses the core issues at the heart of the Elementalist.

The fact is we have two weapon sets too many. Our class is heavily penalized in the balance department because of our access to four weapon sets (attunements) at all times even if they don’t offer divergent game play (IE: Melee, Ranged) in each attunement. We, in theory, have access to double the damage abilities and utility abilities from our weapon slots than any other class. Our utilities as a result are weaker and often times on longer cool downs despite having near identical function to other classes.

That leads to the fact it’s extremely hard to get away from Arcane because, by design, we’re supposed to make use of all four weapon sets (attunements) but in order to do so efficiently we usually need around 20 in Arcane to make the attunement swap timer manageable. Can you get away with less than 20 Arcane? Sure. Some builds make it work. However it’s still an extremely noticeable point when playing without 20 Arcane.

We have the lowest HP pool going against everything in the normal game design. Necro/Engie are tanky and have highest base HP. Ranger has healing and a Medium pool of HP with some mobility abilities. Thief has low HP but really high burst and lots of mobility/stealth abilities to avoid damage entirely. This is where it gets messed up… Mesmer has Meidum pool of HP with mobility/stealth abilities to avoid damage entirely (plus clones). Elementalist has low HP with healing and mobility. It’s crisscrossed for Light Armor from Medium and what to they do to answer it? They reduce our mobility and healing with zero compensation.

That fact ultimately leads to our second core issue of it’s extremely hard to get away from Water because we need the assistance in it’s survivability attributes to pull builds off in addition to the fact it enhances Cantrips which are usually also necessary to pull builds off. Utilities like Glyphs and Signets suffer because they simply can’t fulfill the lack of survivability that we innately don’t have.

It also leads into huge issue with gearing as we need Toughness due to general lack of “trickery” (IE: Stealth, Clones, spammable mobility, etc) because we will have to take the hits but in addition we also need to gear out Vitality. Compare this to say my Mesmer who, with 30 points in Inspiration (+300 Vitality) is at roughly 18000 or so without any gearing towards Vitality at all. This pushes us more towards the “All or Nothing” proposition of a Thief where you see either extreme bunkers (Nothing) or extreme DPS sets with no defense (All). In WvW and PvE we can mix and match enough to get a balance, something not an option in SPvP.

All of these problems are so tangled up into each other it creates a kind of tangled mess where the more you pull or tug on one part it tightens the grip and problem of the tangle in another. There are no quick and easy solutions to the point that it’s probably not even their radar for this year or even the next.

FrownyClown.8402:

So like I could run a d/d elementalist then switch to s/f and die in that instead.

I actually laughed out loud. That is so perfect.

The only way weapon swap during combat would be excusable is if the slots you had already used before swapping kept their recharges.

cheshirefox.7026:

i somewhat disagree with your last sentence, a viable solution should have been reached long ago
the handling of the elem profession thus far is like watching a child try to get the square peg in a round hole.. the sad part is, the child eventually figures it out

It took them literally years to address the Elementalist problem in “Hard Mode” in GW1 where Elementalists had no armor bypassing moves but all the mobs had maximum armor.

This isn’t a company that moves fast. At all. I mean there are still bugs and issues in classes that still exist from day one and it’s been a full year. I hop onto my Mesmer and notice that Temporal Curtain still doesn’t give Swiftness if you already have it yet they already have the coding to make sure you only get 1 application like with the Guardian Staff abilities.

This is why I say people will either quit or find a new class. The only thing people can be sure of is there’s no changes coming any time soon.

The problem with your suggestion is that the weapon sets have synergy with themselves, and not so much with each other.

Kodiak.3281:

cheshirefox.7026:

i somewhat disagree with your last sentence, a viable solution should have been reached long ago
the handling of the elem profession thus far is like watching a child try to get the square peg in a round hole.. the sad part is, the child eventually figures it out

It took them literally years to address the Elementalist problem in “Hard Mode” in GW1 where Elementalists had no armor bypassing moves but all the mobs had maximum armor.

This isn’t a company that moves fast. At all. I mean there are still bugs and issues in classes that still exist from day one and it’s been a full year. I hop onto my Mesmer and notice that Temporal Curtain still doesn’t give Swiftness if you already have it yet they already have the coding to make sure you only get 1 application like with the Guardian Staff abilities.

This is why I say people will either quit or find a new class. The only thing people can be sure of is there’s no changes coming any time soon.

Hey give them credit it took them 6 years to “fix” the elementalist, howerver by that time gw2 was a year a way from being released.

Kodiak.3281:

snip

It sucks how all out defensive skills are on such a long cool down where a mesmer has access to invulnerbility every 9.3-13 secs for 2 seconds + a decent amount of damage while ours either come with 50 second or 70 cD and the former provides no damage while the latter no longer provides any benefit.

while the necro has access to 2 hp bars and high damage.

Honeslty, I don’t think a small bump of toughness would be enough, they will have to cut the CD on our defensive abilities and reduce the need spam buttons to achieve parity with other classes.

silvermember.8941:

It sucks how all out defensive skills are on such a long cool down where a mesmer has access to invulnerbility every 9.3-13 secs for 2 seconds + a decent amount of damage while ours either come with 50 second or 70 cD and the former provides no damage while the latter no longer provides any benefit.

while the necro has access to 2 hp bars and high damage.

Honeslty, I don’t think a small bump of toughness would be enough, they will have to cut the CD on our defensive abilities and reduce the need spam buttons to achieve parity with other classes.

But don’t you see how overpowered that would be! If Mistform had some sort of reasonable cool down like 60s when combined with /Focus and Obsidian Flesh we could be immune to damage for 7 seconds out of every 60 seconds while also maintaining our awesome offensive capabilities like…Fire Aura or Flamewall or Comet!

Its true that the normal defens of an elementalist is pretty low, but we have one of the best selfheal in the game ( maybe more than guards maybe less) and thats a big part of our survivability.
and if u use all ure Combos right u get a some sick stacks of might ( d/d for example).
U can also get some extra heal with blast finishers in your wather Combo fields).

I Play d/d and staff ele in zerg fights.
if u are out of Position with ur staff ele u gonna die ( but u have a staff u have no reasons to go near the enemies, if u get Close to the us lightningflash or fire4 to get some distance), and d/d ele has so much heal and movement ist often enought to get out.

s/d or some Focus builds arent that strong in bigger wvw fights because they dont have that much aoe dmg if u compare to d/d or staff ( wich have some sick heal potential with waterfields).

agree with you, however, i’d very much like to see faster activation on staff skills.
i mainly use staff for WvW, but some skills take so long to activate. fire/ice/earth2 etc.

also, lightning 3 is so out of place, can hit somebody only if they come towards us, or are running away.
i’d very much like to see lightning 3 as aoe knockback, but i can only dream.

There is no need to give up attunements. Switching weapons is fundamental to this game, regardless of the total amount of abilities.

I started as a Necro, I used scepter/focus for close range and switched to staff for AoE, just like Eles should be able too. Heck, when I first rolled my Ele I was kind of new and was super confused why my weapon swap button was taking so long to ungrey… It was a serious /faceplam moment when I found out that our attunement swap was considered our weapon swap due to how many abilities we have. That logic is so flawed considering how many other, much more important factors, a weapon set means to combat; range, AoE, close combat, survivability, buffs and healing.

Is any other class handicapped like this? I have played Necro, Ranger, Thief and Warrior and all of them have the close range and long range weapon swaps (the Thief took a pretty huge hit with the SB nerf though but scissors are invisible and such ; )

Kodiak.3281:

We have the lowest HP pool going against everything in the normal game design. Necro/Engie are tanky and have highest base HP.

Actually, Engineers are on the middle HP class.

Kodiak.3281:

This is where it gets messed up… Mesmer has Meidum pool of HP with mobility/stealth abilities to avoid damage entirely (plus clones). Elementalist has low HP with healing and mobility. It’s crisscrossed for Light Armor from Medium and what to they do to answer it? They reduce our mobility and healing with zero compensation

Very well said. I can’t put it into words any better. Everybody should read Kodiak’s long post because it’s very informative and addresses almost all (if not all) of the Elementalist’s core problems in class design. I hope devs can read his post. I just quoted this paragraph because I believe this is where the real problem lies:

Eles live off by relying on mobility and healing but They reduce our mobility and healing with zero compensation

Kodiak.3281:

silvermember.8941:

It sucks how all out defensive skills are on such a long cool down where a mesmer has access to invulnerbility every 9.3-13 secs for 2 seconds + a decent amount of damage while ours either come with 50 second or 70 cD and the former provides no damage while the latter no longer provides any benefit.

while the necro has access to 2 hp bars and high damage.

Honeslty, I don’t think a small bump of toughness would be enough, they will have to cut the CD on our defensive abilities and reduce the need spam buttons to achieve parity with other classes.

But don’t you see how overpowered that would be! If Mistform had some sort of reasonable cool down like 60s when combined with /Focus and Obsidian Flesh we could be immune to damage for 7 seconds out of every 60 seconds while also maintaining our awesome offensive capabilities like…Fire Aura or Flamewall or Comet!

I just imagined it now and I am giggling like a little girl at how OP that would be. we would be a 1 man wrecking machine.

Give us a touch more base HP and we’d be just about perfect, IMO.

Sorry, WoT incoming…

Primernova.5791:

I have played Necro, Ranger, Thief and Warrior and all of them have the close range and long range weapon swaps

I don’t think a meelee-range-approach is a good way to pick weapons. You should pick weapons (and gears and traits respectively) which suit your play style.
As an ele almost every possible weapon or weapon set provides several tools to either get in range or out of it. As a D/D elementalist, e.g., you got many gap closers (one of them got ultra nerfed, which needs to be rolled back asap) and soft and hard cc which you can either use offensively or defensively; Also most skills have a range of 300+, whereas meelees only hit within 130 units. You should use this to your advantage.
Same goes for S/D, which lacks some gap closers / exit strategies, but offers decent mid-range skills for good burst damage with some nice defensive gimmicks (extra armor, blinds and several area denial skills) and neat ways to raise your damage numbers via might stacking.
Foci provide us with awesome damage mitigation skills which shine in groups but is balanced by the limited mobility compared to other weapon sets.
Staff provides good sustained but slow and predictable damage, awesome support and CC and should not be left out in groups which are able to use combo fields – all that at a range of 1200 units (and more, if you know how to).

You pick your favourite play style, you live by its limits. This is how every build in this game should go. Your suggestion would lead to totally unbalanced stuff like scepter-fire + staff-water and oh-dagger-earth: water field + 2 blasts via fire + 2 blasts via earth + evasive arcana + arcane wave. trololol
It would make balancing even harder, and we all know how careful a.net sometimes is when they “balance” skills…

btw: Most effective builds for other classes combine 2 meelee sets or 2 mid-range and range sets: Warriors with hammer/mace+shield or gs/s+h, guardians with hammer/mace+shield or staff/scepter+focus, thieves with sword+dagger/sword+pistol and so on. You have to use your weapon and utility skills wisely to counter your enemy’s strategy. That’s that.

Kodiak.3281:

Eles live off by relying on mobility and healing but They reduce our mobility and healing with zero compensation

This is one of the issues I see as well. Due to some – what has been seen as super effective – mechanisms used in certain builds, other builds and attemps at making this class work got nerfed into the ground. What bothers me personally, are the long cooldowns for our most effective spells (which also bug out at times – how many firegrabs did you miss today?). They are area effects for the most part, I take their reduced single target impact or the longer cooldowns for granted. But please revisit some of them – Either by making their effects safer to land (fire grab, gust, dust devil – even if you position yourself well, those skills are likely to bug out) or lower their cooldowns by some seconds (e.g. fire grab, updraft, windborne speed – or add vigor to its benefits, if one condition got removed).

From a PvP PoV it is much easier to spec offensively for other classes without getting instagibbed due to reliable blocks, CC on lower cooldowns and better base damage output. As an elementalist we have to rely on boons like protection, regeneration, swiftness and vigor to compensate for our lack of base defense, we need to stack might and fury to get some not-so-meh damage numbers, and we must use evades, displacement, invulnerability, stun breaks, blinds cripple, chill and immobilize to mitigate damage because we cannot eat anything (direct damage as well as condition damage).
That sounds pretty solid. The rate at which we are able to use some of these abilities does not compare to the rate at which we need them against good opponents. Also, we have to hope our more effective skills will work (not getting dodged, interrupted or blinded or just miss it for no apparent reason), otherwise every other class is at a logic advantage when playing against us because of our high cooldowns and our low base sustain. (I think every elementalist using his boons knows how easy we melt to condition pressure and boon ripping, as well as soft and hard CC).
Currently we have a condition-heavy meta and the CC-heavy meta is on the uprise. Both are effective counters against elementalists playing with boon-support, and this is one of the big reasons my ele feels pretty week right now. Stun breaks, endurance and condition removes are forced on long cooldown, but oh wait – there is some more CC and condition pressure on super low cooldowns while we hit like wet noodles (gimmickery builds with low sustain excluded), thus being not able to finish an enemy off before his cooldowns pop up again.

I remember in the recent Dev video, they mentioned that they knew people had concerns about not being able to just use one attunement, and stated you were kind of expected to swap between all you attunements to be viable.

If that is the case, why do we still need to spec into Arcane to reduce the attunement cooldown? If it’s considered a core mechanic to constantly be switching, shouldn’t the cooldown be short to begin with?

None of the other classes are “expected” to constantly swap between weapon sets to be viable. As someone has already stated, swapping weapon sets for other classes allow them to adapt to different combat styles (ie. melee and ranged). An Ele’s skills in a given weapon set are all designed for one type of combat. A D/D Ele would need to escape from combat entirely, so that they could slot in a scepter or staff, if the flow of battle suddenly changed from short to long ranged engagement. In that sense, an Ele swapping attunements is not the same as every other class swapping weapon sets.

The only other class in a similar situation is the Engineer, but they at least have the use of kits that function as alternate weapon sets, and can be slotted and used independently of their equipped weapon set.

While the Ele’s skills do come with a variety of utility effects, that they are all balanced around a specific range/style dictated by the one weapon set you are stuck with in combat. This effectively limits the class’ versatility.

I think the Devs need to re-evaluate how they perceive the attunement swapping mechanics, as they are currently balancing all of the class’ performance around it. We can’t swap between weapon sets because each attunement is seen as a new set of weapons. Yet, because all the attunements are expected to synergize together, they all function in the same capacity. Even worse, rather than balance each attunement’s cooldowns as its own weapon set, they are balanced as if you have concurrent access to all 20 skills; contradictorily treating all 4 attunements are if they were one weapon set.

If the class is viable at all, it is solely due to the synergy of passives offered by its trait lines. Playing the class becomes a grueling experience as acquiring and unlocking trait points is much more difficult than slotting in a new weapon or just roaming for skill points.

Naw, I prefer to go get a drink if I get caught alone with a staff in wvw. Swapping weapons would make me feel like I should stay and fight. I like those little breaks too much.

FrownyClown.8402:

So like I could run a d/d elementalist then switch to s/f and die in that instead.

Fecking bravo. A nice balance of the truth not only hurting but making me laugh.

But here are my opinions on how to fix ele.

1. Make Evasive arcana, Attunement swap blasts/cleansing wave traits baseline.
2. Fix your stupid elementalist trait system to have decent traits. I see no reason to go into fire. The only decent two I see are for Earth and Air but usually we can’t go too crazy with those choices because we are forced into 30 in arcane and 15 into water.
3. Reactivate ability for when you attunement swap
4. Bring back the DECENT AND COMPLETELY FAIR RtL and mistform.
5. Fix little things with spells that lead to big problems. Like dragon’s tooth lengthy cast time, Fire grabs silly hit box. Fire fields not burning targets that run by etc.

Maybe the ability to assign a weapon set for each attunment would provide more flexibility for elementalist builds and gameplay.

Dagger/Dagger for fire
Scepter/Dagger for air
Scepter/Dagger for earth
Dagger/Dagger for water

Would be my selection for weapon sets

Not the weapon swap discussion again? Is there no end to people coming up with stupidly complex systems to add weapon swaps?

ArenaNet wants to limit the number of potential skill combinations. Hence the chance of elementalists ever getting weapons swap is less than 1%.

ThiBash.5634:

Not the weapon swap discussion again? Is there no end to people coming up with stupidly complex systems to add weapon swaps?

ArenaNet wants to limit the number of potential skill combinations. Hence the chance of elementalists ever getting weapons swap is less than 1%.

I’ve never taken part in one of these, but I see what you mean about the pointlessly complex arguments and parroting in this thread.

How about this, to keep it simple. A staff slot and no other changes? Everyone loves staff but it has so many weak points in different scenarios. It’s way too nerfed to be a main weapon imo, so it wouldn’t be game breaking at all.

Primernova.5791:

I’ve never taken part in one of these, but I see what you mean about the pointlessly complex arguments and parroting in this thread.

My apologies. This subject pops up every few weeks with someone demanding weapon swap with either no balance or some very complex system to make it pseudo balanced. Then a long discussion ensues with various people supporting the idea, until enough players show exactly why it’s a bad idea. The main reason though, is because of the huge amount of potential combos. One of thsoe is bound to give an advantage that shouldn’t exist.

How about this, to keep it simple. A staff slot and no other changes? Everyone loves staff but it has so many weak points in different scenarios. It’s way too nerfed to be a main weapon imo, so it wouldn’t be game breaking at all.

The key word being imo hehe. Staff has a lot of combo fields that are prone to abuse. Blast finishers being the first thing that come to mind.

ThiBash.5634:

Primernova.5791:

I’ve never taken part in one of these, but I see what you mean about the pointlessly complex arguments and parroting in this thread.

My apologies. This subject pops up every few weeks with someone demanding weapon swap with either no balance or some very complex system to make it pseudo balanced. Then a long discussion ensues with various people supporting the idea, until enough players show exactly why it’s a bad idea. The main reason though, is because of the huge amount of potential combos. One of thsoe is bound to give an advantage that shouldn’t exist.

How about this, to keep it simple. A staff slot and no other changes? Everyone loves staff but it has so many weak points in different scenarios. It’s way too nerfed to be a main weapon imo, so it wouldn’t be game breaking at all.

The key word being imo hehe. Staff has a lot of combo fields that are prone to abuse. Blast finishers being the first thing that come to mind.

Staff is great in a zerg, it’s what I always equip. I still give great combo fields that players ‘abuse’. The problem is when a Ele get caught alone with a staff, then we can just swim in our own AoE until dead….

Can I have the other weapons in my bag please?

Given the amount of downscaling we’ve had done to our class, I think that whatever made weapon swap seem over-powered at release, is no longer an issue. Especially if it’s just out-of-combat.

On average I carry: 3 daggers, and 3 staves (1 dagger, and 1 staff are spvp). I have even more weapons in the bank. When you are in WvW and have a spam of blue loot in your bags, searching through all the Zenith daggers for the right one to swap to is a chore. There have been 2 GvGs where I opened with static field and then ran out of time to swap to the correct daggers because the map was already laggy to begin with.

What seems OP about going from staff to daggers? Static fields? Water cleanse? We can get those already from Arcane Abatement that a lot of D/D users are already using.

Have you ever done solo spvp queue where you buff sprint with staff at the start, then can’t switch weapons because you waited 1s too long?

All I personally really want is a section in my hero’s panel to put the sets of weapons I wish to use all the time for the place I’m at. Or separate the weapons from the armor in the left panel. And the runes at the very bottom. I don’t need to see major runes that I got as loot jumbled with my exotic weapons. Those even show up in spvp hero panel, which makes no sense at all. So at least unclutter our UI.