Guild Wars 2

So been playing my ele for a while now, and some things i’ve noticed is the lack of options we have for a given situation because we can’t weapon swap in combat.

-Examples: D/D and S/D are both around melee range, so in wvw and vs a large majority of bosses via dungeons/Fractals, they become near useless…

Now I know most ele’s bring a backup staff for such situations, even though they arnt spec’ed into it, because some damage is better then no dmg (or rushing in with D/D to get 1 shotted by the boss)

Basically with the current design elementals are stuck with range “or” melee, when any other profession (excluding Engineer who is Only range) can have either or at the hit of a button.

Could attunements not directly effect atk range instead? Such as maybe Fire on Dagger would be melee range, but lighting could have long range abilities?

I understand why elementals dont have a weapon swap, because that would give them 8 sets of abilities on demand, but as is you’re really not set up for any given situation and unless u memorize dungeon bosses and when/what u need it can become a hassle.

Thoughts on the subject?

inb4-conjure weapons, they lack longevity, suffer from high CD’s and lack real dmg =/ not a solution imo

Thank you sire that you see it this way also. Every other class can go offense and defense by swapping weapons, can go range and melee with this mechanics (but an engie, however if you want to, they have medium armor and flamethrower is kind of “melee”).
I don’t mind being melee as an ele when I go for D/D. What I find annoying is the fact that being D/D is great and then a boss comes or a specific mob and I have to run away, wait and hide (sometimes nearly for 1 kitten minute) till I kind of “loose aggro” and am able to swap for Staff and party can go on (however the mob mostly is dead by then).
I am missing a possibility of “non-being-in-a-fight” weapon swap and the same with trait swap with 1 button.
Why can’t be there (for every class) a button where you can off fight swap weapon sets and at least 1 additional “off-fight” swap for traits?
This is not THAT difficult to implement and would make the life of many in PvE and WvW much easier.
You could leave this mechanic off PvP as it might break some things there but as an ele this would be awesome.
Imagine getting into a tower in WvW just before the attackers get to it, then get out of fight, press 1 button, get a staff, press another one and get the traits which you optimized for staff defense – here you won’t be able to swap any trait points! if you are 30/30/0/0/10 you’d still probably screw on healing however you could optimize the major traits…

Would that be a solution?
I doubt anyone in ANet reads this :P but hope dies the last…

MistyMountains.3751:

So been playing my ele for a while now, and some things i’ve noticed is the lack of options we have for a given situation because we can’t weapon swap in combat.

-Examples: D/D and S/D are both around melee range, so in wvw and vs a large majority of bosses via dungeons/Fractals, they become near useless…

Thoughts on the subject?

My personal thoughts are that the elementalist’s weapons aren’t defined by range as much as they are by role. A staff is just as effective at short range as it is at long range. Daggers have many gap closers, and are great at staying alive. Scepters are a bit inbetween, but 900 range is plenty for what they do.

Instead, staff is a support weapon, scepter a control/conditiondamagespam weapon, and daggers a power/burst weapon. The range is actually the least important aspect of the weapon, and when played well, can be ignored almost completely.

So no, I don’t feel that you need to add range. If you really do need the extra range, there’s conjure weapons, air elementals, arcane blast, glyph of storms and of course the water auto attack.

And on a side note, a build/equipment template style swap is in the works.

I don’t quite see the point or neccesity.
Scepter and Staff are just as effective on melee range as in range. So the only neccesity would be, if I go dagger, I can’t ranged dps. And I see no problem in that.

I don’t think combaring “I use daggers but on some mobs I have to reset and go staff but with my thief i just fight with 1 set of daggers and use weapon swap only to go shortbow for world bosses” that fair.
In many cases the ranged weapon would be not as effective because not fully specced for it, or having melee weapon redundant.

The weapon combination is chosen based on the combos/rotations you can accomplish with them in tandem. Not by the range “im gonna be half effective melee and spam 1, and then half effective ranged for bosses”, atleast not in my eyes. And if it is then it becomes a “casual player problem”. Of which personally I’m not interested.
(not saying there is no effective melee+ranged weapon combo. But say, rifle+hammer is good because of the crowd control rotations that you can do with both in combination, not necessarely because of the range difference)

Anyway, if Focus had it’s fire skills and water 4 altered then we could have a sort of melee/mid range combination.

S/D is no where near melee range. D/D isn’t really melee range either but close enough I guess.
I don’t get this. I never feel “useless” on my Elementalist. If you do feel “useless” when the other people are wrecking seige on the walls and AoE’ing your enemy than that’s probably cuz’ you are. Go run supply or make sure no more enemies get into the tower/keep.
Also, 1 shotted by the boss? I’m usually the one who runs in first to get the boss and his guards attention and throw down the first damage and I never die.

The issue is,

Since we cant weapon swap in combat, if we REQUIRE ranged, but we are D/D we cant. Im not saying we need a gap closer, im saying, you NEED to be ranged.

There is a boss in CoF normal (i think) that does a lot of damage if you are within melee range, I didnt know this and I had D/D equipped and literally became useless to my team. I just sat there hoping some minions would come out that i need to kill, but no, i sat there being useless.

Its fights like these that limit us so greatly that need to be addressed.

The issue is you need to plan ahead. You want everything available on demand? right…You either change your weapon out of combat or stay D/D. You know a boss is coming and did not change to other weapon? Who makes you do D/D in dungeons? You die, you learn your mistake and change your weapon.

@OP For me – S/D is good for dungeons. It provides medium range abilities which I usually find sufficient. If I feel we die a lot I switch to S/F. Evade more and the range would matter less.

Do not overrate other classes option to swap between melee and range weapon sets. While it is nice to have both swappable in combat, you become a master of none.

For example take a look at the warrior. To be competitive in melee you are forced to equip 2 melee weapon sets.

greatsword + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, no block
hammer + rifle/bow = mediocre melee dmg, no mobility, no block
axe/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre CC/interrupts
sword/shield + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, mediocre melee dmg
mace/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre melee dmg

As you see swapping between melee + range weapon sets is a trade-off for warriors.

Ele is fine. We must decide between (near) melee and range. In turn we get 20 skills with all the goodies (CC/interrupts, burst damage, condition damage, heals, mobility) other professions can dream off.

The grass is always greener on the other side!

lol, ele definitely is alright. I just did not know about the plan to implement trait and build and weapon swaps with a button like it was in GW1 (thanks god for that), good to hear that ANet did their homework.

Narhim.7345:

lol, ele definitely is alright. I just did not know about the plan to implement trait and build and weapon swaps with a button like it was in GW1 (thanks god for that), good to hear that ANet did their homework.

Is this true? A dual-spec button? That would be epic!

I only wish one thing regards to this: make switching weapons while
OUT OF COMBAT much easier. As a staff ele, I switch to S/D for ride
the lightning when getting to the main WvW zerg. I switch a bit on
my warrior too, depending on the upcoming situation.

As it stands now, opening your inventory and clicking items is cumbersome.
Worse yet, when you switch back to your original weapon, it places the
items in the beginning of your inventory mixed in with the trash drops.

If anything, have a weapon set button that is only usable out of combat.

frodamn.3706:

…if we REQUIRE ranged, but we are D/D we cant. Im not saying we need a gap closer, im saying, you NEED to be ranged…

There is a boss in CoF normal (i think) that does a lot of damage if you are within melee range, I didnt know this and I had D/D equipped and literally became useless to my team…

The water auto attack has a range of 600. That should be more than enough to circumvent that issue. The alternatives are running Frost Bow or, if neither of those are acceptable, hit and run attacks.

The price you pay for having higher damage is less flexibility with your range. I can understand why this may sometimes be an unacceptable issue, but think of it this way: if you normally deal twice the damage of a staff ele, and melee damage now limits you to attacking 50% of the time…your dps is still on par with the staff ele.

and you get double the number of skills to use. why are you complaining?

Elementalist already come with 24 different abilities with each weapon kit. 5 × 4 for the weapons and 3 utility. Giving them the ability to weapon swap and gain another 20 abilities seems a bit much.

The way I combat the lack of range and melee versatility is to keep a conjured weapon in my utility list. If I have a D/D build going, I’m going to have an Ice Arrow ready. If it’s a Staff build then I’m going to keep Electric Hammer.

That’s what the conjured weapons are for. Their damage is not as high as the primary weapons but you do get to some emergency variety of ability when the calls for it.

Also to fix the problem of the conjured weapon running out too fast is simple. Use about 4 or 5 skills of the weapon then run over and pickup your other weapon on the ground and continue another 5 or 6 abilities. By time you use both weapons your cooldown will almost be up.

teg.1340:

Do not overrate other classes option to swap between melee and range weapon sets. While it is nice to have both swappable in combat, you become a master of none.

For example take a look at the warrior. To be competitive in melee you are forced to equip 2 melee weapon sets.

greatsword + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, no block
hammer + rifle/bow = mediocre melee dmg, no mobility, no block
axe/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre CC/interrupts
sword/shield + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, mediocre melee dmg
mace/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre melee dmg

As you see swapping between melee + range weapon sets is a trade-off for warriors.

Ele is fine. We must decide between (near) melee and range. In turn we get 20 skills with all the goodies (CC/interrupts, burst damage, condition damage, heals, mobility) other professions can dream off.

The grass is always greener on the other side!

This guy understands it all perfectly. For Elementalist the Conjured weapon fills in your weakness.

Urrelles.4018:

Elementalist already come with 24 different abilities with each weapon kit. 5 × 4 for the weapons and 3 utility. Giving them the ability to weapon swap and gain another 20 abilities seems a bit much.

The way I combat the lack of range and melee versatility is to keep a conjured weapon in my utility list. If I have a D/D build going, I’m going to have an Ice Arrow ready. If it’s a Staff build then I’m going to keep Electric Hammer.

That’s what the conjured weapons are for. Their damage is not as high as the primary weapons but you do get to some emergency variety of ability when the calls for it.

Also to fix the problem of the conjured weapon running out too fast is simple. Use about 4 or 5 skills of the weapon then run over and pickup your other weapon on the ground and continue another 5 or 6 abilities. By time you use both weapons your cooldown will almost be up.

Is this really true? I have seen numerous posts espousing the use of the lightning hammer for damage. Someone recently posted weapon coefficients showing the auto-attack of the hammer to be greater than the auto-attacks of elementalists’ other weapons. I believe that conjures now provide stats comparable to equipped weapons and that the sigil on the elementalist’s primary equipped weapon applies to any conjured weapon. (I tested the latter last night.)

Moonrabbit.1543:

Urrelles.4018:

Elementalist already come with 24 different abilities with each weapon kit. 5 × 4 for the weapons and 3 utility. Giving them the ability to weapon swap and gain another 20 abilities seems a bit much.

The way I combat the lack of range and melee versatility is to keep a conjured weapon in my utility list. If I have a D/D build going, I’m going to have an Ice Arrow ready. If it’s a Staff build then I’m going to keep Electric Hammer.

That’s what the conjured weapons are for. Their damage is not as high as the primary weapons but you do get to some emergency variety of ability when the calls for it.

Also to fix the problem of the conjured weapon running out too fast is simple. Use about 4 or 5 skills of the weapon then run over and pickup your other weapon on the ground and continue another 5 or 6 abilities. By time you use both weapons your cooldown will almost be up.

Is this really true? I have seen numerous posts espousing the use of the lightning hammer for damage. Someone recently posted weapon coefficients showing the auto-attack of the hammer to be greater than the auto-attacks of elementalists’ other weapons. I believe that conjures now provide stats comparable to equipped weapons and that the sigil on the elementalist’s primary equipped weapon applies to any conjured weapon. (I tested the latter last night.)

You are right……to a degree. The Lightning Hammer has insane damage. However after level 65 many people say the Frost Bow damage drops. Other than that, the Flamesword is the only other high damage conjure people speak of. I personally can say the hammer is excellent damage. It’s my primary weapon now.

agree.. attunement is a handicap becouse its build so you need 2-3 spells to do the same most classes can do with 1 and the cd’s are much longer for the same effect.
add to that you only got 1 fighting range and yer….
the traits are without any synergi, 20% cd reduction, NOPE only for 1 element type -.- so 4 traits to get what other gets for 1-2…. and it keeps on like this… the idea is good, the execution is just overkill on the nerfed side.

S/D is far from useless in dungeons and fractals… I usually go melee range as it suits my style but I can attack from range if necessary. I am beginning to think the majority of those threads come from D/D-only users.

teg.1340:

Do not overrate other classes option to swap between melee and range weapon sets. While it is nice to have both swappable in combat, you become a master of none.

For example take a look at the warrior. To be competitive in melee you are forced to equip 2 melee weapon sets.

greatsword + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, no block
hammer + rifle/bow = mediocre melee dmg, no mobility, no block
axe/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre CC/interrupts
sword/shield + rifle/bow = no CC/interrupts, mediocre melee dmg
mace/shield + rifle/bow = no mobility, mediocre melee dmg

As you see swapping between melee + range weapon sets is a trade-off for warriors.

Ele is fine. We must decide between (near) melee and range. In turn we get 20 skills with all the goodies (CC/interrupts, burst damage, condition damage, heals, mobility) other professions can dream off.

The grass is always greener on the other side!

You’re quite bias on your write up so I fixed it for you. Please do not come here and tell us that there is no cc/interrupt with using a shield or rifle…

greatsword + rifle/bow = Great melee damage + an additional evade. Ranged cripple to catch target. Great mobility. Great range damaage with 1 additional cc if using rifle.

hammer + rifle/bow = Good melee damage and mobility and CC. Great range damage with 1 additional cc if using rifle.

axe/shield + rifle/bow = Good CC/Interrupts, good mobility. Awesome melee damage with axe 1 chain

sword/shield + rifle/bow = mediocre CC/interrupts, mediocre melee dmg. This is more for condition build…

mace/shield + rifle/bow = Low mobility however we have range kd to catch our target, mediocre melee dmg, awesome range damage