Guild Wars 2

Weapon: off-hand sword
Utility skill: Meditations
Profession mechanic: Wandblade stance

Weapon Skills

Fire attunement
4. Fire riposte*: Block your foe and apply burning
-Lava throw: throw Lava with your sworswing and apply 2 extra stacks of Burning to targets in range
5. Scorch: send out a wave of fire around you that blinds and burns

Water attunement
4.Water riposte: Block your foe and apply regen to yourself
-Frozen weapon: using the leftover water essence on your enemies weapon, freeze it to cause mild chill and weakness
5. Wellspring: create a healing well at your feet for 5 seconds

Wind attunement
4.Wind riposte: Block your foe and apply swiftness to yourself
-Lightning lunge: Lunge target and cause blindness
5.3 Lightning stabs: stab you foe with your sword and follow up with 2 blades of lightning. Causes 3 stacks of Bleeding

Earth attunement
4.Earth riposte: Block youe foe and apply stability to yourself
-Metal shards: Throw metal spikes at enemy and cause bleeding
5. Magneticaly controlled sword: Control your sword from afar and strike 5 times. Causes weakness and bleeding

*Character can move during all ripostes

Utility skills

Healling
Elemental body: For a certain duration all damage recieved is halved and 3/4 of the original damage gets absorbed as health

Utility
Elemental empowerment: Grant boons depending on attunement. Can pulse those boons to nearby allies three time after initial cast
Fire:Might,Fury
Water:Regen,Vigor
Wind:Quickness,Swiftness
Earth:Protection,Stability
Fire purification: Turns all conditions to regen
Embrace of mother earth: Teleport to ally and give stability and regen
Sky’s the limit: Teleport away after striking with lightning and causing cripple and vulnerability

Elite
Contemplate the abyss: For 10 or 15 seconds all skills have no cooldowns

Profession mechanic

now here is where it gets interesting

Wandblade stance is activated with the weapon swap button.
When entering wandblade stance the elementalist’s main hand weapon is switched for the wand blade (whose skin would most likely be the elite spec weapon skin with some particle effects mixed in) and the main hand weapon becomes the off hand (that includes two-handed staff, so gandalf staff-sword wannabes should be happy, i know i am). Wandblade stance has no time limit, but once you come out of it there will be a cooldown twice as long as weapon swap to get back in it

The weapon skills in the wandblade stance are as follows

1.sword wave-> sword wave-> Flying sword stab: wide projectiles that fly until they either hit 3 targets or at max range (Which is higher than scepter but slightly lower than staff). Fire: waves cause weakness
stab causes 2 bleed 1 burn in mellee, 1bleed 1burn in mid, 1bleed 2burn in max range
Water: waves heals self and any friendly they pass but dont count as targets
Stab causes chill
Wind: waves causes vulnerability
stab cause torment and bleed
Earth: waves cause slow
stab cause cripple and bleed

2. trillion swings: swing wildly causing a torrent of sword waves
Fire: Plasma bolt: swings gather in front of caster and create a ball of heat fire and plasma that is later unleashed at single target. causes burn and vulverability
Water: Splash water: swings are 360 all around healing allies and damaging foes, creates wellspring on your feet that heals for 5 secs
Wind: Wind blades: swings turn to wind blades that cause bleed
Earth: Shock wave torrent: Single target causes small knockback with every hit

3. Elemental Strike: Highly powered sword slash that carries through.
Fire: Fire claw strike: wide swing that creates claws of fire that pull up to 5 enemies to you
Water: Ice Sword manifestation: Stab in front and Let fly a big sword of ice that causes chill to all it hits. Can change its trajectory with second activation
Wind: Dimension cut: High damage high crit cut that creates a rip in space at the targets position. Space then explodes dealing damage and knocking enemies away from the spot
Earth: Diamond dust stab: Gather diamond dust in your sword and then slash to unleash it at the target, causing bleed and vulnerability

Now as for off-hand skills if the original main hand is:

Dagger then:
4. Bolts: fire a series of bolts from your dagger
Firebolts: Medium casting time then unleash at once. cause Burn
Icebolts:Fire while casting. Cause bleed and last one chills
Lightningbolts: Instant. Cause confuse
Sandbolts:start casting then unleash while keep on casting. causes cripple
5. Dancing blades: Twirl elegantly while swinging your sword and dagger conjuring elementall blades around you that damage all within and deflect projectiles
Fire: cause weakness to those inside and burns those who enter it
Water: cause regen to you and allies within
Wind: knockback all who try to come close, cause bleed to all within
Earth: Enemies cant get in, you and allies within gain stability

Scepter then

4. Elemntal armor: Creates armor around the character that can be exploded outward gives toughness and
Fire: retaliation, Exploding outward causes burning
Water: Regen, Pulses healing to nearby allies 2 time instead of exploding
Wind: Swiftness, exploding knocks back enemies
Earth: stability, exploding causes bleeding

5. Fire: Plasma sear: fires a plasma beam in a line. Targets hit by plasma beam get double burn from sword wave
Water: Ice sword missiles: 5 Ice swords that follow the target and hit up to 5 people in the way. Each hit disappears one sword
Wind: Heaven spear rain: Conjure three giant spears of lightning above your target that hit all within a certain range of it
Earth: Earth spikes: cause a spikes to sprout knocking back all affected

Staff then:

4. Warmage assault: Lunge at target creating a small aoe burst
Fire: target gets burned and all else around get vulnerability
Water: You get regen and all around get chil
Wind: target and enemies around get bleed
Earth: You get stability, enemies around get knocked back and crippled

5. Elemental symbol: Slam a symbol on the ground with your staff.
Fire: Burn, might
Water: Regen,Vigor
Wind:Swiftness, Blind
Earth:Stability, Cripple

As you can see i inverted the range for staff and dagger and kept scepter as mid. That way if you get to be able to do both range and mellee with them depending on wether you are in wand blade stance or not.
As for traits, i haven’t thought much but i do have two.
1.Main trait: The greater the range the lesser the damage
2. main or secondary: decrease all damge out by 5% but also decrease all damage taken by 5%

Well that’s it…….. kind of long i know.
Tell me what you think

Looks pretty interesting but i think the idea of a sword mage kinda got scrapped, i remember some threads around reddit with ele sword skills getting data mined before the release of HoT and the tempest reveal, we ended up getting a trumpet with flatulence sounds instead, oh well. Tbh the way i would have loved this to be was with a wave like mechanic, short range but whenever you swing the sword you create a wave in front of you that can be avoided by jumping or dodging (jumping over it would make it reasonable from a pvp perspective) and then you can have all sorts of fun with those, healing waves, shockwaves and have the ele instead of spinning like mad do some sort or blade weaving dance throwing shockwaves in front like cone attacks and keep the thing simple, giving dual effects to skills like a revenant has to a class like the ele with already plenty of buttons to push is too much especially when you want a sword character so you may want things flowing a bit faster. i like the elite you designed though, but 15 seconds is a bit too much, i’d say 5 seconds is a bit more reasonable, think about it, it’s a sword, you want skills going off really fast so they would already have a low cast time with no cooldown it would be overkill, what’s stopping me from say using this elite and then spamming 10 lava fonts under 1 boss, a bit too much i think, so 5 seconds might be more ok since you have to account of the skills mixing with the other ele weapons or trait lines.

Ele won’t get a main-hand weapon because that requires more work to make 12 skills. Expect another off-hand, as they only need 8 skills.

Work is hard.

BlackBeard.2873:

Ele won’t get a main-hand weapon because that requires more work to make 12 skills. Expect another off-hand, as they only need 8 skills.

Work is hard.

as that ruined and crushed my hopes on a new longranged weapon.I hope off hand pistol is an option :P

BlackBeard.2873:

Ele won’t get a main-hand weapon because that requires more work to make 12 skills. Expect another off-hand, as they only need 8 skills.

Work is hard.

They can copy/paste the skills from other weapons and classes, if they are suited the specialization I’m not against it.

Whatever, I have never liked swords on mage classes… well, at least it need to be a primary weapon, elementalists don’t need another offhand weapon.

…

Personally I think that a 2 handed spear would be more suitable if we want a martial specialization for this class (I like how Shaolin monks use the “Guan Dao”), perhaps with good adaptability like fire skills to be melee (good dps) and air skills ranged (average dps).
Utility could be martial skills infused with elemental power, and a few traits can strengthen of the weak points of the core elementalist (defense/vitality).
The change to the profession mechanics can be the access to change weapon, 2 elements for ench set of weapon as many ppl have already suggested.
Just an idea, I’m too lazy to detail it and too pessimistic to think will be taken into account

BlackBeard.2873:

Ele won’t get a main-hand weapon because that requires more work to make 12 skills. Expect another off-hand, as they only need 8 skills.

Work is hard.

I am disappointed with Anet’s track record with the elementalist, but let’s not have too much cynicism. It is obvious that Anet made the tempest as a support spec because they needed several professions to be able to specialize hard into the support role. After all, their new baby, raiding, required it. You can see that many of the first wave of elite specs have support elements.

The elementalist already had mechanics that could be further developed with an e-spec, for further support. They had healing, boons and auras, but they were not used in a purely supportive build, because pre-HoT such a build would be useless in any content. Thus, in order to not have those mechanics fade into the background due to all the other HoT supports, the tempest was made to make these mechanics stronger. It just so happens that warhorn fits the tempest both thematically, and because it is always used for support. Warhorn cannot be a main-hand weapon, so tempest got an off-hand weapon.

Designing a main-hand weapon shouldn’t be much harder than an off-hand weapon anyway. You do need 4 extra abilities, but they are all basic attacks, which usually aren’t that complicated. Also, the professions team (I can’t call them a balance team!) should have more time for e-spec design for the next expansion, since they don’t need to release any new professions after the revenant.

I’d be overjoyed if they did Mainhand Sword as a damage spec (with active mitigation. Maybe Stances or physical abilities).

After getting a lot of nerfs for getting a support spec I am hoping that is what we get. That said few things must happen for any damage ele spec to be good in PvE at least.

1) Air auto needs to be very good, no debating this as air is currently the best attunement for consistent dps, without air you get things where your initial dps is good but then you slow down.
2) Active mitigation of any kind, preferably not spread out between the utilities but actually on the weapon. Burning speed is a great example and if we had something similar on mh sword that would be good. Maybe include a teleport+blind.
3) Some sort of new mechanic that would make it worth taking that spec if you wanted small/mobile enemy dps. It has to out match overloads for small/mobile enemies.
4) stay far away from any team utility. team utility will get the class nerfed while personal utility will likely remain mostly balanced.

Things that would be nice and maybe necessary – Buffs to offhand dagger. No two ways about it, if mh sword is an elite then you pretty much must use offhand dagger for dps and it has been nerfed into oblivion. Fire grab is alright if traited (though preferably i’d like it to not be a “trait or do less dps” skill.). Mainly just fix Ride the Lightning. 25 sec, 20 sec traited, 10 sec on hit. Just increase the power scaling on it and make it more dps combined with mh sword than wh lightning orb which is crazy. 8k worth of damage without crits on LO. putting that all on RtL would make the skill too strong. But even if you doubled its power scaling it would still be 4k ish damage short of LO’s dps.

Senario.2038:

I’d be overjoyed if they did Mainhand Sword as a damage spec (with active mitigation. Maybe Stances or physical abilities).

After getting a lot of nerfs for getting a support spec I am hoping that is what we get. That said few things must happen for any damage ele spec to be good in PvE at least.

1) Air auto needs to be very good, no debating this as air is currently the best attunement for consistent dps, without air you get things where your initial dps is good but then you slow down.
2) Active mitigation of any kind, preferably not spread out between the utilities but actually on the weapon. Burning speed is a great example and if we had something similar on mh sword that would be good. Maybe include a teleport+blind.
3) Some sort of new mechanic that would make it worth taking that spec if you wanted small/mobile enemy dps. It has to out match overloads for small/mobile enemies.
4) stay far away from any team utility. team utility will get the class nerfed while personal utility will likely remain mostly balanced.

Things that would be nice and maybe necessary – Buffs to offhand dagger. No two ways about it, if mh sword is an elite then you pretty much must use offhand dagger for dps and it has been nerfed into oblivion. Fire grab is alright if traited (though preferably i’d like it to not be a “trait or do less dps” skill.). Mainly just fix Ride the Lightning. 25 sec, 20 sec traited, 10 sec on hit. Just increase the power scaling on it and make it more dps combined with mh sword than wh lightning orb which is crazy. 8k worth of damage without crits on LO. putting that all on RtL would make the skill too strong. But even if you doubled its power scaling it would still be 4k ish damage short of LO’s dps.

Interesting ideas, but the next spec doesn’t necessarily have to be sword. If it turned out that they were going to add a 2-handed weapon, like greatsword or shortbow, they could make the entire weapon skillset about mobile DPS. Then, they could make the profession mechanic provide some of the active mitigation, instead of having all of it on the weapon. That would help other weapon sets try out dps specs too.

Though, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s sword at this point, since Anet was probably experimenting with the idea before they decided that they needed the tempest to support raid groups.