Guild Wars 2

Anyone else think it’d be a lot easier for ele to survive if we had weapon swapping?

I personally think we have plenty to swap between already

Well of course.

There are a lot of good reasons why we can’t though. Although I really want an outside combat weapon switch.

I’d be happy with even just a place in character equipment to have another weapon in. I wouldn’t say it should be during combat switch. However It would be nice to have the spaces; no?

We already have 20 weapon skills. Allowing a weapon swap in combat would put us up to 40.

Most classes have 10. I don’t think we need to go up to 40.

A weapon swap out of combat, however, would be nice.

It’s a serious shortcoming for eles. Particularly if you are going dagger/dagger: you’re locked into melee combat, attunements bekitten

On my warrior I can switch from sword/axe to longbow and do moderate damage at range if things get too hot for melee.

In this case, the warrior’s 10 skills from two weapon sets gives you more options than an elementalist’s 20 skills from 4 attunements.

I play Dagger/dagger & whilst it`s fun (most of the time) it`s Staff play in WvWvWs (& I imagine dungeons also, not done any).
Great, you`d think, but Staff damage is kind of very low & is for throwing sparkles onto/down from walls. CCs are long casts, so also little use against players.
Get any player (or critter) in sight & they head straight for you, even if a billion players in front of you.
Staff is virtually useless when toe to toe & this is why we need weapon swap.
Fine, if they don`t want us having 40 skills to traispe through, at least add it so we don`t just have to keep doing Alt-F4 due to getting sick of being kitten`d on & have a choice when we`re heading into/being targetted in combat…

Arenanet originally said something along the lines of Elementalists don`t have weapon swap because it`s a difficult profession to start with & this`d only confuse more, but if needed it may be added.

Well, guess what…..

/grovel

I tried D/S and found that I wasn’t happy with the gameplay. Then I went back to my Staff, which I love, and find the damage is great (for me at least), but now I’m wishing I could switch between D/D and Staff because there were some neat and fun spells that I really enjoyed.

I almost wish I could customize the staff spells. Switch things around to my liking. That would be nice, but I know that is wishful thinking.

We’ll probably get weapon swapping when they add trait quick swapping which, after level 40, you need to do anyway once you start swapping weapons.

I don’t think we really need it (it’d be handy at low levels, but I don’t find myself swapping so much anymore), and it’s not any different than my guardian who uses sword/staff swapping in a scepter when I go to WvW.

We have twice as many skills as a Thief, but it doesn’t matter when Heartseeker can do significantly more damage than anything we have…

Weapon swapping during combat would be way unnecessary and not only make them overpowered, but WAY overcomplicated, trying to swap between D/D Earth and Staff Fire or whatever.

That said, I definitely think that both Eles and Eng should be able to swap weapons outside of combat, in that you should be able to designate your preferred alternate weapon and switch between them as easily as hitting “~”, so long as you aren’t in a fight at the time, rather than having to manually swap them in from your inventory.

While I definitely don’t think we need weapon swap per se’ In that we’ve plenty to “swap” between. It’d be nice if say, switching attunements or something could somehow count as swapping, just because of sigils that trigger only on Swap (and for some reason I remember a good number of said sigils being ele-flavored, which was disappointing) and anything else that gives a buff on swap.

The number of skills for elementalist is largely superficial though; S/D or D/D water is all but useless except for saving a slot on condition removal. Its healing isn’t enough to justify the attunement cooldown, and theres no reason to DPS in it.

Same with air. I don’t use it for anything but traveling or tagging mobs really quickly since Scepter 2 is instant.

That leaves fire and earth, and well…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Why-swap-attunements-when-utility-is-not-needed/first#post125076

When you consider the significant damage disparity between ranged and melee, in addition to the risks of it, i think i would prefer the option to swap between them when its reasonable to do so.

But seriously, it would be like if a warrior could only choose to swap between axe/axe and great sword, which both fulfill the same role.

I think all the casts should have the weapon swap in a diferent way for example the ele could do it only out of combat..
Because I have less space in my bag and it is very annoying to open the Hero panel or invertory..

No way.

Ele has allready the most skills of any class and you want to increase this?

No body needs more skills just an easy way to swap weappons out of combat..

In WvW the ele is very bad with staff in 1v1 (meele..) but good in aoe.. dagger is bad for any range atack.. (in any element..)

Why does everyone think so one-dimensional? Ele indeed needs weapon swapping seeing our damage in close combat is just bad. They could even put a 3 second cool down so it can’t be swapped every second. Why should i have to open my stats every time i want to swap my Ele’s weapon. that just sucks.

We don’t need weapon swap, don’t be silly.

I wish i could re-roll my ele with a box on its head.

Our attunment swaping is actuallly less effective than swap between 2 weapons only

i would love to see out of combat swap atleast or if we get combat one to be with atleast 1 min Cooldown like most of our abilites half of wich are usless

I would like weapon swap (ooc) just for easy of inventory management, having to search all my darn bags for my staff when I want to swap is a pain.

I can understand and agree with in combat weapon swapping but out of combat would just make it a little easier to manage my weapons as I could have the slot ready for when I want to swap over for group support / event, it would help my play style more then give me a greater edge. The time it takes sometimes to find my staff or both daggers is painful at times

This actually applies to all classes without a weapon swap ability, please add it as out of combat swapping.

Thanks.

I dont mind not having weapon swap (although alternating between long range AoE and single target close-mid range would be nice), what I want is a skill set on any weapon I equip to play as efficiently as any other class. Note how I say efficient. I don’t mind doing a song and dance to do the same damage or survive as well as any other profession, just let me do this at a similar speed and consistency to any other class.

I’d love to have an out of combat weapon swap for convenience purposes (WvW namely), in combat swap won’t happen.

Yes for the out of combat weapon swap please. Just give us the same second weapon set as other professions but disable the swap option when we enter combat.

The real problem isn’t so much the lack of weapon swapping, since we do have a considerable number of abilities, but that we’re locked more into a range and general play-style with whichever weapon we choose to use at any time. So while most other classes can equip two weapons which allow greatly differing playstyles (like maybe melee defensive with mace/shield and a longbow for long-ranged AoE) elementalists are locked into a range (and occasionally locked into something like AoE as with staff).

What I’d love to see eventually is another weapon for the elementalist that has different ranges for each attunement. Something like 1200 for air, 900 for fire, 600/400 for water and melee range for earth, and perhaps have it get increasingly more AoE focused as the range reduces.

Not needed, swap out of combat and don’t get ambushed.

Out of combat swap is needed.

A lack of weapon swapping wouldn’t be an issue if our conjured weapons were useful.

The only weapon swapping that we should receive is the addition of conjured weapons to the secondary slot for the sake of swapping.

I think it’s needed. Other classes can switch from ranged to melee, but we’re stuck with whatever we pick. Guy sitting on top of a cliff? better not have daggers equipped. Guy on yourkitten while you’re rocking a staff? Better have your kitting shoes on.

1) Out of combat weapon swap – At least. Opening that hero panel while navigating to the next event or whatever is… opening it anytime just to switch weapons is annoying.

2) In combat weapon swap. – IMO having 20 abilities isn’t a good enough reason to do away with this completely. My Guardian and Ranger can both leap into a melee fight then dodge out and lay waste with ranged attacks if they so wish. Thanks for the 20 skills but it feels like without being able to adapt to the situation on the fly, I’ve got less skills than either of my other toons.

To the elementalists saying elementalists don’t need weapons swap. Really well done for getting as far as you have without finding this really frustrating, and really well done for working on a playstyle which adapts to situations you were not expecting or were forced in to. Seriously.

To anyone else saying elementalists don’t need weapon swap purely based on the number of skills an ele has access to, go play an ele to a reasonably high level and then come back and say it again. >.>

elementalist “complex” gameplay is so overrated imo.
just because they have more weapon abilities doesn’t make it that much harder past the “learning cap”.

also, it’s not like anet wouldn’t have ways to limit weapon switching by say, putting every attunement on cooldown when switching weapons or giving it a huge cd (60+s in combat would already be plenty long enough if you ask me), etc.

i’d highly welcome it any day.

Yes. We really need an out of combat swap. I use the staff, but it would be great to place 2 daggers or something in a quick change place just like all other classes can do.

I would enjoy an out of combat swap,, not fussed for a weapon swap during combat.

If Elementalist could weapon swap in combat… he’d be by the strongest class there is… so why not?

Originally wanted weapon swap because going through bags looking for both weapons is a pain, but if I use staff for WvWs, bosses etc, I`m stuck with that.
Any player comes at me I`m kitten`d.
Staff against melee is pointless, where as daggers we stand a chance.

Gimme swap already!! (& a downed state that is of use)

/grovel

To be honest I’ve managed to get to the point where I don’t feel I especially need it, with Scepter/Dagger and a Glypho of Elemental Power I can manage ranged, close and area combat well enough.

But I very rarely use staff or dagger/dagger or dagger/focus or scepter/focus. I’d like to for varieties sake but if I’m running towards an event with dagger/dagger going to the menu to equip a staff is really cumbersome. It’s just not a good interface. The ideal would be a weapon swap that activates whenever we are out of combat or all our skills are off cooldown.

Though really it’s a bit weird that this should be an issue at all. I mean if elemental swap is supposed to replace weapon swap why don’t daggers have any ranged abilities? If the abilities were spaced around so that the elements mixed up ranged and close, aoe and single target it would make some sense (though it’s still frustrating we have so little control over what our toolset holds).

arenanet could just give us weapon swap and make it so that we can only pick 2 elements per weapon and we must not use more than 1 element twice.

eg.

staff for fire, water
duals daggers for lightning and earth

or they could just change our weapons so that they have both ranged and melee skills on them…

@Rack. I think what they considered “Ranged” for daggers are the many gap closing skills it has, in all fairness though any class that uses a dagger doesn’t have a far ranged spell for that dagger.

+1 for weapon swap DURING combat (why we can’t change range as everyone else do? we are the squishiest anyway, so why worry?)
And boost our damage while you are at it, thanks

Grevender.9235:

+1 for weapon swap DURING combat (why we can’t change range as everyone else do? we are the squishiest anyway, so why worry?)
And boost our damage while you are at it, thanks

Allow me to explain.

Today, when Elementalists tell each other what skills they use, we must specify attunement and attack number (which leads to 20 combinations). For example:
F1 (Fire 1), W5 (Water 5), A2 (Air 2), etc.

Similarly, all other classes can specify a weapon and skill number:
Rifle 1, Dagger 5, etc.

Now imagine, if you may, that Elementalists had to talk about skills this way:

ScF1 (Scepter Fire 1), DE5 (Dagger Earth 5), SW4 (Staff Water 4)

With 4 weapons (focus only having 2 skills, and scepter only having 3), we’d have 60 possible skills to switch between during combat.

This is why.

the problem i find with ele not being able to change became clear to me the other day levelling with a mate. i have found the best combo Vs mobs dagger dagger, so we run around the corner vs a giant who despite me being 10 lvl+ higher then it was able to 1 hit me and i was stuck with ABSOLUTELY NO RANGE….. i couldn’t change my mate was tanking his best and getting wiped while i had to run away and hide until i got out of combat so i could change weapons so i could be of use, this took even longer mind you because i couldn’t shake the agro.

I understand the no change in combat choice but perhaps the could include it with a massive cooldown for just this kind of instance/situation??

Should be enabled for WvW. sPVP might be OP. I dunno. I dislike having to out-range to switch, only to be kittened with a staff out in a DW spec. Put a 10s cd on it if it’s so scary.

We do need an in combat weapon swap. Right now we are locked into one specific playstyle and one specific range. Having 20 skills doesn’t mean jack kitten. A lot of it is fluff. Don’t get me wrong I like my Ele – we are quite versatile and there are a lot of useful skills in there. But a lot don’t need to be there and being locked into one weapon is quite limiting. I’d much rather they give us in combat weapon swap as it’s a very useful thing to have. If they need to make changes to our 20 skill system to do that, then that’s fine with me.

There’s times when you’re just spamming an auto-cast because everything’s on CD and you can’t switch attunements. Weapon swap would solve that. I mean, you have to end in fire or air spec every time (especially air if you’re kiting), or you’re sitting in a trash damage spec until attunements come back up, even with an arcana spec.

Wulfrim.4793:

@Rack. I think what they considered “Ranged” for daggers are the many gap closing skills it has, in all fairness though any class that uses a dagger doesn’t have a far ranged spell for that dagger.

Exactly my point. Other classes have gap closers on their melee weapons, but if they are in a situation they need to back off and attack from range they swap to another weapon. Elementalists can’t do that, they are locked into short range combat. Despite the large number of skills they are amongst the least versatile professions.

Choosing weapon defines our gameplay. Even though i would like to change between weapons based on situation, we have so much more to do with that one particular weapon. It makes us unique.

So no, I think the fact that we cant switch between weapons in combat is not a problem.

However I do agree with guys above and being able to have 2 weapon sets and be able to switch between them out of combat would be really nice. We do that anway…just need to find the weapon in bags, which is annoying.

Out of combat its a MUST. Im tired from opening the inventory in WvW.

In combat, it would be nice for people playing d&d or staff.

Amnon, what’s the problem learning 60 skills when you can still be oneshotted by John Average’s thief?
We are talking about balance: this requires for everyone to reach the same goal with nearly the same efforts. Currently our class is limited to a certain range during combat, which is part of our weakness; again, if someone ever played D&D would know that – say – a melee mage build (warlock, that is) would be able to wear heavy armors, this would make sense, as the reason we cannot wear armor is generally linked to the fact mages should nuke from distance.
Elementalist, as a class, has potential but it’s still mostly still unexpressed

Grevender.9235:

Amnon, what’s the problem learning 60 skills when you can still be oneshotted by John Average’s thief?
We are talking about balance: this requires for everyone to reach the same goal with nearly the same efforts. Currently our class is limited to a certain range during combat, which is part of our weakness; again, if someone ever played D&D would know that – say – a melee mage build (warlock, that is) would be able to wear heavy armors, this would make sense, as the reason we cannot wear armor is generally linked to the fact mages should nuke from distance.
Elementalist, as a class, has potential but it’s still mostly still unexpressed

Another one of these? I’d hoped we were starting to get past all of the “my class sucks /whine” posts.
Only the worst elementalists ever will get one-shotted. We are EXACTLY as squishy as thieves (except they’re even more squishy) and we can do enough damage to hold our own against any profession when we play our builds the right way.

As for the weapon swap issue, I wouldn’t object to an out of combat only weapon swap because it amounts to a simpler way of doing what we’re already able to do.
However, an in combat weapons swap would be completely game breaking.
Think about it. That’s 40 1-5 skills that you have in any build. Even with our slightly longer cooldowns, you would be able to spam higher cd (3-5) abilities non-stop. It would just be stupid and the only way to balance it would be to jump our cooldowns to insanely high levels or nerf our damage output.
The thing about Ele is that it’s fine that we’re stuck at the same range in combat. With daggers, we have more gap closers than anybody. With staff, we have more escape skills than anybody. Not to mention the cc to keep them at a distance (again, more than anybody). I mean, this shouldn’t even be a point of argument. I’ve seen plenty of thieves who don’t even use shortbow at all and run with two melee sets and do fine. Or warriors who do the same thing. I’ve even seen some decent rangers who use both bows. Were fine. Don’t worry about it.