Guild Wars 2

Elementalists don’t have a whole lot of weapon sets and still lack plenty of niches – including a pure melee weapon, a single-target ranged weapon, etc. There’s a lot you can do with the profession. The following is my concept for the Greatsword, which brings a direct-damage melee-only weapon with unique auras and utility.

Traits
Greatsword Mastery (Arcana, Master Major) – Auras last 2 seconds longer while wielding a Greatsword.

Fire Attunement

Auto-Chain
Fueled Slash Deals damage to struck foes. Deals additional damage to burning foes.
Fueled Cleave Deals damage to struck foes. Deals additional damage to burning foes.
Burning Blade A two-handed sweep that strikes the target for direct damage. If it connects, the foe and all adjacent foes are burned for a short time.

Flame Wheel
A targeted channeling skill in which you spin in place at your current location, greatly damaging foes near you and releasing fireballs to rain down at the target (small) area. Counts as a whirl finisher.

Trailblazer
Disappear in a puff of smoke and reappear at the target location instantly, damaging and burning foes at the new location. Has no activation time and can thus be used with Flame Wheel and other channeled skills.

Shining, Burning Aura
Gain a unique aura which surrounds you with a ring of fire that follows you around. Foes who touch the edge are hit by a large amount of direct damage. This constitutes a mobile fire field which can be triggered by your skills. Counts as an aura for traits.

Explosion
Hit the area around you with an explosive force that pulls struck foes towards you and deals direct damage. Constitutes a blast finisher.

Water Attunement

Chain Skills
Cold Steel – Slash foes in front of you, chilling them briefly.
Mist Blade – Cleave foes in front of you, hitting for direct damage and slightly healing nearby allies for each chilled foe.
Shattersword Smash the target foe for direct damage. If they are chilled, this deals additional direct damage in an area of effect around them.

Piercing Cold
Hit the target foe in melee range, stabbing through them to deal direct damage and chill them and foes behind them.

Surf
Ride a wave of water forward a short distance, healing allies you pass through.

Aqua Aura
Your body starts releasing water in all directions, slightly healing allies once per second. You become a mobile water field. Counts as an aura for traits.

Mistborn Sword
Briefly evaporate yourself and your sword into mist, haunting the target foe as an invulnerable specter. Channels damage on them over this time. Any auras on you will remain in effect and follow you/your target. When the duration ends, you’ll manifest where your foe is unless you use the secondary activation, which causes you to end the channel early and return to your original location.
Water Cycle
End Mistborn Sword early and return to your starting location.

Air Attunement

Chain Skills
Jolt
Stab your foe with a spike of electricity, inflicting vulnerability briefly.
Bolt
Stab your foe with a second spike of electricity, inflicting vulnerability briefly.
Volt
Shock nearby foes, dealing additional damage to vulnerable targets.

Chain Lightning
Shoot a ball of lightning that bounces between foes and allies, damaging foes and granting fury to allies. Projectile finisher.

Electric Slide
Slide backwards, leaving sparks in your path that damages foes. Constitutes a Lightning Combo Field.

Storm Aura
Gain a unique aura that calls down lightning on foes, periodically damaging them and inflicting vulnerability to them. Counts as an aura for traits.

Counterbolt
Channel a block. If you are struck during this time (regardless of range) counter by calling down a bolt of lightning on the foe who struck you, damaging and stunning them for 1 second.

Earth Attunement

Chain Skills
Earth Slash
Slash your foe for direct damage.
Cleaving Stone
Slash your foe again.
Stone Sheathe
Surround your sword with an sheathe of stone and perform an overhand smash, dealing hefty damage and shattering the rock for a spread of direct damage rocks that count as 20% projectile finishers.

Rock Smash
A short leap (much like the Guardian Hammer leap) that smashes the target location for a Blast finisher and direct damage. Sprays rocks that cause short duration bleeds over a larger area.

Stone Spear
Throw an earth spear in a straight line towards the target area, damaging all struck foes and impaling them, which carries them to the target location.

Earthen Aura
Surrounds you with an earthen shield. All foes who strike you trigger AoE bursts of short rocks that damage and bleed them and surrounding foes. This includes projectiles, but the burst is point-blank. Counts as an aura for traits.

Stonewall
Raises an impassable wall of earth at the target location. Obstructs projectiles.

How would you solve the problem that there’s a greatsword that has the same skin as our elite?

And after reading it, don’t you think you have a bit too many auras? Especially when the blast finishers are taken into account?

Like so often we have some nice concepts here, but i doubt that Anet will implement anything like that anytime soon. Same goes for major changes of traits or utilities (maybe except concjures since they announced that in the last patch).

ThiBash.5634:

How would you solve the problem that there’s a greatsword that has the same skin as our elite?

And after reading it, don’t you think you have a bit too many auras? Especially when the blast finishers are taken into account?

I don’t see that as being a problem any more than the existence of a greatsword skin identical to our elite is in scenarios with a Volcanus-wielding profession and an elementalist with FGS working together is a problem. If players choose to use that for mindgames, especially in WvW, which is casual pvp to begin with, then more power to them.

And no, I don’t think I have too many auras. By making the built-in auras unique to the weapon, they can be balanced individually in order to keep the weapon in line with other options. Ice fields were also intentionally omitted from the weapon in order to prevent the usage of blast finishers to create ice auras. There is a Fire → Leap combo for Fire aura, but that’s about it. The auras could potentially be excessive if one was to go 20/0/0/30/20 with all signets for additional fire auras, but this involves losing out on a lot of stunbreaks and utility.

Some of these ideas are fairly good and creative and I like how you’ve taken the time to give an in-depth suggestion. But in my honest opinion I don’t believe devs will add Greatsword to Ele. There are just far too many conceptual drives not to.

I’d rather have a sword to pair with dagger/focus.

Spiuk.8421:

I’d rather have a sword to pair with dagger/focus.

This. So much this.

Greatsword if the most used weapon in the game. If we ever get something new I’ll be mace or bow.

if ele gets new weapons i highly doubt theyll be gs/axe/bow/shield/hammer, just because of the conjures
and your suggestion seems a bit OP (partly depending on the damage of some things, partly because of the number of auras providing high prot/swift/fury up time – plus they dont really fit in with auras; which are only to punish foes who attack you – the frost and fire buff more so)

innocent ouarior.1954:

Greatsword if the most used weapon in the game. If we ever get something new I’ll be mace or bow.

mace could be an interesting concept… but i think (if ele does get a new weapon) we’ll need to see a shuffling round of skills

Eternal.5109:

Spiuk.8421:

I’d rather have a sword to pair with dagger/focus.

This. So much this.

yes i cant wait to use bolt in air atunement! this greatsword looks abit OP to me, would be nice if the elite greatsword was different depending on atunement tho.

Magische Boek.2530:

Eternal.5109:

Spiuk.8421:

I’d rather have a sword to pair with dagger/focus.

This. So much this.

yes i cant wait to use bolt in air atunement! this greatsword looks abit OP to me, would be nice if the elite greatsword was different depending on atunement tho.

Nice idea, maybe it would become an Elite skill!

Yeah so yet another class can run around using only greatsword, as if Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian were not bad enough.

They could always add these skills to the greatsword elite and make attunement swapping switch the skills. I’d rather have them fix what is wrong with our current weapons than add new ones.

I don’t think they’d give us a weapon that we have a conjure variant of because they have items with those skins in game (except flame axe I think?) so I think sword or mace (since only 2 profs use it atm) would be the most likely new weapon if we were to get one. Incorporating them into a new better version of the conjure like the above said would be nice though.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

ThiBash.5634:

Don’t you think you have a bit too many auras?

And no, I don’t think I have too many auras. By making the built-in auras unique to the weapon, they can be balanced individually in order to keep the weapon in line with other options. The auras could potentially be excessive if one was to go 20/0/0/30/20 with all signets for additional fire auras, but this involves losing out on a lot of stunbreaks and utility.

I think you underestimate the power of your auras a little bit. The auras are obviously intended as some sort of self-powering mechanism, but with Powerful Aura you’d be spreading them to your team as well. Combined with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding, that’d be more or less permanent boons for your entire team.

Now, the reason this isn’t a problem with the current builds is because the auras themselves are fairly meek. However, if you buff them too, the resulting combination would need to get huge cooldowns simply to prevent them from being overpowered.

Having said that, I can understand why you’d want effects like that. My suggestion would be to just not have them be auras. That would make them much easier to balance.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Ice fields were also intentionally omitted from the weapon in order to prevent the usage of blast finishers to create ice auras.

The elemental summons also create ice fields, so all eles have acces to those, regardless of weapon.

I would like to see chain lightning giving shocking aura too allies and stunning foes

ThiBash.5634:

Having said that, I can understand why you’d want effects like that. My suggestion would be to just not have them be auras. That would make them much easier to balance.

dat aura share :P

I agree. Feels like the aim for the weapon was to aim for auramancer builds which is already a prominent build for daggers. This GS just blows all other aura builds out of the water for the sole purpose of it being the weapons gimmick and has so many traits to make it even stronger…but most of the strength of the build could be culled by simply untagging those ‘auras’ as auras.

Spiuk.8421:

I’d rather have a sword to pair with dagger/focus.

Seconded