I do doubt we’d get a greatsword specifically, since we already have a greatsword conjure. The appeal of conjures is to use weapons we can’t normally use, so if we do somehow get another weapon set, it won’t be a weapon we can already conjure.
More than likely we’d get maces, swords, or rifles. I’ve seen people suggest torches, which I think would fit fantastically as an offhand or even dual wield-able weapons.
I could see torches being a condition focused set. Having burning on each of the four attunements plus extra conditions for each attunement. Maybe with bleed stacking in earth AND water, with vulnerability shared between water and air and weakness shared between air and earth. Fire could be all about burns with some blindness for defense maybe…
For the long ranged nuker role I’d prefer if we just made staff more capable of fullfilling it. But if one MUST have a new weapon, rifle might not be a bad candidate.
I imagine rifle as being wielded much like a staff in terms of animations. Raising it over your head and swinging it around to call down AoE blasts and such. But for auto attacks and some single target attacks the rifle would be fired like a normal rifle, sending out bursts of elemental magic from the barrel with great speed and accuracy. From a lore perspective it’d make sense as well, as while the staff is just calling down raw power it’s not very focused, hence all AoEs. But a gun is well designed to deliver a single shot of explosive damage to a single target. So rifle would be the best weapon for single target nuking and have decent AoE pressure to make it the flip side of the staff’s great AoE pressure and support.
Fire attunement could involve big AoE bursts on target, punishing enemies for getting too near your target. Auto attack could be like a faster moving fireball with a smaller AoE radius. Give it some AoE burst spells, the required fire field, and maybe a long, channeled shot that when released will send out a fireball into the sky that explodes and makes it rain blasts of fire that hit randomly along the ground like the charrzooka ability, effectively carpet bombing the place. Not unlike meteor storm but more all at once damage making it harder to ignore. Or maybe give it a skill jump where you make the ground erupt into fire, leaving a fire field and crashing back down in your designated area for a blast finisher.That would make us choose between getting a fire blast finisher for might, escaping a dangerous situation and giving up the might, or using it to engage/disengage. Maybe even forsake our own finisher to jump into a water field.
Water attunement would likely be about chill and vulnerability. More condition oriented and meant for hampering the enemy so our burst skills hit harder. Auto attack could be ice bullets that cause vulnerability. Calling down a snowstorm over an area to spam chill for it’s duration would be a cool addition. Or an ice sheet on the ground that makes enemies that walk over it fall over and gain a short duration weakness.
Air attunement I’d like to be more about wind than lightning. Though the auto attack shooting bolts of lightning from our gun would be pretty neat. Focus air on a combination of single target damage, mobility, and crowd control. An AoE knockback to anyone near the caster would be neat. Or maybe an air oriented burning speed that causes knock-back on enemies we rocket past rather than sheer damage. Another skill jump for this one might be neat too, letting us fly into the air for a greater distance than our fire one would allow, but without the field of blast finisher. And of course a single target heavy damage burst skill with a long cooldown. The kind of skill you save to finish the enemy off, or start off with to get the enemy on the defensive early. Maybe we hold our rifle in the air and call down a series of quick lightning strikes for heavy damage. A channeled and interuptable effect so you gotta be crafty with it.
And earth… I’d like earth to be a sneaky defensive attunement for this weapon. Turn us into a commando. Auto attack could be a channeled minigun of rock bullets that stacks bleeds on the target from a distance. Throw down smoke fields we can blast for stealth or exploit to blind enemies. Give us a cripple ability and possibly access to some damage mitigation in the form of protection, projectile destruction, or block and we’re golden.
And thus we’d have a solid heavily offensive ranged weapon with low support and all the crowd control and movement skills we’d need to stay at range. Something the staff fails hardcore at. And it’d have the quirky “Going against tradition” flavor Anet loves to include in everything. A mage with a gun!? We are doomed!
