Guild Wars 2

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that this would work better if it was used as a rifle, since it would correct the ‘drawback’ mentioned below, and provide a better weapon niche since our only 1200 weapon is a staff. I’ve edited this top post accordingly to take that into account. The second one does not need changing. Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

EDIT 2: Check out my other new idea for a condition based elementalist Hammer build!

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since I submitted new ideas for the game – but I figured I’d spend my evening coming up with weapon ideas for the ele. The first one is going to be for dual-pistols.

Now, I’ll admit that my idea has one drawback – it really only works if you’re dual-wielding pistols. So.. take that for what you will.

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that this would work better if it was used as a rifle, since it would correct the ‘drawback’ mentioned below, and provide a better weapon niche since our only 1200 weapon is a staff. I’ve edited this top post accordingly to take that into account. The second one does not need changing. Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

Anyways;

Elementalist Pistols (Or a rifle);

Archetype: Caster Gun (think ‘Outlaw Star’).
Quick info: All skills are 900 range by default (1200 range if we make it a Rifle) unless otherwise specified. If wearing two pistols, all skills will animate with BOTH pistols, not just one.

Earth:
This tree is designed to bring the ‘Flora’ aspect of the Earth element out for a change. This element focuses on continuous damage, snares/immobs, and healing – with some of the most creative ways to fire a gun that I could think of.

1 – Inosculation: (.5s cast time) The ele shoots the ground beneath their feet, dealing damage to the target and crippling both the caster and the target for 1s.
2 – Cannibal Cannon: (10s cooldown, .5s cast time) The ele lobs hungering plant seeds at a target location, dealing damage upon impact and summoning 3 hungry plants for 15 seconds. These plants deal damage to the first enemy they are attracted to unless killed or 15s runs out.
3 – Thirsty Fodder: (self-cast, 15s cooldown) You need to feed those hungry earth pistols! Your next attack will heal you for 100% of the damage done, and trigger regeneration on you and nearby allies.
4 – Crazed Ivy: (25s cooldown, 1s cast) Earth shot which manifests as a rapidly invasive vine – which immobilizes the target for 3s and poisons them for 10s. The vine will proceed to move to another nearby target after 3s and trigger the effects there (max 3 bounces).
5 – Fertilized Shells: (self-cast, 50s cooldown) Earth shots now attract grasping vines from the ground for the next 15 seconds that immobilize (1s) the target.

Fire:
This tree is designed to ‘bring the heat’. It basically has four different modes of AoE output; damage + burning, heavy-damage, and both of these with “rapid fire”.

1 – Pop Pop: (.5s cast time) A fire shot that explodes on contact with the target, dealing damage and adding 1s of burning to surrounding targets.
2 – Corona: (8s cooldown) An exploding cannister is fired at the target location, exploding after 1s – dealing damage and burning (4s) all enemies in the area (200 radius)
3 – Hotshot: (self-cast, 25s cooldown) The caster gains quickness for 6s. The effect is canceled element attunement is changed.
4 – Pulsar: (25s cooldown, 1.5s cast time) An impressive beam of blue fire which deals massive damage to all targets in a line, causing bleeding for 5s.
5 – Inferno Shells: (self-cast, 50s cooldown) Fire shots now deal an additional 50% damage for the next 10 seconds. Burning effects cannot be applied for the duration.

Water:
I wanted this to be a water tree that had the option for heavy single-target-damage, but also a small option to add the ‘healing’ that most water ele’s are used to. I also wanted to see if I could spice it up with an AoE steroid mode, as it only made the skills even more interesting to activate.

1 – Squirt Gun: (.5-4s cast time) A water shot that does more damage depending on how long it is held. At max charge this skill will daze the target for .25s. (4x dmg at 4s, 3x damage at 3s, etc).
2 – Soaker: (8s cooldown, 2s channel) A constant stream of water that deals damage and cripples the enemy for the duration of the channel.
3 – Washout: (15s cooldown, 1s cast time) A mighty torrent of water deals damage while launching the enemy backwards.
4 – Iceball: (25s cooldown, 1.5s cast time) A fast-moving ball of solid ice strikes the enemy, dealing damage and stunning the target for 2s.
5 – Splashing Shells: (self-cast, 50s cooldown) Water shots are now trigger AoE’s for the next 10 seconds, healing allies and damaging surrounding enemies.

Air:
I really liked the idea of bullets loaded with exploding wind and lightning. I also liked the idea of an air tree that had both moderate damage AND AoE for once. This is an excellent mitigation tree as well due to its short-cooldown daze and blinding steroid.

1 – Surprise Shot: (.5s cast time) A quick moving bolt of lightning strikes the target and 3 nearby enemies.
2 – Short Circuit: (8s cooldown, 1s cast time) The target is hit with an arc of lightning which hits 3 nearby enemies, dazing them for .25 seconds.
3 – Charger: (self-cast, 4s channel time) The caster charges their guns. After the charge is complete, their next air-shot will trigger a second identical shot.
4 – Tiny Twister: (25s cooldown, 2s cast time) The target and all enemies are struck by a horizontal tornado, dealing damage and knocking them back sideways.
5 – Flashbang Shells: (self-cast, 50 second cooldown) Air shots now trigger blinding (5s) for the next 8 seconds.

Feel free to leave constructive criticism

Thanks!
-LoreChief

Yo, these are great! But, heck, man. Anyone facing a duel pistol elementalist wouldn’t stand a chance. O.o

LoreChief.8391:

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since I submitted new ideas for the game – but I figured I’d spend my evening coming up with weapon ideas for the ele. The first one is going to be for dual-pistols.

Now, I’ll admit that my idea has one drawback – it really only works if you’re dual-wielding pistols. So.. take that for what you will.

Anyways;

Elementalist Pistols;

Archetype: Caster Gun (think ‘FFX-2 Gun Mage’).
Quick info: All skills are 900 range by default unless otherwise specified. If wearing two pistols, all skills will animate with BOTH pistols, not just one.

Would love this so much!!

Its a cool ideal but that seems a lot like a scepter and your saying P/P not just pistol main hand only why not just make it a rifle that will fill the roll of a scepter like 2h wepon that missing from ele. As is ele only has a long ranges for a 2h wepon they are missing a 2h melee wepon and a 2h in-between wepon. Other then that sound like a good ideal.

Jski.6180:

Its a cool ideal but that seems a lot like a scepter and your saying P/P not just pistol main hand only why not just make it a rifle that will fill the roll of a scepter like 2h wepon that missing from ele. As is ele only has a long ranges for a 2h wepon they are missing a 2h melee wepon and a 2h in-between wepon. Other then that sound like a good ideal.

I like the sound of this. Element a list has no real long range damage as staff is mostly a support wep. It would be nice if they made rifle a long range high damage weapon , kept pistols for medium range and implemented a sword for short range. Ele would then have 2 weps per range. Imo ele still doesn’t have much build diversity but this would help as more weps = more diversity.

Hmm.. it could work as a rifle I suppose. I really like the idea of these skills animating with pistols, but I can see your points.

Also, I didn’t assign any ‘hard’ numbers for any of the skill damages, as I’m not good at coming up with ‘balanced’ numbers that way.

I would love to see Pistols added, Though i would prefer if they were fully condition based weapons with Burning, Bleeding, Torment and Confusion as damaging conditions. Chill, Cripple and such as other condition.

Mix of Single target and AoE damage with a trait that decreases cool down and makes attacks pierce.

elementalist, imo, would look really clunky when shooting a rifle, pistol on the other hand… I’d love to see that :P.

I know the range would be better on rifle but p/p allows for us to choose different offhands and things like that for a bit more diversity, and instead of 900 range, they could just make it 1000 range and have minor trait like an engi: reduce cd, longer range (1200), and piercing shots

btw, crazed ivy should inflict 5 torment as well, and iceball should inflict chill for 5 seconds

other than that, love ur ideas!

I feel that our long range options are weaker than our short/mid range, rifle is just what the class needs, then you could get to the more fun stuff after that :p

A point though: Your 5 Skills : are like a utility, they don’t do anything on their own, and weapon skills aren’t like that.

The water 2 beam should heal along it’s beam.

water 5 could be changed to a sort of artillery attack like the healing mortar shells on the engi elite.

The damaging spells in water attunement tend to be ice themed. So the squirt gun would likely be a chargeable ice lance, similar in play to kill shot I’d imagine.

A nice starting point though.

emikochan.8504:

I feel that our long range options are weaker than our short/mid range, rifle is just what the class needs, then you could get to the more fun stuff after that :p

Hate rifle!
Pistols are SO much better.

Make them condition based and i would be sold

Love these and have a couple of suggestions!

I assume the 1 skills are all auto-attacks? In that case, wouldn’t earth 1 pretty much be a permanent immobilize? For water 1 are there any other auto-attacks that require a charge? I feel like a “hold” spell for auto-attack might be a bit clunky.

I don’t know if I like the Shells skills as they force me to commit to an attunement for their duration to get the maximum effect. How about if you reduce the cooldown from 50s and make it “your next attack in X attunement” to complement the Lingering Elements trait? This would provide more flexibility with combos and rotations.

Combo fields and finishers:
I’m sure some or all of the auto-attacks can have Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance) like a lot of the ranged weapons in the game.
Possible Projectile Finishers:
Earth 4, Fire 4, Air 2
Possible Blast Finishers:
Fire 2, Water 4
Possible Whirl Finishers:
Air 4

Other stuff I can think of:
Water
Steam Cloud (25s cd, 0.5s cast, 3s duration)
Discharge your weapon, venting a cloud of steam around you.
Regeneration: 3s, Cures 1 condition from allies
Combo field: water
Radius: 480

Chilling Shots (15s cd, 2s cast)
Fire 3 shots that chill your target for 1s per shot

Imbued Shot (20s cd, .25s cast)
Target yourself with an imbued shot, granting boons and creating a frost aura.
Frost Aura (duration 3s)
Regeneration: 5s
Swiftness: 5s
Removes Immobilize and cripple

Earth
Culling (30s cd, 1s cast)
Fire a round of imbued bullets into an area, removing boons from foes and granting protection to allies.
Protection: 4s
Boons removed: 2
Radius: 320
note: I wanted this one because eles don’t have much boon stripping (do we even have any?)

Poison Coating (15s cd, 1s cast)
Bombard an area with poisonous explosive rounds.
Radius: 320
Combo field: Poison
note: first access to poison fields?

Air
Electromagnetic Pulse (25s cd, 1s cast)
Leap up into the air and slam your rifle butt into the ground, generating a shockwave and reflecting projectiles.
Reflect projectiles for the duration of the skill
Radius: 240
Foe launch distance: 320
Combo finisher: Blast

Quickdraw (10s cd, .25s cast)
Fire a lightning fast shot, blinding your foe.
Blind: 1s
Unblockable
Combo Finisher: Projectile

Well engi grenade 1 can’t even be autocast, since we are supposed to be the fiddliest class, these pretenders can’t have the most annoying mechanic to themselves!

I’m mainly voting rifle because balancing pistol mh/oh with the existing stuff sounds like a nightmare :p And tbh every other weapon has a mix of condi/power skills, so rifle should too.

emikochan.8504:

I feel that our long range options are weaker than our short/mid range, rifle is just what the class needs, then you could get to the more fun stuff after that :p

A point though: Your 5 Skills : are like a utility, they don’t do anything on their own, and weapon skills aren’t like that.

The water 2 beam should heal along it’s beam.

water 5 could be changed to a sort of artillery attack like the healing mortar shells on the engi elite.

The damaging spells in water attunement tend to be ice themed. So the squirt gun would likely be a chargeable ice lance, similar in play to kill shot I’d imagine.

A nice starting point though.

Not all weapons have to be the same firstly, secondly – not all weapon skills do damage.

Just off the top of my head;

Mesmer weapon skills summon phantasms
Guardian Hammer throws up a barrier around the guardian to trap enemies inside
Elemenetalist Focus creates an anti-projectile barrier

@LordMeowalot: #1 earth is a cripple not an immob. It also cripples the ele who casts it as well so its mostly useful for situations where you have backup.

As far as being forced to commit to an attune; that’s half the point of it. The buffs would be too strong if you could just hotswap attune’s and do something like swap your elements around to get all 4 of the Shell skills activated at once. At the same time, much to a similar gameplay of the Staff – long range weapons aren’t meant to be swapped around every 2 seconds without hazard.

@ArmageddonAsh: I’ve got another set of weapons I’m drafting up skills for that will be more condition based. Stay tuned!

Thanks everyone!

LoreChief.8391:

Not all weapons have to be the same firstly, secondly – not all weapon skills do damage.

Just off the top of my head;

Mesmer weapon skills summon phantasms
Guardian Hammer throws up a barrier around the guardian to trap enemies inside
Elemenetalist Focus creates an anti-projectile barrier

I didn’t say damage in my post, I said “do something” Summoning a phantasm is doing something, as is a barrier.

Buffing your other skills isn’t a unique action worthy of a weapon skill, it’s a utility. Similar skill is that arcane power one, with the 5 crits. Useful but boring. Though utilities can gain extra effects, whereas [unless these 5 skills were auras] these wouldn’t have anything happen from just pressing them.

emikochan.8504:

[unless these 5 skills were auras] these wouldn’t have anything happen from just pressing them.

Whoa hey now. You just brought up a totally good point – we do have skills that don’t readily “do something” – the auras. Why would you look at the Shells I’ve made concepts for and say they are different from auras? One’s reactive offense and the other is proactive offense.

From a lore standpoint the Rifle doesn’t make much sense to me. But neither do pistols. I love the idea of having a long range damage focused weapon as the staff is predominantly support our utility outside of fire.

With that being said I think the Long Bow would work far better for this. Launching magical arrows based on attunement sounds kitten awesome to me.