Guild Wars 2

Old suggestion perhaps, but I figured a way to implement which would make it simpler for ANet to maintain power parity with the other professions, make the Ele easier to learn and harder to master, and a bunch of other benefits besides.

What my idea regards is basically to reduce each weapon set to a core “idea” and then use the Attunements as “flavor.” So for example, Dagger #2 is a facing required cone channel, at least right now in Fire and Water attunements. What you do is make Dagger #2 a cone channel under each attunement, where the straight damage is always the same regardless of attunement, and then the attunements add effects (visual and statistical) to differentiate them.

When using Dagger #2 for example, we could put the cooldown at, say 8 seconds, then regardless of which attunement you’re in, when you use it the skill goes on CD. So it becomes a tactical choice if you want to use Drake’s Breath for damage and a burn, Cone of Cold for damage and a heal, “Lightning Hose” for damage and a blind or stun, or “Breath of the Great Dwarf” for damage and a bleed or cripple.

So Elementalists would then have the same number of skills available as any other profession, with comparable cooldowns and damage adjustments, while the attunements give the skills versatility.

ANet could then designate each weapon for a specific use (making it easier to add weapons to the repertoire in later patches or expansions), such as Daggers being PBAoE weapons, the Staff a long range AoE weapon, the Scepter being a mid range single target weapon, and the Focus a highly defensive weapon. These uses would remain the same under each attunement, so Focus #5 would be an invulnerability skill on a specific timer, with secondary effects determined by the attunement.

This would remove the need for attunement cooldowns entirely, since switching attunements would not actually give the Ele access to any more skills, but instead simply alters in some fashion the graphical and secondary effects. Since many professions’ skills are designed with multiple effects (i.e. Blurred Frenzy doing damage with an invulnerability component) what this change would really do is simply allow Eles to choose from a variety of elemental effects to apply to their skills.

Then Eles could have access to a weapon swap to give some tactical flexibility. Staff #5 is kind of a good example, Meteor Storm could do damage and a knockdown, Healing Rain would be changed to Hailstorm doing the same damage and an AoE heal/condi clear, Static Field would do damage and the stun, and Shockwave would be a targeted AoE that does damage and launches targets away from the center of the AoE. Staff #5 would be on a 30 sec CD (or whatever is deemed appropriate) that goes on CD regardless of which attunement the Ele is in.

In essence, reduce Ele’s access to skills to five per set, give the weapon swap, and let Attunements modify the skills’ secondary effects. For those familiar with the concept, attunements become a sort of elemental metamagic.

Sounds boring.

A set type of skill that only changes by attunement means you have 4 skills that just do different effects instead of skills that are different with different effects like we have now.

This would really make it boring playing Ele because this is really simple and makes the Ele play like every other class just with different effects. It would require less thought to play ele which is not why I personally play Ele and get bored of my other classes easily.

Sorry I lost it at “breath of the great dwarf” and couldn’t finish the rest

Anyway this would take a lot of fun out of playing ele I think, cutting skills in half and making attunements schizophrenic with all the swapping.

Personally I like the idea of giving a weapon swap but allowing the same attunement, so an ele might be a fire/ice ele with dagger fire/water + staff fire/water,, or maybe earth/earth/fire/water for conditions, and so on. This would give individual eles more flavor and allow them to ditch useless attunement sets for ones that fit their build. This would clearly break the game though in so many ways so nevermind.

oZii.2864:

Sounds boring.

A set type of skill that only changes by attunement means you have 4 skills that just do different effects instead of skills that are different with different effects like we have now.

This would really make it boring playing Ele because this is really simple and makes the Ele play like every other class just with different effects. It would require less thought to play ele which is not why I personally play Ele and get bored of my other classes easily.

How about we get over the idea that an Ele takes some sort of elite training to play first, and second realize exactly what I’m trying to describe.

For example, each weapon’s auto-attack does the same thing, just with a different graphic and secondary effect. Fireball is damage with an impact AoE component, whereas Water Blast is damage with an impact heal component. Right now these are two separate skills due to attunement swapping, when really they’re exactly the same just with different secondary effects.

ANet could take the attunements and make them offer an inherent bonus, such as Fire adding 50% damage, Water halving damage but increasing heals by 50%, Lightning doubling Blind or Stun duration etc.

The idea is to get rid of four sets of redundant, half or quarter power skills compared to the rest of the professions, and instead make each skill as powerful as any other profession’s and use the attunements to determine their visual and secondary effects. Normalizing the damage of each skill allows easier and better balancing, and while at first it may seem simplistic to the untrained eye, this type of system allows for greater flexibility and skill combos, unrestricted to “rotations.”

As yet another example, ANet could make the Dagger #3 the movement skill for Eles. Make it a 10 second CD comparable to other professions. Then you’d have Burning Speed, RtL, Magnetic Grasp and an undetermined Water movement skill (Path of Ice, Slippery Ground?) on the same skill slot, depending on which attunement you were in. If you use RtL it puts the skill on CD, and you’re unable to access the movement skill until the CD is up. Which puts the requirement on the player to make sound tactical decisions rather than burning through every skill CD as soon as they come up.

In turn, this means that balancing the Ele would no longer penalize less used, non-meta builds due to nerfing the one power build, because skill rotations wouldn’t really exist as they do now, it would be more about using the appropriate attunement at the right time, instead of blasting through all attunements and cooldowns to maximize damage.

Kaleban.9834:

oZii.2864:

Sounds boring.

A set type of skill that only changes by attunement means you have 4 skills that just do different effects instead of skills that are different with different effects like we have now.

This would really make it boring playing Ele because this is really simple and makes the Ele play like every other class just with different effects. It would require less thought to play ele which is not why I personally play Ele and get bored of my other classes easily.

How about we get over the idea that an Ele takes some sort of elite training to play first, and second realize exactly what I’m trying to describe.

For example, each weapon’s auto-attack does the same thing, just with a different graphic and secondary effect. Fireball is damage with an impact AoE component, whereas Water Blast is damage with an impact heal component. Right now these are two separate skills due to attunement swapping, when really they’re exactly the same just with different secondary effects.

ANet could take the attunements and make them offer an inherent bonus, such as Fire adding 50% damage, Water halving damage but increasing heals by 50%, Lightning doubling Blind or Stun duration etc.

The idea is to get rid of four sets of redundant, half or quarter power skills compared to the rest of the professions, and instead make each skill as powerful as any other profession’s and use the attunements to determine their visual and secondary effects. Normalizing the damage of each skill allows easier and better balancing, and while at first it may seem simplistic to the untrained eye, this type of system allows for greater flexibility and skill combos, unrestricted to “rotations.”

As yet another example, ANet could make the Dagger #3 the movement skill for Eles. Make it a 10 second CD comparable to other professions. Then you’d have Burning Speed, RtL, Magnetic Grasp and an undetermined Water movement skill (Path of Ice, Slippery Ground?) on the same skill slot, depending on which attunement you were in. If you use RtL it puts the skill on CD, and you’re unable to access the movement skill until the CD is up. Which puts the requirement on the player to make sound tactical decisions rather than burning through every skill CD as soon as they come up.

In turn, this means that balancing the Ele would no longer penalize less used, non-meta builds due to nerfing the one power build, because skill rotations wouldn’t really exist as they do now, it would be more about using the appropriate attunement at the right time, instead of blasting through all attunements and cooldowns to maximize damage.

No.

I didn’t say anything about elite skill the extra complexity is why I play Ele personally.

I see the thought behind your idea and that is why I said it sounds boring. It is simple instead of there being 20 different skills your asking for 20 of the same skills their effects only change depending on attunement. That is why I said it sounds boring and it is simple. So all the skills have the same skill coefficient the only thing that changes for each skill is what it does based on your attunement but in function and probably in animation they would all be similar.

It’s simple and easy and straight forward. It’s a Warrior.

Sounds like a boring change. There are other classes to play if you don’t like having access to a large number of skills. Might I suggest Warrior?

the idea itself is not bad and has some nice thoughts behind it but imo that would be a complete change to elementalists – it is like you would add cds to thieves’ weapon skills.
That would completely change the class and I think no one would like that

The only thing the ele really needs is a redesign on attunement. It should be a flat 10 sec cd and the trait should be changed to something other than attunement redunction.