Guild Wars 2

If you feel like the elementalist has lost its spirit, could encourage attunement switching better, or just think it could be improved by upgrading some of its core mechanics, this is your thread. No limits, go wild with any crazy ideas.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the elementalist?

Few personal ideas to start the thread:

Idea 1 – Weapon skill normalization

I think the strongest point of the elementalist, skill variety thanks to attunements, is his weakest point as well, from a development perspective. Weapon skills take four times the amount of work, and the profession suffers because of it.

I would hate to get more off-hands with future elite specializations, so, what if we removed that variety, replacing it with something else that can be easy to upgrade?

We would normalize weapon skills through attunements. This would mean that a weapon skill has the same mechanic across every attunement, with similar base stats as well.

For example, staff 5, could be normalized as a channeled AoE, based on Meteor Shower, the fire version. Water version would be frozen meteors, air charged meteors, and earth normal meteors that shatter on impact. As you see the mechanic would be the same across every attunement, and only a few secondary effects would change between each attunement, like condition effects, field types, combo finishers, etc.

Of course, this would pretty much ruin the elementalist as we know him, so what would we get in exchange?

Weapon swap, plus new weapons.

The already available weapons aren’t enough, so we would remove conjures (which are a mess anyway) and tranform them into new weapon proficiencies. Greatsword, Shield, and Shortbow would become new weapons, while Axe and Hammer aren’t unique enough and would disappear.

Idea 2 – Cross-attunement combos

Imagine that attunements were switched faster, and that you could switch at the middle of a skill, changing the effect and doing some sick combos. This idea could require the normalization of skills described above, at least with the new weapon using this system.

On one hand there are the auto attack chains. Every chain has 3 steps. You could switch attunement in the middle of a chain, and don’t lose progress. Meaning that, you could do fire 1-1, water 1-2, air 1-3, earth 1-1, fire 1-2… You get it. The weapon skills would be designed to have synergies with each other, and reward combos in each situation if you play smart rotations. Same for sequence skills.

On the other hand there are the channeled skills. You could switch attunement in the middle of a channel, and not have it canceled, instead merging with the next attunement. So, you could be channeling a rain of fire, and then switch to earth and merge it with a meteor rain. The rain of fire could leave fire fields, and the meteors be blast finishers, creating a combo.

This idea could also require cooldown changes as to not be too overpowered., depending on how is adjusted the attunement cooldown.

Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours!

…

Full list of redesign threads:

Elementalist – Mesmer – Necromancer

Engineer – Ranger – Thief

Guardian – Revenant – Warrior

Allow eles to be celestial, nerf base stats and have specs give bonuses that will dictate the playstyle more than it does now. Also, fix that earth is almost mandatory in pvp while not really making you feel like an earth elementalist.

The only thing ele needs is a rework on scepter to have multitarget autoattack (not aoe) in lightning and retaliation in earth, attunements are just fine.

Ele with two weapon sets. No attunements. Keys f1-f4 for something else. Weapons skills would be mixed – like what is needed in a pve raid, what is needed in wvw raid. Meteor shower could be f4 because female animation is just beautiful.

Edit: we need new profession because the current ele is awesome for expert players; total garbage for low/medium skilled players – except as meteor shower bot.

Ele is a mostly non weapons class they simply happen to have weapons that changes there attks but the attks them self are coming from the ele or as one would call a mages class vs a war class. So combos chans do not fit nor even nomination for the atuments attks. The atunments are the ele’s weapon.

They need to move all the on switch effect to arcain line from the element lines and add in added effect for staying in that atument. Making arcain line for swap and element lines for when you are using that atument. I think that would go a long way for the ele class.

I would be interested to know how the old design functioned , when Ele had mana as a resource. I wonder if that is where some of the old class descriptions people like to bring up came from, If it worked like initiative from thf , or what. They had a much longer lock out of an element when swapping originally as well. If it worked that way , I could see an ele swapping to water and becoming a real healer while in water , and would be scared to death of one that was in fire. I think the old Staff lighting #2 used to hit like a truck as well , thats why it has its own unique animation , to let people know they better gtfo the way.

I would basically steal the forcemaster from blade and soul and put it into gw2. It only uses 2 elements, but is more a master of the elements than our elementalist is. Sadly it suffers from the same fate in pvp in that game as our ele does. Big damage in pve, lowest damage in pvp and hard countered by pretty much every other class. But its still better than ele is at killing people in pvp. Or better yet, the wizard from black desert. Too bad everything else about that game is trash.

Ele needs to have the attunement mechanic completely replaced, anet devs cannot handle it at all, you’re either OP …or brokenly UP, never in the middle

I don’t know much about ele outside of d/d fresh air in open world at this point, so I’m sure I’m missing what some of the complaints are about. However, I don’t think it gets any better than this. Attunement swapping feels fast, fun, and versatile. I enjoy being able to drop huge area damage while also throwing heals, boons, and auras all over the place.

Here’s hoping they keep attunements.

Edit: Feel like I should add a suggestion…

Suggestion: Change conjure weapons so they function similar to attunements. Instant summon, attunement swap cooldown when changing to a different attunement, but with the ability to swap back into the conjured weapon. Modify a trait to facilitate quick-swapping between conjured weapons.

Nikkinella.8254:

I would basically steal the forcemaster from blade and soul and put it into gw2. It only uses 2 elements, but is more a master of the elements than our elementalist is. Sadly it suffers from the same fate in pvp in that game as our ele does. Big damage in pve, lowest damage in pvp and hard countered by pretty much every other class. But its still better than ele is at killing people in pvp. Or better yet, the wizard from black desert. Too bad everything else about that game is trash.

Please no. Forcemaster has one of the most boring playstyles of any caster ever IMO. And no I don’t want to only use 2 elements. There’s a reason I shelved my WoW mage and it’s because I got sick of Blizz pruning kitten that weren’t of the type of spec you were playing each expansion. Nowadays Frost uses 95% Frost-based abilities and it’s boring. Even more of a slap in the face when lore characters like Khadgar and Jaina will regularly use Frost, Fire, and Arcane abilities right after each other.

Never played BDO so can’t comment on that.

Here’s another idea: Change that silly tornado skill and make it a shorter cooldown blast + CC. I know we have other options for CC and blast, but the elite skills for this class are pretty worthless much of the time. At least a CC blast would be useful and could free up the generally more useful regular utility slots that we might otherwise use to add blasts and CCs.

No idea of the balance implications of such a change, however.

Somehow.4769:

Allow eles to be celestial, nerf base stats and have specs give bonuses that will dictate the playstyle more than it does now. Also, fix that earth is almost mandatory in pvp while not really making you feel like an earth elementalist.

What if each attunement gave different base stats?

So for example, water would give a boost to healing power. If you want to be a pure healer, then you get magi gear, but if you want to be a jack of all trades, then you go celestial and you aren’t punished as much because every attunement adapts to its role.

Then, elite specializations could change these base stats too, so that water becomes about condition damage instead, through chilled effects available with the new skills.

Would make elite specializations much more unique if something.

Pelto.9364:

Ele with two weapon sets. No attunements. Keys f1-f4 for something else. Weapons skills would be mixed – like what is needed in a pve raid, what is needed in wvw raid. Meteor shower could be f4 because female animation is just beautiful.

Edit: we need new profession because the current ele is awesome for expert players; total garbage for low/medium skilled players – except as meteor shower bot.

So you would have different elements in a single weapon? Like, first skill has fire, but the second has ice? Or each weapon would be themed around an element?

I don’t think attunements should be removed altogether, but yours is an interesting idea. Conjures already work that way anyway, as do shouts and signets.

Supreme.3164:

Ele needs to have the attunement mechanic completely replaced, anet devs cannot handle it at all, you’re either OP …or brokenly UP, never in the middle

It’s more expensive from a design and development perspective, too. In the old model, where elite specializations didn’t exist, it could have worked, but now, with new weapons being added with each new elite specializations, things can go wild easily.

It’s these design problems which lead to balance problems in the first place.

2 ideas I like

1 is from Smite, Hel
Hel has 2 modes, light and dark. the skills and animations are the same, but different effects.

example.

1. light: fires a projectile that then returns HP to hel
   Dark: it explodes doing AoE damage
2. light: AOE CC Cleanse and makes CC immune for a few sec
   Dark: AOE Slow and Magic protection strip
3. Light: AOE Heal
   Dark: AOE Damage

This could easilly be done to attunments

The other idea is froma newer MMO and does kind of the same thing. You have elemental skills from fire balls and ice fields. but when you use those skills while you are in the same element, it has stronger affects.

The fire bolt normally is just that, but when switched to fire, it adds burn.
The ice field slows. but when used while in ice attunment, it freezes

Then there are skills that completely change from element to element

I feel like Tempest is counter-intuitive to how Ele felt before the specialization. Swapping attunements and maintaining a loose rotational order to respond to new situations is the most fun, imo. I would add an F5 like Scrapper and Chronomancer, to do something different. Most of Ele’s utility comes from its weapon sets so reworking some of those could be key (mostly Scepter, Warhorn, off-hand Dagger). The past few metas have been littered with passives so if other classes’ designs aren’t going to reduce them then I’d like to see some combination of reworked skills with more invulnerable/block/evade frames.

I would also like to see main hand dagger some some updates such as giving a 600 ranged to earth 1 a full 1 sec block to earth 2 to not just ranged attks, water 1 needs to be 900 ranged, air 2 needs to be a blind or some type of def effect more then just weakness, and fire 1 needs to have five hits but 2 of the hits are right at 100 (a full shot gun like attk).

The idea of weapon skills never really made sense for Eles, I’d like to see a weapon-as-utility skill feature, where their weapon skills are no longer tied to whatever weapon they’re using and can be slotted as if they were utility skills. This would also allow for the removal of attunements, with something a bit simpler for their f skill(s).

It would be a good experiment to see if this is something that could be handled by other classes as well. I generally am not a fan of having my first 5 skills always locked based on whatever weapon I’m using. I think this sort of railroading for the sake of false security with balance has done more harm than good to GW2.

i know we said just for fun, no limits go crazy but all i see here is something that will completely change elementalists and turn it into some different kind of magic user.

removing attunements, generalizing weapon skills across all attunements making 20 weapon skills exactly the same, but in a different color and effect (think glyphs), adding light and dark magic (out of nowhere, also not an element). adding more stats depending on the attunement you are in (you already get that from specializations), removing conjured weapons and adding them as real weapons with weapon swap (so we can have 40 skills?…

My idea is a little bit more “realistic” and its an idea of a next elite specialization.
Tempest kinda buffed auras so lets get a new elite specializaton that buffs conjured weapons. Lets call it Enchanter, and lets give the ele a main hand sword (or dual wield sword, either way is good)

The new mechanic is similar to overload from tempest but instead of causing another aoe attack we “enchant” our weapon with special effects based on the attunement.

It would be a mix of mesmer mantras and thieves venoms.

Example:
You start casting fire enchanting, it has 3 seconds of cast time but you can cancel the channeling at any time by hitting f1 again.

1 second channel= your spells grant 1 stack of might for 3 seconds and cause 1 second of burning for 20 seconds
2 second channel= Your spells grant 2 stacks of might for 3 seconds and cause 2 second of burnng for 15 seconds
3 second channel= your spells grant 3 stacks of might for 3 seconds and cause 3 seconds of burning for 10 seconds

Then we can also use the elite specialization traits that grant extra effects if you enchant a conjured weapon for example:

fire enchanting a conjured weapon= your attacks have splash aoe now and have 50% chance of causing burning

Lightning enchanting a conjured weapon= your attacks cause a bouncing bolt 50% chance on hit (imagine a ice bows ice storms and all those bouncing bolts everywhere)

Im sure you can see this can be balanced with strenghts and weaknesses if youd give further thoughts into it. Would end up just like any other elite specialization, sticking with the theme of elementalist weaving 4 elements and empowering a certain core skill type (conjured weapons) who arent really used that much atm, but could get an overhaul and buff with the specialization

I wouldnt go so far as redisign from ground up, but a few changes I would like to see would be higher base HP at least 15k base, and a higher base def something better then the 1800 we got now.
As far as skills go I would like to see a new set of ultility skills, at least 3 for each magic fire water air and earth.
Fire could be +% damage for a short time, and or burn damage
Water would be heals and condi cleansing
Air would be mobility and blind
Earth would be stability and protrction
These new skills would allow people to focus on a perticular magic and play style that they prefer to use.

Elementalist’s big failing has always been conjured weapons. They look amazing. They’re fun to use. Until they run out of charges. At that point you either need to run back (ugh) and pick up the spare (assuming no-one else did) or switch to another conjured weapon, which might not suit your needs and or wants at that time.

Either change their baseline functioning or give us a trait to get rid of charges.

eg. Bound Conjurations – Conjured weapons no longer have charges and don’t expire unless dropped. Cooldowns increased to 10 minutes.

This would allow elementalists (and other players) to use them persistently but the increased cooldown would balance the removal of charges and discourage players from dropping their conjured weapons willy nilly and expecting the ele to resummon.

cgMatt.5162:

I feel like Tempest is counter-intuitive to how Ele felt before the specialization. Swapping attunements and maintaining a loose rotational order to respond to new situations is the most fun, imo.

Opposite on both counts.

Hate the constantly switching attunements style of play and Tempest is probably my favourite of the elite specs.

It was an interesting design choice though. I’ve never had the impression that players like you are a tiny minority so an elite spec which kicks that style of play in the nads has always puzzled me.

I would also add more effect to ele current condi both dmg and soft cc. Burning will give ppl an effect to “brun” though there boons faster so boon duration would go faster. Bleeds would apply a “toxic earth” giving ppl a -25% healing effects. Blind or weakness will apply a “uncontrollable attk” where attks from a player will always act as if they are hitting some one with retaliation. Chill will apply a torment like effect that tick much lower but dose more dmg as a player moves faster (so say every +10% movement speed is +5% dmg taken and leaps blinks movement skill etc.. are a set dmg on end).

I think this would give ele a lot of condi power and effects with out braking it in the way of giving a class all the condi dmg effects much like we seen with other classes. I think condi dmg over all is the magic dmg in gw2 where power dmg is the physical dmg ele simply has no real magic dmg in this game.

@OP: you’re posting this in every profession forum?

I wouldn’t change a thing — I love the elementalist mechanics just the way it is!

insta cast for all conjures like engi kit or atunement swap.
would add more survivability with es and more depth to the playstile.

get lost of 2014 precasttimes

change back rtl

add pvp changes to wvw

Reworking/Redesigning ele depends on what you want ele to be. Do you want them to be focused on certain elements (up to 3 if you don’t use an elite spec) or do you want them to be generalists, dabbling in all elements (traitlines are generic with limited attunement limitations).

I don’t know which one is correct and Anet is the only true answer, but I can propose a method to enable both.

A) Weapon skills in non-active attunements cooldown 50% slower.
B) The first minor in each elemental traitline lets that element set cooldown at standard speed even when inactive (in addition to current effects).
C) Arcane gains more attunement swapping traits and loses its on critical ones. It should also have a cooldown boost to non-active attunements through swaps to reinforce its (new) role as the generalist/swapping traitline.
D) Elemental traitlines reworked to better enhance their own attunement a lot, or have more general benefits but are weaker.
E) Open up more role options within each element (earth and water damage mostly, air support, ironically fire actually has a lot of support)
F) Cantrips benefit from their elemental traitline, not their own utility trait.
G) Arcanes merged into Glyphs, Glyph trait moved to Arcane tree.
- HEAL -Glyph of Brilliance (blast, boons and healing per enemy struck)
- Glyph of Power (condi + crit on activation)
- Glyph of Storms (Blasts at the start and the end, otherwise similar to current version)
- Glyph of Shielding (Gain an aura and block 3 hits, detonate any auras on you if the block is unbroken [bonus, all auras gain a detonation effect])
- Glyph of Revival ~No idea here
- Glyph of Elementals (Fires off the projectile finisher like arcane blast, summons the elemental there unless cast without a target where it summons at your position).

But this is basically a huge rework of elementalist gameplay (not necessarily the style everyone would want) but its the style of what I would like to see. It would necessitate balance changes on a similar scale on the other classes so this would never be viable on its own (perhaps even a nerf given power creep of the other classes).

Honestly I love everything about what the class has to offer,
however I’d like more weapon variety in the future,

Personally I would love to see p/p with the new specialisation
(Based on spellslingers from wildstar)

Something that berserker has that i think would fit ele well would be aura or field explodes. This is from Flames of War “When the field expires, it explodes, damaging foes and burning them again” and King of Fires “Increase the duration of burning you apply. Gain fire aura when you critically hit an enemy. Berserker skills detonate fire aura, damaging[sic] and burning nearby foes.” I think added this effect to ele’s aura or fields (of the 4 element types) would add a lot of game play to the ele class so much so that it could be an elite spec type of effect or a core ele effect like atument swamping.

When it comes to say core ele how to buff that maybe more problem causing in that tempest is very much still an ele but with one line change and add skill on atuments that you do not always need to use. This is going to be a problem moving forward for other elite spec. adding in a new f5 or remolding f1-4 to do added effect will not be enofe to make the core ele worth playing over the elite spec.

Core ele needs an added effect on its swaps that is lost some how when the atuments are changed for elite spec. or some type of build in cdr to atuments and or global cd that is lost for running an elite spec.

As things stand the only thing “lost” for core ele to run tempest is some level of dmg (a line is lost that could be more dmg all though tempest line has one dmg effect but its not that great) and this will become a non factor when they do add in a dmg line for an elite spec. then there will be no reason at all to run an core ele.

As ele we need to put some real though into this or ele is no longer a class it will be tempest or what ever the next elite spec is.

not specifically ele, but Tempest.
i’d love for the attunement overcharges to be ground cast, even if i have to use a Tempest trait to make it so.
i play fire staff zerker, and i’d absolutely love to have the lightning and fire storms at my disposal
i’m not crazy enough to play a super squishy zerker ele and run in to melee

Revert all nerfs to rtl. Lightning flash gets an unblockable stun added to it and puts a buff on you that makes the next attack you do after using it unblockable as well. Blinding ashes has a 3 second cooldown and does a 5 second reveal on any target you burn. Arcane shield blocks all attacks for 3 seconds and can be pressed again to detonate it, and is now 20 second cooldown. Just a few minor buffs that would finally make dps ele viable.

Nikkinella.8254:

Revert all nerfs to rtl. Lightning flash gets an unblockable stun added to it and puts a buff on you that makes the next attack you do after using it unblockable as well. Blinding ashes has a 3 second cooldown and does a 5 second reveal on any target you burn. Arcane shield blocks all attacks for 3 seconds and can be pressed again to detonate it, and is now 20 second cooldown. Just a few minor buffs that would finally make dps ele viable.

RTL needs to have a leap cd effect on it but so dose all other leaps in the game.

Lightning Flash should have an aoe stun on it and i guess make it unblockable but the added buff after should not be a thing.

The problem with blinding ashes is the icd effect so i say make it a 10 sec icd but make it per person not per activation that and added say a 2 sec reveal would go a long way. So blinding ash needs to act more like glyph of element power and not like a sigal.

Just having the shield block all will do i would not mind seeing it have a revies charges so each time it blocks something it stores up charges the more charges the lower the cd or the higher the dmg on its burst. But these needs to be with in reason a 20 sec block that you can do effects in is too much say 30 sec at its max charges or 50 sec with out but have a high burst on the end of the effect would be with in reason.

But even this is not going to fix ele as a core class there going to be something about ele that tempest nor the next elite spec lose out on. Maybe a set of class only buffs from spawing atuments or a golober cdr to icd effects.

A summary of my first ideas, with some changes:

• Added weapon swap.
• Weapon skills across attunements normalized. This means the effect and mechanic of each skill will be the same no matter the attunement. Cooldowns are shared too, but get reduced when you switch attunements, promoting attunement switch.
• Now changing attunement while using a chain skill does not cancel it, and instead continues the chain in the new attunement. Channeled skills are continued as well, stacking time and changing to the new attunement’s effect.
• Conjures removed. Greatsword, Shortbow, and Shield added as new weapons for the core profession, their skills inspired by removed conjures.
• Swords added for the core profession as well, allowing direct melee combat with cleaving.
• Glyphs summoning elementals removed. New slot skills, minions, which aren’t affected by the current attunement, like signets and shouts.
• Glyphs reworked for support roles, similar in style to those of druid.

The basic idea is to simplify weapon skill variety across attunements, in exchange of weapon swap and combo mechanics when swapping attunements. Normalized weapon skills across attunements would make balance and design easier, too.

Conjures have always given multiple problems, so replacing them by weapons should be a natural evolution, specially if we get weapon swap. Glyphs can then be repurposed for simpler yet more useful support roles, and summoned elementals moved to an entire new family thanks to the hole left by the removal of conjures.

As for trait lines, if we are to keep them, element-based lines should be gone, replaced by something that doesn’t discriminate by attunement, instead focusing on weapons and roles. All attunements should be useful no matter your build.

Eddbopkins.2630:

I wouldnt go so far as redisign from ground up, but a few changes I would like to see would be higher base HP at least 15k base, and a higher base def something better then the 1800 we got now.

Base health should be adjusted for all professions, really. It’s just ridiculous in many cases.

Exact current numbers here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health#Base_health_by_profession

juno.1840:

@OP: you’re posting this in every profession forum?

I wouldn’t change a thing — I love the elementalist mechanics just the way it is!

I did, check the first post for the links to the others ^^.

Jski.6180:

Core ele needs an added effect on its swaps that is lost some how when the atuments are changed for elite spec. or some type of build in cdr to atuments and or global cd that is lost for running an elite spec.

Something like virtues, maybe? So when an attunement has no cooldown, you get a passive effect.

It would encourage not to switch attunements though…

Lonami.2987:

Something like virtues, maybe? So when an attunement has no cooldown, you get a passive effect.

It would encourage not to switch attunements though…

It need to be more when your not running tempest (any other elite spec) you should get an added effect. All the classes that did not lose a F1-5 effect to get a new one needs something for there core class or there is no core class.

For core ele maybe atument swaping effect would fit but it needs to be more then 0 globle cd on atument swaping. I am not sure what could be added ontop of that though.

Jski.6180:

Lonami.2987:

Something like virtues, maybe? So when an attunement has no cooldown, you get a passive effect.

It would encourage not to switch attunements though…

It need to be more when your not running tempest (any other elite spec) you should get an added effect. All the classes that did not lose a F1-5 effect to get a new one needs something for there core class or there is no core class.

For core ele maybe atument swaping effect would fit but it needs to be more then 0 globle cd on atument swaping. I am not sure what could be added ontop of that though.

I don’t think that will be fixed until we get another elite specialization.

Meanwhile, what about revamping tempest to make overloads change depending on the active weapon? They’re kinda dull and boring in their current state, and giving them unique skills depending on the main-hand weapon could be interesting.

issue with tempest for me is range, staff and scepter should be about range as per the classic mage ranged dps low defense model, and yet tempest and other skills force you into close range. This for me is a good starting point, the devs should look at the intended range of a class/weapon and base the skills around that first and foremost.

Caeledh.5437:

cgMatt.5162:

I feel like Tempest is counter-intuitive to how Ele felt before the specialization. Swapping attunements and maintaining a loose rotational order to respond to new situations is the most fun, imo.

Opposite on both counts.

Hate the constantly switching attunements style of play and Tempest is probably my favourite of the elite specs.

It was an interesting design choice though. I’ve never had the impression that players like you are a tiny minority so an elite spec which kicks that style of play in the nads has always puzzled me.

Attunement camping is better for PvE DPS rotations, so if you liked that game mode better I can see where you are coming from. Any seasoned PvP/WvW player would probably enjoy the attunement swaps when you are fighting sentient beings.

Scepter:
- Fire 1 casts faster (like 3/4 s) and automatically hits in a 160 radius
- Fire 2 is 1/2s cast time, same drop time
- Phoenix now has a 13s CD, normalize the number of hits it can do (this last part is coming anyway for raids)
- Water 1 actually hits targets
- Water 2 does damage on the first animation pulse, with a 2nd main hit shortly thereafter.
- Air 1 has no precast, does more 25% more damage (again)
- Earth 1 has no precast
- Earth 2 gives more toughness on use
- Earth 3 also removes 1 stack of stab (but doesn’t actually cc, or is 1/4s stun if that can’t be programmed)

OH Dagger
- Fire 5 has a 50% wider cone, probably needs more damage (unless they nerf HoT stuff) or needs to do burning damage all the time.
- RtL has a 20s CD, no “on hit” garbage.
- Earth 5 has a 1.5s cast, gives you 1 stack of stability.

Utilities:
- Arcane shield CD is now 30s
- Lighting flash is now 1200 range
- Cleansing fire is also a stunbreak again

Tempest
- This is now actually a SUPPORT spec. Overloads changed to focus primarily on support, with much shorter cast time. You don’t take tempest for an increase in dps. Also, overall healing capability it nerfed significantly (along with everything else HoT). Baseline for power-level is old d/d cele ele.

Lonami.2987:

I think the strongest point of the elementalist, skill variety thanks to attunements, is his weakest point as well, from a development perspective. Weapon skills take four times the amount of work, and the profession suffers because of it.

I would hate to get more off-hands with future elite specializations, so, what if we removed that variety, replacing it with something else that can be easy to upgrade?

We would normalize weapon skills through attunements. This would mean that a weapon skill has the same mechanic across every attunement, with similar base stats as well.

It would kill all the fun of playing Ele.

Maybe start with something simple, and give eles (and every class) the same total numbers of base stats. Eles could have maybe more concentration or whatever, i don’t really care having lowest hp/armour, but the points lacking need to go somewhere else.
Yeah I know we have twice as more weapon skills than other class, but they’re already balanced around that fact.

Tempest idea

Feanor.2358:

Lonami.2987:

I think the strongest point of the elementalist, skill variety thanks to attunements, is his weakest point as well, from a development perspective. Weapon skills take four times the amount of work, and the profession suffers because of it.

I would hate to get more off-hands with future elite specializations, so, what if we removed that variety, replacing it with something else that can be easy to upgrade?

We would normalize weapon skills through attunements. This would mean that a weapon skill has the same mechanic across every attunement, with similar base stats as well.

It would kill all the fun of playing Ele.

Don’t you think the combos between sequences and channels would compensate for that loss? At least attunement switch would serve a purpose other than just switching skills like an engineer.

New weapons and weapon swap would be added as well.

MyPuppy.8970:

Maybe start with something simple, and give eles (and every class) the same total numbers of base stats. Eles could have maybe more concentration or whatever, i don’t really care having lowest hp/armour, but the points lacking need to go somewhere else.
Yeah I know we have twice as more weapon skills than other class, but they’re already balanced around that fact.

I think base health by profession is what needs to be adressed first.

The elementalist is right now at the lowest tier regarding health, with mesmer at the medium. Maybe it’s me, but mesmer sounds glassier than elementalist to me. Engineer, guardian, and revenant could use some repositioning as well.

Lonami.2987:

Don’t you think the combos between sequences and channels would compensate for that loss? At least attunement switch would serve a purpose other than just switching skills like an engineer.

Not really, no. The effect of this would be to create a few optimal combos which you need to use to maximize your dps. It’s just more clicking for the same effect. It will manage to make ele even harder to play, but more fun? Nope.

Attunements serve their function perfectly. They attune you to a single element, granting you skills associated with that element. It’s a perfect metaphor and it works like a charm. It’s by far the best elemental magic mechanic I’ve seen in a videogame.

Remove the “on hit” from diamond skin to remove reliance on soldiers and remove water from being mandatory in pvp

Balance health across all classes

Reduce cast times or time before skills actually work, currently any interrupt builds wet dream especially staff.

Go back and look through the underperforming traits

They need to go back to the Guild Wars 1 method. Attunement swapping in GW2 is THE most difficult aspect to balance in the game imo. What if we got a 2-handed weapon in expac 2? That’s 20 skills coming straight from 1 weapon, 4 attunements. Now balance each of those 20 skills according to trait lines, trait line combinations, and runes perhaps. That just sounds like a nightmare even to me. And suddenly we get nerfed to kitten, again, making us have a semi-useless weapon in all attunements.
Abandon the 4 attunements in my opinion and let us pick from 1 attunement pre-combat, 2 possibly, and give us a weapon swap for some customization that the ele has never actually experienced. Add a special mechanic or feature to each attunement itself if you’re picking from 1 of the 4, so that it’s affects are felt. Such as if you’re in the fire attunement, burning dealt lasts 20% longer and you deal 5% more damage to burning foes. There is your DPS/condi line as an example.

I feel forced into D/F in sPvP, and I know that I can easily go D/W. I do both, but focus is just better, and equally boring. I don’t know how many people have played with the warhorn, but it’s extremely fun to play! But more importantly, I am forced into Earth, Water, and Tempest otherwise my entire team flames at me for not playing the proper ele build. That’s what I truly dislike. And my team is right. I feel that I am inclined to play that sole role because it’s the staple role. I desperately want to play in fire attunement again, but I lose out on so much survivability from water, or earth, that I get stomped and it’s just no fun.

I also believe ele base stats need a rework. If ANet is tired of us playing the healing/support bot in sPvP (possibly WvW. I don’t WvW), let’s rework the stats some so that we at least have some decent HP to stay alive without choking us into earth/water trait line. I just feel that arcane should be the niche trait line for such things, not earth AND water. Make the ele’s base stats celestial since the 4 attunements are already a dead giveaway of that. One attunement for dps+ condi, one attunement for heavy “single” target DPS (air seems to have lost it’s focus on being a single target heavy dps in a majority of the skills), one attunement for healing, one attunement for some tankiness and survival capability. By default the ele’s mechanics are a celestial stat profession, but without the base celestial stats.

origin.1496:

They need to go back to the Guild Wars 1 method. Attunement swapping in GW2 is THE most difficult aspect to balance in the game imo. What if we got a 2-handed weapon in expac 2? That’s 20 skills coming straight from 1 weapon, 4 attunements. Now balance each of those 20 skills according to trait lines, trait line combinations, and runes perhaps. That just sounds like a nightmare even to me. And suddenly we get nerfed to kitten, again, making us have a semi-useless weapon in all attunements.
Abandon the 4 attunements in my opinion and let us pick from 1 attunement pre-combat, 2 possibly, and give us a weapon swap for some customization that the ele has never actually experienced. Add a special mechanic or feature to each attunement itself if you’re picking from 1 of the 4, so that it’s affects are felt. Such as if you’re in the fire attunement, burning dealt lasts 20% longer and you deal 5% more damage to burning foes. There is your DPS/condi line as an example.

I feel forced into D/F in sPvP, and I know that I can easily go D/W. I do both, but focus is just better, and equally boring. I don’t know how many people have played with the warhorn, but it’s extremely fun to play! But more importantly, I am forced into Earth, Water, and Tempest otherwise my entire team flames at me for not playing the proper ele build. That’s what I truly dislike. And my team is right. I feel that I am inclined to play that sole role because it’s the staple role. I desperately want to play in fire attunement again, but I lose out on so much survivability from water, or earth, that I get stomped and it’s just no fun.

I also believe ele base stats need a rework. If ANet is tired of us playing the healing/support bot in sPvP (possibly WvW. I don’t WvW), let’s rework the stats some so that we at least have some decent HP to stay alive without choking us into earth/water trait line. I just feel that arcane should be the niche trait line for such things, not earth AND water. Make the ele’s base stats celestial since the 4 attunements are already a dead giveaway of that. One attunement for dps+ condi, one attunement for heavy “single” target DPS (air seems to have lost it’s focus on being a single target heavy dps in a majority of the skills), one attunement for healing, one attunement for some tankiness and survival capability. By default the ele’s mechanics are a celestial stat profession, but without the base celestial stats.

The 4 attunement are fun. Anet isn’t tired of us playing support in pvp, look at the nerfs and you’ll see. Low hp but strong against condition builds not smart enough to mix in power? Butcher diamond skin into an “on hit” with icd, making water mandatory. Ele relies on boons? More boon corruption added. Nerf base healing to be more reliant on heal power.The list goes on. There is a reason most ele run support. It’s all that’s left. If ANet wanted us able to play a different role they would change it

It’s not “all that’s left”. Virtually nobody plays support in PvE. Ele still has pretty decent damage output and mediocre at best support in this mode. The problem in PvP is all the damage is so kitten high you can’t really run damage build on ele, because you die in an instant without going for defence and sustain at the same time. And when you do, yeah, you’ll be doing crap damage. No surprises there.

The problem, however, isn’t ele itself. It’s the silly environment they put it in. That’s what happens when you design a PvE game and strap PvP on it.

Eles will be fine when they won’t have to spec heavily in sustain and defences to simply exist. That is always your first thing in mind when making a build. I think it is time Anet remembers its manifesto. Well even then, they’re easier to kill than a ranger’s pet.

Unlink the skills from the weapons, allowing free choice of skill combinations like GW1 had.

TheQuickFox.3826:

Unlink the skills from the weapons, allowing free choice of skill combinations like GW1 had.

This would just lock us into a specific set of skills which happen to be best for the intended application. Also it makes different weapon types totally irrelevant.

I would focus my rework on traits, and give ele more mobility on skills

Eles are the squishiest class that relies heavily on boons for dmg mitigation (prot&regen&vigor mainly). Problem is those boons are mostly provided through traits while other classes have a good part of their dmg mitigation tools built in weapon skills and class mechanics (and can spec for more survivability through traits& utilities) thus allowing them to build for damage.
Until HoT, no weapon skill granted protection; we had to trait for it, or take armor of earth.
Only 2 weapon skills granted regeneration and were – still are – on relatively high cd. At this moment, no utility grants regen, we still have to trait for it. (Except maybe glyph of elemental harmony but requires to be in water) And even regen is pretty useless without healing power, so that’s another stat we have to equip.
Vigor only provided by phoenix (and traits again of course).

So we have scarce access to our means for survival.
The point is, eles have to trait for survivability or damage. The mechanics is flawed by essence. The class mechanics only gives us more skills with half the efficiency and twice the cd, and even then we still have to switch between offensive and defensive.

To compensate, i think everything could be fine if elemental attunement was just made baseline for the player, and make the trait AoE. But that has already been suggested countless times. Or rework the weapon skills and utilities to give more frequent access to those boons.

Overall, Eles should become less trait-dependant, but I think there’s no hope anymore at this point.

While im not expert on eles, but maining an ele, i have some issues with some traits and also some skills.

First of all, i like the core design of the class, using attunements to have 4 sets of skills depending on your attunement is what defines an elementalist.

The same design with tempest, which, by overloading the attunements makes an interesting gameplay for elementalist.

Now about the problems i have experimented on the class, the first and most important issue i have with the class, for all game modes is survival, i mean, the effective durbility of the class is the lowest from all the 9 classes, our base vitality is among the lowest, pairing with thief and guardian, but since we use light armor we are even more squishy. I can recall several episodes doinghot content in open world, only to get one shooted by a champion mob. and while is easy to say that we have ways to evade damage, these have poor performance because long cooldowns, short duration or simply because you must sacrifice too much dps to have them

My first problem is that we lack a decent source of protection to compensate for the lack of both health pool and armor, let me recall:

Weapon skills:
Sand squall
Overload earth

Slot skills
Armor of earth

Traits:
Elemental shielding (earth)
Elemental contingency (arcane)
Hardy conduit (tempest)

We can have perma protection if trait earth and tempest with auras, but our dps will suffer a lot. Sure, i thanks the fact that our protection is much better than the other classes if i play tempest, but our survival depends on this buff.

I can say the same about stability, only armor of earth and Harmonious conduit, personally i think that harmonious conduit should make overloads pulse stability for all tempest overloads, a trait which gives me a single stack of stability for 4 seconds is not enough in some battles, i prefer 4 pulses of stability, each one with 1 second duration. Im sacrificing 4 seconds of not dodging any attack and being in melee range to be the perfect target for anyone.

Another problem is, our auras, withouth any trait, are trash:

What makes auras good is the buff they carry when you trait them, when traited i can make an aura give me 5 different buffs, clear a condition, heal me and my allies. but what if they are not traited, i mean fire shield is trash because first, you must be hit and second, gives a miserable stack of might. Frost aura gives 10% damage reduction for 4 seconds, which is not enough to prevent you from getting one shoted in open world. Shocking aura is good as it is because it makes you be proactive when using it, and magnetic shield is very underwhelming when compared with other classes skills to deflect projectiles.

While classes can support their groups with unique buffs, i cannot say that eles can do the same with auras, auras are very bad if not traited.

Elite skills: These are just simply bad, elementals do little damage, bad tanking and delayed cc, tornado makes you too vulnerable and is not potent enough to give me an increase in dps, rebound requires perfect timing to be used correctly and fire greatsword takes too long to recharge.

What i want from elites. First, buff elementals to do someting significative for the elite skill they are using like fire elementals doing heavy burning and giving a fire field, ice elementals doing a freeze like cc around them, air elementals giving superspeed and unleashing big damage and earth elementals giving protecton and taunting enemies, also a buff on their damage and survival. what i could make in tornado is to choose one of the 3 styles of tornado and not be able to change them for the duration of the skill, so you will have heavy damage, good survival or heavy cc, making the skill versatile in what you need. Also, make it give pulsing protection for the elementalist for the remainder of the skill to not make it an easy target.

About rebound make it have longer duration, it can be like a second elite healing skill if ally dies, it is healed, if dont dies it is healed too and receives an aura. And last with fiery greatsword, my unique issue with this skill is, the cooldown is inmense 1 minute cd for other conjure and 3 minute for this?

Now if i cant improve survival by giving more sources of protection, then give more reliable sources of avoiding damage, but not the skills that already have with huge cooldowns.