Guild Wars 2

To start things off:
1. I LOVE this game!
2. I LOVE this profession (just started one and find it the most enjoyable if not a bit challenging. People dont lie when they say Ele=High LearningCurve)

My issue with the elementalist is that their attunements seem to be forced into roles (Fire=Damage, Water=Healing, Air=Mix, Earth=Cond./Defense) which IMO conflicts with ANets whole play how you want attitude. In GW1 I did not like the Ele at all. I used them for my heroes and henchies but that was it. The elements were forced into roles and if you wanted to deal damage with water HA! you couldnt do it well.

When GW2 was announced and the Ele was revealed I instinctively thought “Well I’ll be ignoring that one again.” When the videos released showing the teaser of skills my attitude changed. I saw the ele as a class that could be a WIDE range of things and thought i could finally have my water themed mage that could kick kitten Now granted the ele can deal damage with all four elements but it still is fire’s forte while water is left to do the healing and some damage.

I just need to rant and say why cant each of the weapons give a damage focus to each of the elements so people who want to do damage with water/earth/air as a primary damage dealer can?

I’ll use staff as an example with Water as damage dealer role seeing as water HAS 2 HEALING skills on staff!
Water, change skill 3- Geyser: Causes a geyser to erupt at target location causing damage and knocking down enemies caught in blast. Skill 4- Frozen Ground: Causes ground to freeze at target area and erupt causing ice shards that bleed when opponent steps on it. Skill 5- Tsunami: PBAoE skill causes a large wave to erupt from caster knocking opponents back and causing damage.

To make a long story short: Each element should have a weapon where they are the primary damage dealing role.

Thank you for reading!

Or you can switch weapons and use Dagger/Focus. That is an offensive Water spec. Group that with Vulnerability on crits and Piercing Shards (20% more damage to vulnerable foes in water attunement).

NZ Scyther.8675:

Or you can switch weapons and use Dagger/Focus. That is an offensive Water spec. Group that with Vulnerability on crits and Piercing Shards (20% more damage to vulnerable foes in water attunement).

Dagger water autoattack stacks vulnerbility…

It’s worth noting that staff is a weapon with more of a support twist then the others while still being heavy on long range AoE.

while i would agree that diversity is always a good thing, i just dont think thats how anet envisioned the class.

they made the class so you constantly swap between attunements and spam lots of skills really fast. they then used the weapons to create alternate styles of play. scepter is ranged, dagger is up close, and staff is for big AOE.

from what i understand from the OP you would rather see it made as something similar to dagger=fire, staff=water, scepter=air, ???=earth.

while that style of play could work, the class would need a heavy redesign from the ground up to support such a dramatic change.

I’m switching attunements no matter what weapon I’m using. When using staff I start with earth an impair them then switch to fire and cast aoe’s until people or myself get low health, then pop off water to cast slow/chill and heals.

With daggers I start with air and pop off ride the lightning than the kickback move to knock them down. From there I go to fire and use the aoe then whatever move number 5 is, maybe use some fire breath. Usually if it isn’t dead then I switch to earth to knock it down again and a little extra damage, and finally water to heal up.

Yes, that’s the thing. You’re supposed to switch, not stay in 1 attunement (though it’s possible for some niche builds).

So it doesn’t matter that water doesn’t deal much damage, because that’s not what it was meant to do. You have fire for that, and you swap between the two whenever you think you need them.

Celestina.2894:

It’s worth noting that staff is a weapon with more of a support twist then the others while still being heavy on long range AoE.

and this is the problem imo…

at first, they announced it like fire will be aoe dmg, air single target dmg, water support/control and earth support/defense or something like that… now it is absolutely not true, maybe some of that on some weapons, but definitely not true overall… im not sure if its good or not…

main problem is that ele e.g. in water have very low dmg, why? ofc it should have lower dps, because half of skills are support or control, but why other skills are crap dmg too? if you have 2 skills to deal dmg its already lower dps then with 5 skills, why make even these 2 almost useless? it doesnt seems to be fair to me…

Staff being only a support weapon is a huge problem. We have no available 1200 range weapon that can be used for real damage specs.