Guild Wars 2

I love to think of weapon skillsets for different classes, and since sword has been suggested so many times I though I would make up one worthy of the Elemetalist. Love to hear your feedback on it.

So the main goal of this skillset is to give a truly unique playstyle to the Elementalist, without making it overpowered or encroach on the playstyles of other classes. So I tried to look at attuenments differently. Instead of requiring attunements to be switched constantly in rotation to maintain maximum dps, each attunement has a specific purpose, or playstyle, similar to how other classes take different weapons for different purposes. For instance, air attunment for ranged, water for support, and earth/fire for melee. To make this work, sword auto attack skills would also have to be viable damage dealers similar to other classes, so you could rely on it when skills are on cooldown. A consequence of this is that traiting into Arcane Magic is not as importance as you shouldn’t need to switch as often, which should allow for some more build diversity.

A secondary goal is to find a weapon that synergizes with focus more, by offering alternate options to important dagger skills, as well as making certain attunement pairings less optimal for dagger compared to focus. So without further ado, the skillset:

Fire

Fire skills are your main damage skills, and if you are just looking for pure dps you should stick to it. It is melee focus and would play similar to guardian sword.

1 Auto Attack Chain

1/2s Sword swing
1/2s Sword backswing
1s 360 Sword spin, fire extending from the sword to double the melee range. Can hit up to 5 tagerts

2 Heated Metal

A slight lunge (250ish range) with a forward stab. Gives enemy 5 stacks of vulnerability for 3s. If hitting an enemy from behind, it also cripples them for 2 seconds. Fairly high damage.
8s CD

3 Flame Drill

Player dashes forward with sword floating just in front of him, spinning radially (like a drill). Ticks a hit 4 times a second (maximum 4 hits) and each successful hit adds 1 second of burning to the target. Does moderate damage.
12s CD
Leap Finisher
600 range

Water

Water, as usual, is the support side of the Elementalist. While that hasn’t changed, I took a different look at it to keep things interesting.

1 Auto Attack, Water Stream

A continuous stream of water from the tip of the sword, similar to Air Scepter auto attack. Every 3 seconds of continuous attack it pulses at the target and gives everyone around it 1s of regeneration.

900 range

2 Washout

A wave generates from the player and moves out 360 degrees around them. The wave cleanses 1 condition per player that it passes through. Enemy players/mobs will be pushed back by it until it reaches max range, but it will not interrupt them (they can still move in any direction away from the waves, attacks will still continue to cast). Pushback is negated by stability.

15s CD
350 radius

3 Ice Wall

Summons a wall of transparent ice at ground targeted area (think guardian line of warding). Wall cannot be passed through with stability, but does not cause knockback. Instead, players can destroy it by damaging it (similar to binding roots/entangle), but attacking it in melee range gives enemies 1s chill per hit.

35s CD
900 range
5s duration

Air

Air is the long range damage option. It is also the only good source of AoE for Sword. It plays somewhat similar to Staff Fire.

1 Auto Attack, Bolt of Light

Ele slashes their sword in the air, causing a lighting bolt to come from the sky and strike their target. If an enemy is within melee range of struck enemy, lighting tendrils will jump from the struck player to them, doing half damage.

1 attack per second
1200 range

2 Open Airwaves

Ele teleports to the target, doing AoE lighting damage and a blast finisher upon arrival, and slashes them repeatedly for 2 seconds, then automatically teleports back to the original cast location (no secondary skill). If the Ele is interrupted in any way (including fear) they do not return.

15s CD
900 range
2s channel for skill
Blast finisher

3 Natures Wrath

Ele levitates slightly off the ground while enveloped in a shocking aura (allows them to be interrupted but not just repeatedly attacked while casting). A cloud forms over ground targeted area. After the 3 second channel is successfully completed, lighting will strike the ground under the cloud 1 time per second 6 seconds. If hit directly, enemies are stunned for 1s, if hit by AoE, dazed for 1/2s. This attack is similar to meteor storm. Each lighting strike does high damage.

40s CD
1200 range
3s cast time
6s duration

Earth

Earth is similar to fire, but more defensive and condition based (duh). Good when you need to bunker down for a bit, or for those that like to outlast opponents instead of bursting them down. Goes great with the reflect and invulnerability skills on focus.

1 Auto Attack Chain

3/4s Sword Stab (Causes 1s bleeding)
3/4s Sword Stab (Causes 1s bleeding)
1s Overhand arcing sword slash (Causes 1s weakness)

2 Stone Shards

Summon small shards of stone on skin. If attacked in melee, enemy gets a 2 second bleed every time they hit. After 3 seconds, shards explode outwards, damaging foes and crippling them for 2 seconds.

10s CD
1s channel
3s duration
240 explosion radius
Projectile finisher

3 Search Target -> Targeted Strike

When pressed, skill starts charging (with an obvious charge animation). At any point, the skill can be activated again to strike the enemy with an uppercut slice for moderate damage. For each second the skill is charged, uppercut will remove one boon on hit, up to 3 boons removed. If skill is not used within 5 seconds, it goes on cooldown.

20s CD
5s channel

Anyways, thanks for reading my Elementalist sword skillset post. I would love to hear what you think, as well as any questions, concerns, or complaints. As always, try to keep things constructive and fun.

fire 3 – “fire whirl”

same as original poster, but whirl is in place and finisher is whirl.
spell effect should be an upside-down flaming tornado.

Hmm, I’m not sure what to think about the philosophy behind the weapon. Namely the having close and long range together. Generally, only Focus does that and at the cost of offense. I guess it’d depend how defensive this weapon gets with water and earth, but if it stays primarily offensive I could see how that’d work…

Also, why did you pick sword?

Leo G.4501:

Hmm, I’m not sure what to think about the philosophy behind the weapon. Namely the having close and long range together. Generally, only Focus does that and at the cost of offense. I guess it’d depend how defensive this weapon gets with water and earth, but if it stays primarily offensive I could see how that’d work…

Also, why did you pick sword?

I presume because it gives room for mixing mh/oh combos, and because bolt is one of the few legendaries that suit elementalist — and has any dignity to it.

Leo G.4501:

Hmm, I’m not sure what to think about the philosophy behind the weapon. Namely the having close and long range together. Generally, only Focus does that and at the cost of offense. I guess it’d depend how defensive this weapon gets with water and earth, but if it stays primarily offensive I could see how that’d work…

Also, why did you pick sword?

I picked sword because all of other ele weapons are basically focus type weapons; as in, the weapon is irrelevant and just used to channel spells. My goal was bassically to make a spellsword, but it needed to A. be different than using mainhand dagger, and B. still contain all the general abilities of an elementalist so it could work well with preexisting traits. The mix of short an long range fixes the problem of being the only class stuck to one range because of the lack of weapon swap (every other class can choose one melee and one ranged weapon). You may be right in that this may have to much defense and therefore be a little OP, but they are just rough ideas, and through manipulation of damage numbers, cooldowns etc almost anything can be balanced.

I think the whole point of all ele weapons is as a foci :P I don’t think we’ll be hitting anything directly anytime.

This class needs a long/mid range single target direct damage option. Not another melee option. A 1 handed sword would be the ideal option for this as it would allow you to choose a compliment in the off-hand to cover some of the short comings like a lack of AE or missing utility.

It would be nice to have some neat animations too to spice things up.

Spitting fireballs.
Dropping an Ice Clone that detonates briefly after being cast.
Summon an ice mirror in front of us to reflect ranged attacks.
A lightning attack where we blinding flash and leap back 600 yards and push it again to lunge at the target with a lightning fist.
Shoot slow moving cyclones at the target and have another earth move shoot a fast moving one that gains damage for each small cyclone it consumes along the path pulling people toward it each time one is consumed.

Just stuff to add some depth and cool animations to this class. Having a ranger and seeing all the awesomeness that is swrd/dagger really leaves you depressed when you play the ele with so few cool looking and engaging abilities.

Most of the MH dagger are super short range anyways. You could argue that they have range on them, but let’s face it: you’re going to be right in the enemies face getting hit in order to pull of attacks.

Something that has a bit more range in the way of the mesmer’s greatsword would be interesting. Also, consider combinations such as sword/dagger. If you’re coming up with ideas for another weapon, never consider only one part of the game (PVP, PvE, WvW) or only one possible weapon combination (Sword/Focus) because that will lead to either massively overpowered or underpowered skills.

Ice Sculpture – Creates a sculpture of ice in front of the player that lasts 10 seconds and acts as a decoy. If the sculpture is destroyed, enemies become chilled in a 360 radius and friendly players in the area are healed. Sculpture resembles Logan Thackery. 30 second CD.

I’d just love to see you summon a block if ice and slice and dice it into a Logan Thackery sculpture with the sword.

emikochan.8504:

I think the whole point of all ele weapons is as a foci :P I don’t think we’ll be hitting anything directly anytime.

Technically, you do with the conjures. One reason I wish they were good/more versatile.

I wouldn’t mind more attack options where you actually use the weapon as its intended to channel elements through. Scepter/Staff/Focus are meant to be foci and while I like Daggers, it’s rather annoying that none of its skills relate to an actual dagger’s use (except maybe vapor blades).

Atherakhia.4086:

This class needs a long/mid range single target direct damage option. Not another melee option. A 1 handed sword would be the ideal option for this as it would allow you to choose a compliment in the off-hand to cover some of the short comings like a lack of AE or missing utility.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind another melee option besides dagger (which feels only pseudo-melee to me) but then I feel dagger is the offensive melee-ish mainhand so I’d have technically preferred a more defensive melee mainhaind. Maybe balance it by having the autos cleave, making them the ideal for your bread-and-butter offense and everything else would be to defend (earth), support (fire /w damage buffing), mobility (air) and healing (water).

Not that I don’t like the direction of the OP, I just had time to re-read and re-think about it. Something simple/straight forward would be great to accent the complexity of the class, IMO.

I think the only thing I’m not quite keen on is the variable ranges. Because they’re in there, having skills like adequate blocks, buffs and various other tools doesn’t feel as justified because if you’re getting pounded, you just switch to water and go mid-range or air and go long. Basically, I like the idea of a weapon better paired with Focus but variable range offense feels less justified than variable range defense.

I made a post about this a while ago, mine was a bit more detailed than your’s.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/One-Handed-Sword-Elementalist/first#post1229482

I have a strong passion for Spellswords in any game. I played D/D just to try to simulate it, but it just isn’t the real deal. I would love if someone at Anet would strongly consider giving Ele’s swords.

i think its not bad concept, seem like a good possibility for datadisk i always liked going Sword+Focus as mage in WoW especially the focus which looked like smaller staff, Gandalf way, Sword+"Scepter" :P

i would like to see as offhand scepter as well :P some kind of ranged dps offhand going dual scepter as a npc in one way of Ascalonian Catacombs would be really cool

Glad to see someone is working on the Spellsword build!

For the Air autoattack, it would look rather thematically cool if:

1 Conduct Lightning

First portion of animation sword is held skyward, a bolt hits the blade, then the elementalist throws it forward. I could be a long animation wind up, with a really fast, 1200 range single target projectile that deals very good damage. Easy to dodge if you’re timing against the ele, but hard to avoid if not watching. If hit, a second bolt will ground target the area, forcing the player/creature hit to take additional damage if they remained stationary.

I’d chance the second skill in Air to:

2 Gale Blades

Project 5 whirling blades of air that charge forward to your foe with slight homing capability (ala Necro staff’s 1 skill) that Cripple and Damage your foe on impact.

3 Tempest

Elementalist charges similar to Meteor Storm with the blade raised high, but instead unleashes a violent thundercloud in the area that strikes random, single foes that remain inside. Against an isolated, single target it would be fantastic single target damage potential (like Smite is for guardian scepter) but it would be suboptimal to our AOE options against multi targets, but the sword wouldnt be an aoe weapon at all, so thats fine.

This would make the Air – Sword play style one of forcing your opponent to stay mobile while forcing them to dodge, or in PvE, strategically used over other options if a foe can be forced to remain stationary a lot. The Cripple stacking from the second skill, synergises with the “delayed” aoe second hit of the first skill and massive potential spike damage of the third skill.

Earth Signet and Focus’s Gale would work well with this kit to insure immobility for foes in pvp.

True about conjures, though they do have their uses if you think of them as just a bunch of utilities rather than an actual weapon. In pve I always use the lightning hammer for the aoe stun, blast finishers/aoe blind and leap. Though I’m a bunkery healy spec so it does more damage than any of my attunements too :p

emikochan.8504:

True about conjures, though they do have their uses if you think of them as just a bunch of utilities rather than an actual weapon. In pve I always use the lightning hammer for the aoe stun, blast finishers/aoe blind and leap. Though I’m a bunkery healy spec so it does more damage than any of my attunements too :p

and Conjure Lightning is the highest dps weapon in the entire game, so, yea know, it does have that going for it too :P

I would love to see pistol / pistol spellcasters

I want the elementalist to be a viable replacement for a warrior in dungeons. That can ne achieved by a good melee autoattack chain with some damage and probably an extra evade.
Therefore +1 for the idea.

Dub.1273:

I want the elementalist to be a viable replacement for a warrior in dungeons. That can ne achieved by a good melee autoattack chain with some damage and probably an extra evade.
Therefore +1 for the idea.

While it does lack the evade, the lighnting hammer already fits the bill for the “best auto-attack chain” for dps in the entire game, and honestly its probably the best for its utility effects too. Blast finisher + aoe blind + 5 target (!!) limit on third hit AND the best dps?

Sure, you do have to deal with the limitations of the charges, but its a small price to pay for having the best damage in the game :/

Maybe I should just start shutting up about this thing before it gets nerfed >.<

we need an OH or 2H weapon not another main hand.

Scepter and dagger are already decent.

Not sure about the skillset. Seems to split its style by having 2 elements using ranged, while the other 2 elements use melee. In that case it needs to have more gap closers, and retreats, so the player can easily move in and out melee without having to use dodges.

Fire Drill works nicely as a gap closer.
Maybe make Open Airwaves similar to Thief’s sword skill where the player can activate a teleport to previous spot manually. So it can be used as a gap closer, but also as a retreat shortly after going into melee.
Earth could have a skill like tunnel (similar to what Wurms use). An underground leap, making the user invulnerable to damage while its underground, and then return on target location and strike for damage. Would function as a gap closer, as well as a retreat.

Personally I’d love to see a sword added for the Elementalist, but maybe have it more focused on purely mid-range attacks, much like the Scepter. But while the Scepter is more defensively focused, the Sword could focus more on offensive abilities.

If you are making a new weapon design.

remember you are an elemental mage. not a warrior.
Keep it range.

quick ideas just popped.

*Throw your fiery sword impaling your enemy. 900R
*Make your sword spin around you in fire, burning enemies near. (defensive).
*Mind controll your fiery sword to attack people at distance. (channeled skill). 900R
*Manifest your sword you fly and stuck in ground. controlled explosion. 900R

took like 30 seconds to came up with these.

LordSlack.4685:

Ice Sculpture – Creates a sculpture of ice in front of the player that lasts 10 seconds and acts as a decoy. If the sculpture is destroyed, enemies become chilled in a 360 radius and friendly players in the area are healed. Sculpture resembles Logan Thackery. 30 second CD.

I’d just love to see you summon a block if ice and slice and dice it into a Logan Thackery sculpture with the sword.

Ice sculpture is of the Destiny’s Edge member of your race (Logan if human, Ritlock if char etc etc.).

Move 1 in water: Create an Ice Block wall that stops foes from passing. Combo field carve-able
Move 2 is in air: Send a harsh wind at your foe knocking them down. Combo finisher carve.

Carve will create a race based ice sculpture on a carve-able field.

Some interesting ideas ni this thread, I would definitely like a weapon that has more combinations of long and short range.

While I like the idea of a new weapon, I’m not so sure about the sword. Personally, I would have ANet introduce a new weapon class, Flails, and let the Elementalist be the only one that can dual wield them.

Then you’ve got Eles, dual wielding giant morning stars, whips, chains, nunchakus, etc. in a whirling storm of destruction. Something in the range between daggers and scepter, with lots of AoE that focuses on reflects and blocks.

Sort of a mystic Dervish!

LordByron.8369:

we need an OH or 2H weapon not another main hand.

Scepter and dagger are already decent.

Why do you believe the scepter is decent? Tell me what causes you to think that it makes its wielder an effective ranged combatant.

In my eyes, the scepter suffers from many issues:

• Flamestrike is about as “meh” as attacks get.
• Dragon’s Tooth won’t hit anyone without a 3 second CC of some sort.
• Phoenix travels so slowly that it can be outrun with swiftness – good luck hitting anyone with that at 900 range. (It also won’t hit targets on elevated platforms due to some sort of bug, it just disappears into said platform.)
• Shatterstone is useless – it does less damage than Ice Shards, locks you out of your non-instant skills for far too long, and is easy to dodge.
• I don’t know why Water Trident even has a damage component – you have to cast it at your feet to get the heal. (Minor gripe.)
• The earth attunement lacks offense – the only real damage comes from Stone Shards, and it’s absolutely terrible without condition damage. Building for condition damage leaves your other attunements weaker vs. power and crit, so that’s not very helpful, either.