Guild Wars 2

From what I understood it kinda works like the thief’s skill 3 mechanic where it’s different depending on what main-hand and off-hand weapon combination they use.
However since it’s 4 attunments 2 of which are active it makes 12 different combinations depending which attunment is used for main-hand and which for off-hand.
It would look like this:

- Fire/Water
- Fire/Air
- Fire/Earth
- Water/Fire
- Water/Air
- Water/Earth
- Air/Fire
- Air/Water
- Air/Earth
- Earth/Fire
- Earth/Water
- Earth/Air

Of couse the skills would be the same regardless of combo use like Fire/Water and Fire/Air skills 1 and 2 would be the same. Or Earth/Water and Air/Water would have the same 4 and 5 skills. Also skill 3 will probably be the same when using same attunment combinations in reverse, like Air/Water and Water/Air will have same skill 3.

However I am wondering how the Glyphs will react to this, as they give different effect depending on the selected attunment, however I suspect the main-hand attunment will be their effect selection then.

Your math is a bit off.

For one thing, order doesn’t matter for the attunements, Fire / Earth and Earth / Fire are the same skill. So that drops it down to 6 base combinations. F/A, F/E, F/W, W/A, W/E, A/E.

But then you also missed that each “pure” / double attune counts as another potential combination, so that’s 4 more for a total of 10. Granted, all the double attunes are the old skill 3 attacks (other than Sword obviously) so maybe you were only counting new attacks.

Assuming you’re talking only about the combination skill (3), of course. Order DOES matter if you’re just talking about the entire weapon kill bar.

From the footage WP showed, only the attunement you currently have on your maindhand half / left side counts in terms of traits and stuff. So yeah, I would expect that Glyphs would react the same way and work off the left side of your bar / mainhand.

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

Well hopefully with the dual skills barrier trait will have enough survival without having to spam heals. Remembering the 6 combo will take awhile. Weavers will gain extra vitality as well.

mazut.4296:

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

Agree with yo,u really hope ele has a bit of durability given most heal skills sit on skill 3/5.

mazut.4296:

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

The way I see it, the 3sec global does what the charge time on Tempest for overloads was supposed to do… it creates a loss that is equally weighted to the new mechanic. With Tempest the idea was that you’d give up some versatility by making you remain in attunements longer to gain some new powerful abilities… but that didn’t work out at all, the charge up time was short enough that people could still dance between attunements quite easily for all the versatility in the world. I still attunement dance on my Elementalist as a Tempest exactly how I did before HoT with no difference other than now I have 1 extra spell per attunement that is more powerful than everything else.

With the weaver, they are enforcing the penalty via a global cooldown. You gain these new powers and the versatility of dual attunement at the cost of you can’t just attunement dance as you please anymore, you have to be more thoughtful of your actions.

Panda.1967:

mazut.4296:

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

The way I see it, the 3sec global does what the charge time on Tempest for overloads was supposed to do… it creates a loss that is equally weighted to the new mechanic. With Tempest the idea was that you’d give up some versatility by making you remain in attunements longer to gain some new powerful abilities… but that didn’t work out at all, the charge up time was short enough that people could still dance between attunements quite easily for all the versatility in the world. I still attunement dance on my Elementalist as a Tempest exactly how I did before HoT with no difference other than now I have 1 extra spell per attunement that is more powerful than everything else.

With the weaver, they are enforcing the penalty via a global cooldown. You gain these new powers and the versatility of dual attunement at the cost of you can’t just attunement dance as you please anymore, you have to be more thoughtful of your actions.

Firstly with tempest although you can switch between attunements to keep casting you couldn’t switch back into certain attunements as often as say an old arcane type d/d ele would, I definitely wouldn’t say there is no difference.

There are times when I skip an overload to use other skills, so its not just a no brainer every time (in PvP).

The second thing is this mechanic means that it takes 3 seconds to access skills 3,4 and 5 which is a very heavy cost. Quickly switching to water and using off hand skills to heal (or gain invulnerability in the case of a focus or reflect projectiles from say staff) will not be possible – you will need to think a lot further ahead with the new spec.

Thinking about it a bit more, its sad that it will be harder to combo the blast finisher from the dagger off hand if my understanding of the mechanics are correct.

All that said, I still think the new spec is really cool and I am definitely not calling it weak (or strong) without trying it and the other classes out.

I saw a skill in that stream that allows you to swap whole elements for a while, like core ele… might be useful

Supz.9836:

The second thing is this mechanic means that it takes 3 seconds to access skills 3,4 and 5 which is a very heavy cost. Quickly switching to water and using off hand skills to heal (or gain invulnerability in the case of a focus or reflect projectiles from say staff) will not be possible – you will need to think a lot further ahead with the new spec.

Yea it requires you to plan actions a little more in advance, but is that really so bad? It’s higher skill threshold for a greater reward…

Lets look at your two weapon examples real quick…

Focus, going Earth Attune for Invuln… Earth has some pretty decent offensive powers on 1 & 2, and in the case of Scepter even offers a decent defensive power on 2. The combined 3 skill may very well offer you your Invuln or even Barrier making the necessity to attune a second time immediately no longer a major concern. Given that Earth is a very defensive attunement to begin with, it’s actually quite likely that the earth combos will have some very solid defensive bonuses.

Focus, going Water for healing… well first off if your going water for healing with a Focus you really need to check your skill descriptions again… Focus is completely offensive in Water attunement… If you’re mainhanding Scepter then you might have a problem as you’re only heal is on 3, but, since Water is a largely support focused attunement the odds are any Water combo will provide some reliable support benefit as well.

Staff, going Earth for Reflect… ok for this one you will have to deal with the 3 second delay unless at least one of the Earth combos on staff offers something comparable to Reflect. However, if you’re switching from Air, then you do still have Static Field which if you use it effectively will give you a window of reprieve from it’s stun just long enough for you to get that 2nd Earth attune off for your Magnetic Aura…

Staff, going Water for healing… well you have Water Blast… I know it’s not much… but it’s something to get a quick heal off while waiting for your second attunement to get Geyser and Healing Rain…

That said… I do see your point… and maybe with any luck, ANet could be convinced to allow the attunement you just attuned to to not be included in the global cooldown… that way you can attune to a singular element with a quick double tap, but dual attuning still has to deal with a global cooldown.