Guild Wars 2

Just a few ideas I’ve had to bring elementalists more in line with the other professions. This would directly buff their ability to survive and give more variation in building options.

1) Allow weapon swapping. Since this could be seen as ‘too much’, have it make attunement swapping go on cooldown when you do swap weapon sets (Attunement swapping/weapon swapping could be on the same cooldown).

2) Increase the power of an attunement’s abilities the longer the player stays in the attunement. Something like 5% increase/min, stacking at 5 would do wonders. This would be 25% increase damage/healing from abilities if an elementalist decided to stay attuned to a specific element. This would open up build options where elementalists decide to not attune dance, and instead built for static boosts. These type of elementalists would benefit the most from weapon swapping, as they wouldn’t be needing to attune dance.

3) Bring base health in line with Rangers, 15k base at level 80. The other light armor class (Mesmer) has a base of 20k. This would fix a lot of problems with survivability.

4) Improve the damage on Evasive Arcana rolls and bring back the combo finisher to them. However, make it a static 10s cooldown across all attunements.

5) Normalize the boost toughness gives to all armor classes. What I have heard is that it benefits heavy armor classes more than medium/light. In that regard, it must be a % boost. Having it as a static bonus would improve the survivability of both light and medium armor classes.

That’s about all I’ve been able to come up with so far. This would allow various builds to be made, and make the profession more fun to play. Heavy Arcane builds would attunement dance for max benefits (Boons/bonuses/etc – Kinda like how it is now), while there would be some elementalists that would stick to maximizing the capabilities of a specific element instead (Such as a water elementalist with D/D and Staff. Staying in water to keep auto-regen of Soothing Mists up… Etc).

Feel free to critique/comment.

Elementalists already HAVE weapons swapping and between 4 weapons at a time via attunments. Arguably you have the most versatile range of options available to you of any class at any given time given how many traits and skills ALSO change with your attunements.

Holy holy holy kitten. No character is going to get to be the best at everything. Chill.

I agree with Tab.

It seems like Anet has a very set mind on what the ele should be and maybe people seem to make it work. If you want weapon swapping and no attuenments I would suggest 6 of the other 7 professions.

As tab said, “No character is going to get to be the best at everything”

1. No we already have 20 skills while other profs have only 10… The only way that might work is if they made Conjures weapons, like when we have a Conjured weapon on our hands we would still be able to switch to our weapons and back. I’m not sure how overpowered that might be though

2. There are already traits that increase the longer you are in an attunment, like the 5% increase in speed (air) or the flame barrier chance (fire) getting a total boost for being in an attunement isn’t needed

3. Elementalists are “meant” to be the squishiest prof in the game, they compensate for that by having some of the best healing skills.

4. EA nerf was needed, the trait wasn’t working as intended.

5. Toughness works the same on all professions. There is no % boost, it works this way: Toughness and Defense (from items) is added and form your “Armor”. Whenever you are hit the actual damage you take is Damage/Armor so either increasing your Toughness or you Defense will negate much of the damage.

Thrones.3209:

1) Allow weapon swapping. Since this could be seen as ‘too much’, have it make attunement swapping go on cooldown when you do swap weapon sets (Attunement swapping/weapon swapping could be on the same cooldown).

Out-of-combat weapon swapping would be a welcome addition, but swapping weapons in-combat would be too much, I think.

Thrones.3209:

2) Increase the power of an attunement’s abilities the longer the player stays in the attunement. Something like 5% increase/min, stacking at 5 would do wonders. This would be 25% increase damage/healing from abilities if an elementalist decided to stay attuned to a specific element. This would open up build options where elementalists decide to not attune dance, and instead built for static boosts. These type of elementalists would benefit the most from weapon swapping, as they wouldn’t be needing to attune dance.

I’m all for build choices, but this would be too hard to balance. Depending on where the numbers fell, it would either be a noob trap to stay in one attunement or a noob trap to dance. Getting that butter zone where either is viable would be extremely difficult. IMO, the +10% damage while in Fire/Air Traits accomplish this well enough.

Thrones.3209:

3) Bring base health in line with Rangers, 15k base at level 80. The other light armor class (Mesmer) has a base of 20k. This would fix a lot of problems with survivability.

Yes, please.

Thrones.3209:

4) Improve the damage on Evasive Arcana rolls and bring back the combo finisher to them. However, make it a static 10s cooldown across all attunements.

Also yes please.

Thrones.3209:

5) Normalize the boost toughness gives to all armor classes. What I have heard is that it benefits heavy armor classes more than medium/light. In that regard, it must be a % boost. Having it as a static bonus would improve the survivability of both light and medium armor classes.

I’m not so sure about this. This gets into long-ranging core design goals. In general, I’m ok with Warriors being innately more tanky than Elementalists. That just makes sense.

Valid critiques.

Just want to say two things though.

1) Not asking for any profession to be the best at everything. Just wanting the elementalist to be more useful/fun to use. Unless you perfectly master it… It feels spammy (And that’s just with D/D.).

2) Weapon swapping would not allow for insane combos if it put attunement swapping on their cooldown (Base is what… 14s now?). So that wouldn’t be an insane buff or make them the world’s greatest profession. Attunement dancing elementalists would only use it as an out-of-combat switch anyways, which a lot of elementalists are wanting.

Anyways, sorry if people have heard enough whining about elementalists. I’m still leveling mine, but getting really anxious with all the talk of their endgame. Everyone in my current guild even states elementalists are sub-par. Them and Engineers are the lowest amount of any profession in the guild that actually runs dungeons. Oh, and for clarity, I’m looking at this in a PvE perspective, not PvP. If there is a major difference between the two in balancing, then I would simply recommend Anet to balance the skills differently for both styles of play.

Just all the talk and such (even on these forums) are making me lose my motivation to level my elementalist. These were just ideas I came up with envisioning the endgame.