Guild Wars 2

The 4-kit Engineer [¹] and the Elementalist [²] are functionally equivalent, with the single exception of weapon-swapping cooldowns. Their equivalent functions are just in different places. Each profession has:

1. 4 weapon bars to swap among
2. 4 weapon-bar swap buttons
3. 1 healing utility skill, 3 utility skills, and an Elite

However, #2 and #3 are swapped (except the Elite):

• Elementalist: #2 are the F1-F4 buttons, #3 are 6-9.
• Engineer: #2 are 6-9, #3 are F1-F4.

For both professions, each skill (except 1) on the weapon bar has a cooldown, and their healing and utility skills have cooldowns.

The big difference of course is that Elementalist weapon-bar swap buttons (F1-F4) have 9-15s cooldowns (depending on how may points in Arcane), while Engineer weapon-swap buttons (6-9) have no signifcant cooldowns (like 2-3s).

As a result, Elementalist weapon-swapping cd means that you are penalized somewhat for switching to another attunement – say from Water to Fire – by not being able to go back to Water right away if you need to.

For example – say you’re spamming Shatterstone (scepter 2) to build up big stacks of Vulnerabilty, then switch to fire to do some Vuln-buffed damage, and immediately a damage spike hits your group and you need to switch back to Water for AoE healing – but you can’t for another 6-11 seconds (an eternity in combat).

Hence, Elementalists are incentivized to use a 5-4-3-2-swap rotation, cycling through all their skills for maximum throughput and cd usage (not that all do this, just more of an incentive to than Eng), whereas Engineers are better able to pick the right kit and right skill for the situation at hand.

For example, say a Grenade/Bomb/Elixir Gun engineer uses one or two Elixir gun skills then swaps to Grenade kit for more damage, and immediately a damage spike or condition bomb hits the group and you need to swap back to Elixir gun for AoE condition removal and healing (assuming their individual cd’s are up) – you can. There’s no weapon swap cd preventing this, just individual skill cooldowns.

You still have to play smart and save those individual skill cooldowns for when they’re needed, but you aren’t prevented from using Elixir Gun 3 and 5 because you just used Elixir Gun 2 and 4 and then switched to another kit. Your tactical skill choices aren’t stymied stymied by the long weapon-swap cd that elementalists are.

Yet, the Engineer is not considered OP because the actual weapon skills still have cooldowns (although on average much shorter than the Elemantlist weapon skill cd’s – max 25s vs max 45s). They’re not spammable and you still have to use them smartly or find them on individual cd when you really need them.

Would it be the same for the Elementalist, were the Elementalist to have its weapon swap cd’s dropped to the same as the Engineer (2-3s)? Less clunky, less artificial barriers to skill selection and use, more incentive to choose skills strategically/tactically in response to the combat circumstances rather than for cd-optimization, but still limited by individual skill cooldowns.

Thoughts?

Alternate links in case gw2skills.net goes down again:
¹: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k34;2R0-V015wM-Z0;9;8Tn
²: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;2sPVg0c-gTFx0I

Would cause a lot of problems with the many attunement-based traits Elementalists have. Spam Air attune with trait for damage on air attune for a “free” damage boost (likewise with Fire and a free Burn), permanent Protection / Swiftness / Might / Regen from the trait that gives you a boon based on attunement, on-demand status healing any time you need it from Water attune swap, and so on.

Would pretty much require a massive rework of the Elementalist traits.

Might end up better in the end, but I don’t know if such a large change would be a good move this early in the game when they haven’t really even tried to fix Elementalist in its current state.

Valid polnt OP and I have wondered the same having started on enji then switched to elem. But yeah, because of the attunement bonuses, particularly from the arcana line, it would take a lot of reworking.

The problem in my opinion is not the attunement swapping and the cooldowns that come with it. The problem is the mediocre damage the class puts out.

Alternatively they could go the opposite route and buff our defensive stats and abilities, but I think the much better choice is to keep us squishy and boost our damage instead.

The class was clearly designed with that in mind. I really don’t get what spooked ANet so much during the beta that they had to make it our damage output so weak (admittedly, I never got to try the pre-beta-nerf version of the class).

Electro

Would cause a lot of problems with the many attunement-based traits Elementalists have.

True, though engineers have similar on-swap traits – 5s Swiftness on 5s cd (permaswiftness as long as you swap kits every 5s), 5s Vigor when you gain Swiftness (perma vigor), cast a damaging spell when swapping kits…

Would require some rework for sure, and would have to make sure certain on-swap stacking buffs can’t stack too much (or at all), but not all of them have to go or be redesigned, some are probably ok in current form.

The other difference is, that weapon swap-sigils work on the elementalist.
Like using the one that gives 3 stacks might on weapon swap.
Just triggers when you swap attunement
Those sigils doesn’t work on the engi…^^
Oh and btw, if you think elementalists are weak (they aren’t, sorry if you can’t play the class), then just reroll to engineer or any other class.

Only the attunument you just swapped out has a 9-15 seconds cooldown, for the other two it’s 1-2 seconds. It requires some real flexible thinking to consider Medkit skills a weapon bar. Also the Engineer’s Tool Belt skills cannot be chosen independently from the utility skills (which in the case of the “4-kit Engineer” are the weapon sets) which makes such a build cumbersome.

Yes, Elementalists have lengthy attunement-swap cooldowns, while the Engi has very low cooldowns. But consider this: The Ele can equip cantrips/stun breakers, which are incredibly important. If an Engi chooses to equip a stun breaker, he essentially loses out on an entire “attunement” worth of abilities. This, combined with the fact that they cannot benefit from swap sigils, are the main reasons an Engi friend of mine rerolled to Ele. I do not want this flawed system on my Ele. However, I would be more than ok with lowering the attunement-swap cooldown to 10 seconds or so, and changing the Arcane line to no longer affect swap cooldown. I think it pigeon-holes Ele, and lowers the amount of possible trait builds dramatically when you need to always have 30 points in one specific tree just to have the class play the way it was meant to.

@DesertRose: Think of it as a 3-kit engineer, then. The argument presented by the OP still stands, since the 3-kit engineer has the same number of skills available as the elementalist – 3 kits and their actual weapon versus 4 attunements.

@Munchkin: I’d have to say that sometimes I get the feeling that changing attunements has a cooldown just so elementalists can follow the theme of having a special mechanic-related attribute. What might work – and fix Electro’s concern – would be for “on swap” effects to have an internal cooldown which is reduced by having points in Arcane. An alternative new role for Arcane could be to make it speed up the cooldowns on the active attunement (only) – this would leave the attunement-dance as powerful as it currently is, but make staying in one attunement a little less suboptimal.

Incidentally, as a note: do “on swap” sigils actually work on elementalists? I’ve been avoiding giving any to my elementalist on the assumption that they don’t, but if they do, than the ele may actually be the BEST profession to have them…

draxynnic.3719:

Incidentally, as a note: do “on swap” sigils actually work on elementalists?

Yes. However Sigils have an internal cooldown of 9 seconds.

Yes, on swap works, but the next attack on swap ones, like leech and intelligence, are bugged, so stick with things like battle or hydromancy.

Thanks. The 9 second cooldown makes sense, since it means on an ele they’ll still be triggering at roughly the same rate as another profession might trigger them. However, since other professions are more likely to simply stick in a set that’s suited for the situation they’re in, the ele will probably still get more use out of them.