Guild Wars 2

The Ele will lose access to his attunements and instead get access to a one handed sword* and have three attunement slots instead of four. The first is your weapon set while the other two are fire abilities that you’ll have regardless of your weapon equipped. The fourth slot is your pet’s skill so in a way it’s ranger light. Both non-weapon fire attunements focus on damage, utility, CC, and cleansing. Fire Overload can still happen and can even be improved to expand its AoE field.

I might axe some of the healing though since adding too much would defeat the purpose of denying the water and earth attunements. AoE damage (power and burning), the awesome pet, and reveal are the big themes with a minor in cleansing. If the pet seems to make things way overpowered it’s no big, it could become a ranger pet instead I’d totes main ranger just for that awesome pet!

Traits:

• Minor adept: Gain pyromancy and swords. You gain a fire lion as a pet. It would have red fur and a fire mane and tail tip.

• Major adept 1: Applies reveal to anyone within 150 unit radius of you. Cooldown 30 seconds. Potentially underpowered as a stealthed ranger pet or minion could trigger the proc or potentially overpowered.

• Major adept 2: Apply vigor to nearby teammates whenever you swap to pyromancy set 2.

• Major adept 3: Your pet applies an extra couple stacks of burning on his attacks.

• Minor master: Your pet deals more damage.

• Major master 1: Your pet’s search and rescue (if slotted) expands to 900, up from 600.

• Major master 2: Bright meteors apply reveal for an extra second and apply weakness.

• Major master 3: Healing skills increased by 15%

• Grandmaster minor: Gain might when swapping pyromancy skillsets.

• Grandmaster major 1: Every stack of burning you cause stacks more regeneration and vigor duration upon allies.

• Grandmaster major 2: Your pet taunts foes upon you or him being critically hit. Cooldown 45 seconds for the proc.

• Grandmaster major 3: Fire overload’s radius is bigger. Also grants stability upon casting.

Pyromancer sword abilities:

• Autoattack: slice-slash-crippling strike

• Sword 2: flashing blade.

• Sword 3: Is basically blurred frenzy being an evade and attack in one but causes burning too.

Anything but warhorn (since elite specs can’t and shouldn’t be stackable) can be offhand but you’ll only have access to fire attunement’s offhand skills. Sword/dagger will likely be recommended while staff and main hand scepter and dagger for other builds.

Pyromancy set 1:

• Autoattack: Fire small fireballs from your hands. Similar to thief pistol autoattack in damage modifier and rate of fire.

• Blinding flame: causes reveal and blindness within the targetted radius.

• Purifying flames: heals conditions off allies (two conditions every second) and applies burning to enemies. Lasts three seconds with a cooldown of 25 seconds.

• Lava flesh: Just like obsidian flesh. Character turns red (I’ve seen red characters from boxes of fun so the effect for the telegraph is already in the game).

• Walls of fire: knocks down the enemy for 0.5 seconds (3 seconds in PvE) everytime they try getting out of or crossing the circle. Is intended for hard zoning (as opposed to soft zoning with a skill like fire or air overload where the character can cross, but take damage or need to consume a resource to safely do so) and situational. Cooldown 40 seconds.

Pyromancy set 2:

• Autoattack: Like ride the lightning but with a fire leash instead of lightning.

• Bright meteors: Just like meteor shower but applies revealed to whomever it hits.

• Reflector flame: creates a reflection field so hostile projectiles get reflected back if fired from the outside. If hostile projectiles are inside the field they’ll be destroyed. 30 second cooldown.

• Burn baby burn: Causes an AoE daze plus burning. Is basically the Druid’s Lunar Beam with burning added with a fire magic flavor.

• Healing flames: Heals allies nearby and grants a fire aura to all nearby allies (five max with priority going to players, then pets, then NPCs). Is basically a copy of wash the pain away with a fire aura at the end and fire graphics.

The fire overload charges when you’re in your weapon set, just like tempest.

Pet skills:

• Search and rescue

• Ferocious stalker: The pet stealths and pounces upon the ele’s target with a rapid attack plus evade like the smokeskelk’s ability. As usual causes burning because he’s a lion made of fire! Hello!

• Maneater: each attack causes lifesteal for the pet and ele.

Utilities:

• Fire boarding: Ride a tidal wave of fire and surf away. Is basically just eye of the storm with a sick telegraph. Since you won’t have access to tempest in this spec I thought this made sense. Unlike Eye of the Storm however the skill is completely personal so you won’t be able to tactically wait for two of your teammates to get CC’d to use it (if you didn’t need to use it before for a disengage). If you see an ele surfing on lava just remember the lava itself is safe but the ele has superspeed. Not a subtle tell but the game needs to be a wee bit better at telegraphs across the board for all classes.

• Flames of time: Slows and damages foes while granting alacrity for allies. Since chill isn’t appropriate for a pyromancer I otherwise copied well of recall from Chronomancer.

• Procession of fire: like procession of blades but rains fireswords in the area instead.

• Flameward step: lay a mark somewhere and when the enemy steps there it causes revealed, burning, and becomes flamward pursuit. Basically the thief’s shadow trap with a pyromancer flavor.

• Elite skill: Avatar of Fire. Become an avatar of fire and gain stability, might, resistence, and protection.

Avatar of Fire abilities:

• Autoattack: punch.

• Roundhouse kick: knocks down your foe for two seconds.

• Volcanic rupture: lava bursts forth from the area the AoF ran past. Is like surge of the mist in that the character simply runs forward, but instead the ground opens up immediately behind them.

• Pet toss: Throw your pet at your foe, causing confusion and bleeding.

• Don’t know what to put here.

I suspect the elite spec isn’t quite balanced but what changes would you make to it to bring it in line? I don’t like powercreep and may seem OP in places but other classes would be given nice goodies too. He’s also locked out of his typical elemental attunements so he has to sacrifice earth, wind, and water weapon abilities.

*Or shortbow but I haven’t thought of weapon skills for that yet.

Agemnon.4608:

• Pet toss: Throw your pet at your foe, causing confusion and bleeding.

That would be an awesome ability.. A flaming lion projectile incoming!

Change name into “Pyromaniac” and make characters to laugh maniacally when ever using skills, or when ever setting a foe on fire.

Keep thinking about the rest, but please don’t even consider adding a pet. It’s been such an anchor holding down rangers ever since GW2 arrived, and I’m ready to say that pets just don’t fit in a game where mobility and dodging are important. Elementalists don’t need that burden added even in a specialization.

The Ele will lose access to his attunements…

I’ve stopped reading here. Simply put this is to short sighted, the core elementalist have ton of traits that make use of attunments. An elite spec can’t possibly discard 4 traitline out of 6.

If you wanted to do a Pyromancer elite spec, it would be better to just tweak a bit each attunment like tempest do. For example :

- Fire : when you use it again when in fire attunment, create a blast of flame
- Air : when you use it again when in air attunment, create a fiery wind
- Earth : when you use it again when in earth attunment, create a magma pool
- Water : when you use it again when in water attunment, create a liquid flame

Stentorian Goat.7241:

Keep thinking about the rest, but please don’t even consider adding a pet. It’s been such an anchor holding down rangers ever since GW2 arrived, and I’m ready to say that pets just don’t fit in a game where mobility and dodging are important. Elementalists don’t need that burden added even in a specialization.

Alright then. I thought the pet mechanic was kinda unorthodox for Elementalist so I left it on the table to avoid a net gimping. The fire lion could still be great for rangers.

I’ve stopped reading here. Simply put this is too short sighted, the core elementalist have ton of traits that make use of attunments. An elite spec can’t possibly discard 4 traitline out of 6.

I’m going off a philosophy of giving something up to obtain excellent results in another area. The guardian going from base guardian to dragonhunter already has his virtues swapped with DH abilities so we already see this implemented on a class.

• Fire : when you use it again when in fire attunment, create a blast of flame
  - Air : when you use it again when in air attunment, create a fiery wind
  - Earth : when you use it again when in earth attunment, create a magma pool
  - Water : when you use it again when in water attunment, create a liquid flame*

Maybe that could work like the air attunement giving reveal and water cleanse and burning? The way I proposed though avoids a lot of work redoing lots of unique weapon skills for a weapon set change. As long as big damage (power and/or burning) and nice AoE reveal access get in there somehow.

Guardian’s trade their virtues for other virtues that all work off the same traits and skills that the original virtues do. A trait that buffs Virtue of Justice still works on Spear of Justice. A trait that buffs Virtue of Resolve still works with Wings of Resolve.

That’s completely different than entirely discarding all attunements besides Fire. That would render so many traits completely useless. Any trait that only works in Water / Earth / Air, useless. Zephyr’s Speed, Stone Flesh, Soothing Mist, all “Training” traits (Aeromancer, Geomancer, Hydromancer). Any trait that activates on swapping to Water / Earth / Air, useless. Lighting Strike, Healing Ripple, Earthen Blast, Elemental Attunement. Not to mention heavily restricting Glyphs.

Losing something is fine, but elite specs still have to work with the core specs. That’s one of the main design philosophies that Anet themselves have put forth, that the elite specs need to work with core specs, not against them.

Agemnon.4608:

The way I proposed though avoids a lot of work redoing lots of unique weapon skills for a weapon set change. As long as big damage (power and/or burning) and nice AoE reveal access get in there somehow.

This is basically a non-issue. No rework has to be done to weapons for an elite spec. Unless the spec is specifically about that. That’s why we get new weapons. The new weapon is designed for the spec, the others are left as they are.

Yannir.4132:

Agemnon.4608:

The way I proposed though avoids a lot of work redoing lots of unique weapon skills for a weapon set change. As long as big damage (power and/or burning) and nice AoE reveal access get in there somehow.

This is basically a non-issue. No rework has to be done to weapons for an elite spec. Unless the spec is specifically about that. That’s why we get new weapons. The new weapon is designed for the spec, the others are left as they are.

I thought about that but figured that a sage pyromancer would be very OP since it’ll have access to water healing skills (though the lack of wash the pain away would prevent it wait, of course!) Maybe it could be like tempest like mentioned above but instead of the ability being specific to the element it’ll be specific to fire. But then it’s essentially Tempest with different skills. Nothing wrong there objectively, but people look forward to mechanical changes accompanying a spec while replacement keeps power creep in check since instead of having it all plus some new mechanic you give something up to be superior in another area. Core game traitlines need to be looked at again (for all classes) to take into account elite specs and sync with them.

Air skill: AoE Reveal and power damage field lasting four seconds.
Water: Cleansing field that grants five stacks of might with modest burning application. Lasts a second and a half.
Fire: Stacks burning and some power damage.
Earth: AoE Reveal and stability plus modest power damage. Lasts three seconds (stacks reveal the longer a foe stays in its radius up to 30 seconds of reveal max)

The applicability of attunement-based traits is a good issue to bring up. However, they could simply apply when switching to the different pyromancy sets.

This would mean that some trait lines might not have a place to which they link, so I’d also propose that the pyromancy sets automatically swap to match with the first and second trait lines you select.