Guild Wars 2

if i see a D/D in a dungeon sticking on one attunement; i will bring it up
scepter doesnt seem to switch as much… because pure damage is done better by other weapons, only two of the auto attacks inflict condition damage (meanign condition specs do very little in air/water – the only reason to switch to water is to heal/cleanse because its auto attack/shatterstone are so horribly UP, air for blind/lightning strike damage packet… but then that sticks you in a long -lacklustre damage- channel attack)
if i see a staff ele sticking in fire i think nothing of it… unless they ignore teammates going down/getting loaded up with conditions and dont change to water to cleanse (/earth to blast into a water field) or fail to immob/cripple/chill a mob that the rest of the team is trying to kite (notably AC troll… ive never seen a staff ele except me immob>cripple wall/chill him – i also ‘stoning’ him during his fight with kholer; to make the fight more even)

This game allows you to fully reclass at any point – the reclass costs less than it does to port somewhere at 80, so really the only cost is deciding how to gear yourself… and honestly you should be carrying multiple sets of gear to handle multiple situations, so at the end of the day, experimenting is a GOOD thing. There is no “fix it now” ever, just “can I do this better”. Note that “this” is not defined by the meta-gamers here on these forums.

So what do you want to do in this game? If it’s to play it like every other MMO where you play with a static set of gear using the exact same attack rotation over and over… this is not the game for you. This is a dynamic MMO – you have combo fields, buffs, debuffs, and mobility that all go in hand with a variety of situations that need adaptation. Every single class has multiple tools that they can actively use at their disposal – to not use those tools is ineffective. When you have your strongest fire moves going, what is better: auto-attack, or switching and dropping a field that allows the entire party to heal, chill, daze, etc… and this is not counting all the bonuses you can give yourself by switching. There’s no question that a fire nuker can hit hard, but your other abilities have far more purpose than just other attacks with different animations. Look into it.

Leo G.4501:

Baladir.2736:

As you can see, just above I got my butt chewed because someone misunderstood and thought I was supporting a one attunement style of play.

If you’re talking about me, I was ‘chewing’ for the opposite reason. If the team needs damage and not much else, saying ‘your limited DPS is pointless’ undermines a whole meta of team play people look for. And DPS is highest in fire.

Yeah, you can say ‘should just put down ele and roll a warr/thief’ which is basically admitting ele sux and can’t function in a damaging aspect, which is a dumb conclusion. Even if ele isn’t the best DPS class, doesn’t mean no one should play it and have fun with it.

K, your post makes alot more sense now. DPS is high in fire, but there are long cooldowns. An elementals dps as a class is not bad because there is good damage in other attunements while waiting for cooldowns. To sit and not do much more than auto attack for a good portion of the time in fire, as you say, lol, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play it. Heck, he/she paid the same for the game as everyone else, he/she has every right to play their way and have fun. That wasn’t the question the OP asked.

The OPs question was, “Is it seriously that big of an issue?” Not in your case of a team needing only limited dps (a point I inititated in my post you originally responded to). Question then becomes, where does an Ele find such a team? I would strongly recommend the advertisement, “Fire dps only ele, f2,f3,f4 on my keyboard do not work, lfg” not be used.

One thing I can tell you as a staff WvW player, you definitely
will want to cycle through all 4 attunements when going
against zerg armies. Simple reason is spreading out AOE
all over an area.

The number 2 skill is an AOE in all attunements dont forget,
so that supplements all of the other AOE as you cycle each
attunement. The strategy is to cover a large area quickly as
opposed to stacking all your AOE on one spot. Why? Because
zerg army battles are constantly moving, and if you try to
stack in one spot the army has already moved out of that area
more times than not.

Sorry, guys. I posted this last night, went to bed, got up, went to work, then went out for some time with my girlfriend.

Thanks everyone for replying, this clearly isn’t the class for me. I’ll keep trying to look for something.

Majora.6028:

Sorry, guys. I posted this last night, went to bed, got up, went to work, then went out for some time with my girlfriend.

Thanks everyone for replying, this clearly isn’t the class for me. I’ll keep trying to look for something.

The only classes where I’ve been able to just sit in a weapon a vast majority of the time was Engineer (Grenadier spec or Flamethrower spec and just sit in those) or Warrior.

Oh no, I don’t have an issue with a swap here or there, I did it on my Ranger. The thing is, on my ranger, I ran Greatsword almost constantly, but every once in awhile I’d pop shortbow and just sit back. That only for a few minutes, and it rarely happened. I’m fine with that. What gets me about Eles is that it is almost a constant swapfest. Not my thing. I’m just going to try something else out. Thank you for your help, though.

Majora.6028:

Oh no, I don’t have an issue with a swap here or there, I did it on my Ranger. The thing is, on my ranger, I ran Greatsword almost constantly, but every once in awhile I’d pop shortbow and just sit back. That only for a few minutes, and it rarely happened. I’m fine with that. What gets me about Eles is that it is almost a constant swapfest. Not my thing. I’m just going to try something else out. Thank you for your help, though.

I’ll just throw my advice in the ring, take it or leave it.

The only class that doesn’t swap weapons (or attunements in this case) for optimal play is the thief. The skills with longer cooldowns are usually more powerful and having two sets of weapons (in the elementalist’s case, four) with “power” skills is better than one.

You can play effectively enough by yourself in PvE without swapping anything. You may even get away with it in dungeons in many cases. Once you get to the PvP scene, its a completely different story. Especially for the ele. Ele gets 4 full weapon skill sets that all have longer (30-40s) cooldown skills to rotate through.

This is essentially why the class is being nerfed. Once people figured out what F1,2,3,4 did instead of trying to WoW-Fireball-Gank their targets, d/d eles took their place as an ‘apex predator’ (term used by Anet devs referring to incoming ele nerf).

It is indeed ironic that Elementalist went from one of the weakest classes to “OP” because of meta. I just hope that they don’t kill the permaboon (limited to specially equipped for boon duration) crazy swap – the concept of an elementalist blasting all of the attacks of all elements as fun, and if they take away that aspect, it will become a ‘only trees that max self/party dps’ meta… it should always be a case of building diversity and new metas, not killing existing ones. There is hope, though, as there are those in Anet that share that sentiment.

@Majora: Thief is indeed probably the class you could get away the easiest without swapping. You can mix short/long range, and don’t have cooldown timers. However it is also the squishiest medium armor class – you will have to make active use of evasive moves, dodges, and placement to make the best use of even a single weapon set.

Probably the easiest class to get away with “1, 2, 3” no swap gameplay is warrior. Just walking up and pressing “2” with GS is enough to kill most kittens in PvE. You have gap closers and evasive moves to keep the DPS going, and you don’t have to actively keep changing trait builds to squeeze in your rifle for when you can’t safely reach a target. Don’t think people complain about warriors that run only GS in dungeons either – when a single HB can kill a burrow in AC or even a veteran (might stacked glass cannon, hits peek in the 30Ks), as long as you play with enough smarts to not constantly die. Though I do constantly swap weapons to keep bosses crippled 100% of the time, lay in a rapid/kill shot (especially on grouped mobs), give heal breathers without stopping DPS, make sure there is bleeds on before a 100B (as that’s 10% more damage on my build), etc. I would be a lot less effective if I didn’t constantly swap, but it’s not make or break like it is for Ele.

You do need to swap attunements frequently to play the Elementalist at a high percentage of its potential.

Unfortunately, the Attunements mechanic is not like other professions’ F1-F4. Because the ability to have twice the weapon skills of the other professions gives the Ele such high potential versatility, their skills needs to be weaker than the skills of other professions to compensate. Consequently, staying in one Attunement means you not only basically don’t have a profession mechanic but your weapon skills are subpar as well. Oh, and the Attunement mechanic is the reason Eles can’t weapon swap, so you’re down another source of power. It’s also the reason Eles have the weakest base defenses in the game (not only are they cloth armored but their base health pool is pitiful). There’s a laundry list of things Eles had to “give up” during development to get Attunements, so avoiding attunements avoids a lot of where the Ele’s power is tied up.

THAT SAID.

The vast majority of PvE is pretty easy and you should be able to get away with staying in one attunement. Dungeons might be rough. You’re generally going to be more of a liability there if you stay in just one attunement, but the Stories will probably still be ok, if a bit harder for everyone else than they really need to be. Getting skilled at your one attunement can help a bit but honestly there’s not a very high skill ceiling on using one set of spells on mobs.

All I have to say on this topic: OP, if you were impressed by that “fire-wizard”, then I guess a real elementalist would have made you faint.

well just know that if you dont swap attunement you will only group with your friends.. every one else will kick you very fast..

not swapping attunement is equel to other classes refusing to use their 3,4,5 skills for their weapons, so yer….

You have the right to chose to be less useful. People have a right to chose who they group with; they might decide to base that on usefulness.

Majora.6028:

Is it seriously that big of an issue? I feel like quitting now, I haven’t enjoyed the other classes, and now I’m being harassed and told that I won’t be able to play me class at all later if I don’t fix myself now.

It greatly depends on what you want to do and where you want to go. People shouldn’t be harassing you about it in map chat obviously since you’re apparently still leveling, and on top of that doing so in open world PvE.

See, the thing is, you can basically choose between a rotation that involves 4 cooldowns and one that involves up to 16 cooldowns and also gives you and your allies boons when you switch attunements. However, after leveling two Elementalists in the open world I have to say it’s frankly not very useful in the first half of the game. If you don’t have your 30 points into Arcana yet, if you don’t have all the traits that make switching even more useful, and if you’re fighting predominantly trash mobs that normally die before you can even switch, if you’re possibly even using a Staff which is far less balanced between attunements damage-wise than other weapons, then staying in Fire makes all the sense in the world. It’s the highest damage attunement with any weapon, blasting your fire combo fields with Arcane Wave is one of the most useful things you can do with it in general open world PvE, and so on.

In dungeons (including fractals), mobs have more health. It makes sense to maximize your damage output there, and the way Elementalists maximize damage output and utility over time is switching attunements often. If you’re looking to farm dungeons, people will expect that you maximize your dps. If you aren’t planning to go to dungeons (much), well, see above.

I’m not even going to get started on PvP. It’s an entirely different game for Elementalists. Most PvP Elementalists focus much more on survivability than damage, i.e. they do the exact opposite of what you do while you’re leveling in open world PvE.

you can totally get through most pve content without ever swapping out of fire, especially when leveling.
Once you get to higher level content, though, you;ll find you NEED to swap. Water has heals and snares, air has blinds and knockdowns, earth has bleeds and combo finishers.
I can dish out a crazy amount of damage while keeping crowd control while healing my party while initiating/finishing a crazy number of combo fields.

Playing Ele without swapping elements is like imposing a handicap on yourself. Seriously, you lose out on 3/4 of your skills, not to mention a lot of other benefits that can come from swapping if you spec right, like boons to allies, or getting rid of conditions etc.

If you want to stick with fire, that is fine, ofc, but you loose out man