Guild Wars 2

this is exactly why I can’t acccept the argument that eles have 20 spells… half of them are the same, only making different dmg and conditions.

Gorni.1764:

this is exactly why I can’t acccept the argument that eles have 20 spells… half of them are the same, only making different dmg and conditions.

I can understand bows and rifles being very similar, what else can you do with a rifle than shot it or use as a blunt weapon?

But when you have four elements at your disposal, having some of them look the same is just lazy.

or you can always play a warrior with all those fancy effects, with way more weapon sets and definitly don’t need an animation rework as much as an ele needs it

end sarcasm.

Oh no! An elementalist doesn’t make special moves for every spell he(or she) casts! What’s the point in having a different animation for Dragon Breath/Cone of Cold? Are they not doing the exact same thing pretty much but under different elements? What would you rather happen? The elementalist summons a giant ice cream cone which spews forth magic at it’s enemy? Okay, people probably would want that for the comedic effect, but let’s be realistic here.

The elementalist has just as many unique animations as any other class, and there’s nothing wrong with them. If you were a kitten wielder of magic who was tasked with slaying all sorts of monsters, would you really seriously spend the time to come up with a special little dance move for each spell? I highly doubt it. If anything people would try to figure out the most simple and fastest way of casting a spell, not how to be pretty doing it(unless they work as an entertainer in which case most of their magic would be just for cosmetics in the first place).

I have a grenade engineer too, should I ask Anet to give each of the grenades a special throwing animation? Oh no, I have 6 grenade skills but they all look the same so I just can’t accept I have more than 1 grenade skill!

Dude… I am about as convinced as it gets that these people had nothing left to whine about and got caught up on practically one pair of the same animation, trying to build an argument by adding stuff that don’t belong there. That’s far beyond even “first world’s problem” right there!

First of all, it might be a bug, unintended, but magnetic grasp can be used for damage, which is its primary function. Including this bug(?) in the list is what blatantly shows your true purpose and thoughts that were going on with making this thread and video.

Secondly, fire grasp is clearly a fiery themed animation with “bubble” shapes while lighting touch is a mix of “sparks” and air. Very linear shape. Why you miss something so evident is why I can tell you just didn’t have anything else to fill up your days as of late and felt like you needed to make “this”.

Last but not least I would guess the two breath animations are intended to be that way not because of laziness but because they both come out of the mouth, they both have to be cone like and the first one has “dragon” in its name which for some us at least makes for a nice connection between fire and ice themed dragon breaths!

I m not even going to consider the rings kitten…

We have 4 different auto-attacks. And I mean in-every-way-different. No one has that and I don’t see why the characters movement should be different when he/she supposedly casts fire from the ground or giant, spiky rocks! They are both meant to come from bottom to top hence the raising of the hand. Similar to FG and LT. They are both meant to come out of the hands and spread in a cone in front of the character. That’s how they imagined it in a way that shows the skills “power”.

@Gorni, Please…! Be my guest! Make a list of these 10 skills that are exactly the same with their other 10 counterparts! I ll wait.

For the record, I get that you are trying to emphasize on the animation, but applying different conditions, damage, utility is not to be taken to lightly. It’s the difference between knowing what you are doing and simply mashing your buttons. Dragon breath deals damage and applies burning which gives extra damage on fire grasp, but Cone of cold heals allies. Distinguishing between the two and why each is important makes the difference between finishing a fight alive or never making it in the first place.

Omg A Hotpocket.7683:

I have a grenade engineer too, should I ask Anet to give each of the grenades a special throwing animation? Oh no, I have 6 grenade skills but they all look the same so I just can’t accept I have more than 1 grenade skill!

Oh how i wish anet did that..You know you only got 2 dodges and id rather know with big flashy effects when a bleed or chill grenade is coming in my way so i dont spam dodge while you use #1 or trying to figure out what the actual grenade looks like in the mess!
:P

Well not flashy effects now that i think of it cause you know gw2 is already full of particle effects..Maybe make you do a small specific dance based on each grenade would be more appropriate!

This thread distracts from some of the real animation issues elementalist has.

Scepter 1 air is atrocious beta art. Scepter 1 fire fails to cast due to hit delay and a cast time thats .25 seconds too long.

It cracks me up that in a video specifically complaining about animations, they can’t see the difference between ring of fire and ring of earth.

Mpiftekis.1529:

@Gorni, Please…! Be my guest! Make a list of these 10 skills that are exactly the same with their other 10 counterparts! I ll wait.

First I never said that they are exactly the same. Overall my point was that (in PvP) you don’t really care if you make for example a fire-ring or an earth-ring since with both spells you have a small-range aoe at melee-range that also applys conditions based on attunenemt. It would be nearly the same if you’d just cast 2 rings of fire if it had a lower CD. You’d never say “oh I need a 3s cripple on my enemy so let’s skip ring of fire and cast ring of earth instead”. Most spells are just dmg at melee-range with different conditions and you spam them like any other class does.

It’s mainly an issue with D/D and since it’s the only viable PvP-weaponset (maybe except S/D) my argument fokussed on it (the other weapons have mostly unique spells and good design, though some of them are useless [shatterstone for example] and as said they aren’t really viable in PvP); the spells were already mentioned in the video.

Let’s allign the spells in a different order to clarify my point even more:

Fire:
1 Autohit
2 Cone-shaped chanel with burn (Fire Breath)
3 Small-Range-AoE with burn (Ring of Fire)
4 low-Range gap-closer with burn (Burning Speed)
5 high-dmg cone-shaped attack (Fire-Grab)

Earth:
1 Autohit with bleed
2 CC (Earthquake)
3 Small-range-AoE with bleed (Ring of Earth)
4 Gap-closer with leap-finisher (Magnetic Grasp)
5 high-dmg aoe-attack (Churning Earth)

Water:
1 Autohit with 600 range
2 Cone-shaped chanel with heal (Cone of Cold)
3 Small-range-AoE with chill (forgot name)
4 burst-heal (Cleansing Wave)
5 CC (Frost-Aura)

Air:
1 Autohit
2 Cone-Shaped spell with weakness (Lightning Touch)
3 Small-range AoE-CC (Updraft)
4 Gap-closer (RTL)
5 CC (Shocking-Aura)

Summarized:
1 low-dmg autohits
2 cone-shaped dmg-spells with different conditions (Earthquake only exception)
3 small-range AoEs with different conditions (Updraft only exception)
4 Gap-closers (Cleansing Wave only exception)
5 individual spells

Let’s substract the autohits and the “double spells” and we have ~10 (usefull) spells which is nearly the same as the other classes.
Really unique spells are updraft or cleansing wave for example. They have unique mechanics and can therefore be used individually. The rest kinda feels like 5 spells that are a little different in each attunement (like Glyph of elements).
Autohits may be unique in animation but rather weak and useless with most weapons and attunenments. You’re better off not using them with D/D.

To sum up I don’t want to complain about the design itself – it’s fine (though it could be more interesting). For example we have 3 gap-closers or 3 CCs at once that don’t share a CD (30P arcana necessary though) – that’s what makes D/D eles so strong.

What I wanted to complain about are the people that only see eles having 20 spells and justifiying several disadvantages we have compared to other classes with that argument.

edit: I’m lvl40 PvP, almost only playing ele (since release) and therefore I think i know what I’m saying.

Nova Stiker.8396:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOcxiTEGXYQ

Uhg, go do some homework.

Daggers don’t ‘need’ an update. Drake’s Breath doesn’t look like Cone of Cold. One is a flame thrower of orange and yellow flame and the other is an ice breath of blue-white mist. That the character is using the same physical movements is because ‘duh’, they’re both breath attacks that come out of your mouth. You want one to come out of your rear instead?

Same really for the other attacks. And how do you see Ring of Fire and Ring of Earth as the same? Fire has you swing your arm outward and Earth has you swing your arm upward. It’s more subtle on the Charr but more easy to see the difference on something like an Asura.

How about putting down the daggers and pick up a scepter and a focus. Those two have animation problems such as shooting effects from the wrong weapon (such as ice shards) or lock you out of other skills past its actual cast time (shatter stone) and not to mention nearly all of Staff’s moves have copied animations most of which don’t even come from the staff at all.

alot of animations are repeated… (thief) withdraw, and (ranger) lightning reflex utilise the same character animations; its the effects (blue glow of withdraw; lightning crack on LR) that make them different; i dont really think its a problem

… also; those dummies suck with ‘ground hover’ moves (projectiles that hover along the ground; if you try shooting it over a gap it will just drop down); you’ll find it hard to test stuff like guardian s#3 or iwarlock due to it

The kitten?

15char

Gorni.1764:

Let’s allign the spells in a different order to clarify my point even more:

Fire:
1 Autohit
2 Cone-shaped chanel with burn (Fire Breath)
3 Small-Range-AoE with burn (Ring of Fire)
4 low-Range gap-closer with burn (Burning Speed)
5 high-dmg cone-shaped attack (Fire-Grab)

Earth:
1 Autohit with bleed
2 CC (Earthquake)
3 Small-range-AoE with bleed (Ring of Earth)
4 Gap-closer with leap-finisher (Magnetic Grasp)
5 high-dmg aoe-attack (Churning Earth)

Water:
1 Autohit with 600 range
2 Cone-shaped chanel with heal (Cone of Cold)
3 Small-range-AoE with chill (forgot name)
4 burst-heal (Cleansing Wave)
5 CC (Frost-Aura)

Air:
1 Autohit
2 Cone-Shaped spell with weakness (Lightning Touch)
3 Small-range AoE-CC (Updraft)
4 Gap-closer (RTL)
5 CC (Shocking-Aura)

Summarized:
1 low-dmg autohits
2 cone-shaped dmg-spells with different conditions (Earthquake only exception)
3 small-range AoEs with different conditions (Updraft only exception)
4 Gap-closers (Cleansing Wave only exception)
5 individual spells

Gorni, I m sorry, I just couldn’t deal with reading it all and in reality neither with debating with you. I had decided to remake your list in a way that introduces you new options for the skills (e.g. Fire 3 which is Burning Speed is not only a gap closer but, 1) a gap opener, 2) an evade, 3) a repositioning skill, 4) a combo field, 5) a burst-trap when facing a wall or rooted, and 6) an AoE damaging skill) but it takes way more time and energy than I m willing to invest in this. So I ll do it the simple way.

What you are either missing or denying for the sake of “first world problems” is the depth of combat and the skills you are using. But you can’t be marginilizing everything because you want to hate on the game. Updraft is another example you refer to as “CC” simply when in reality it can be used for that, plus 1) repositioning, 2) roaming, 3) boon generation and 4) evading regardless of context (pvp, pve, wvw).

And you can’t be hating on animations either, like that idiot in the video, who equates stabbing rocks with flames… If the artist decided that d/d ele should have a fire dragon breath and an ice dragon breath, expecting that one of them will come out of the characters chest instead of the mouth is simply unreasonable. As unreasonable as equating an animation that comes out of the hands with one that comes out of the mouth, just cause the effect goes in a cone, is.

It’s like saying a kitten and a cross, an upper and a lower hook or even drinking beer and drinking water are the same. There is a lequid involved, but neither the effects, nor the animations are the same. You can’t deny this.

Dagger skills actually look pretty fine, but I would definitly support an update for scepter and focus skills. There you can see that the elementalist was one of the first classes that were designed, in comparison to the mesmer, who was designed as one of the last classes. Mesmer skills look just amazing, with a lot of details and very fluent, nothing to compare with elementalist’s skills.

I’m complaining mainly about scepter fire 1 (burning strike), air 1 (“lightning-laser”), Water 3 (you don’t rly ever get to see the animation), focus water 4 (chill wind) and 5 (ice meteor) and earth 4 (magnetic wave). These skills just look either pretty boring or just bad. There are a lot better models ingame, like the lightnings of some mage mobs in the Blazeridge Steppes, the electric dome of some veteran mobs in the southsun cove and the ice attacks of some ice imps in the norn area. As well the new animations in the aspect arena just look amazing, I’d love to see some of them on the elementalist.