Guild Wars 2

So, as everyone is well aware, the game designers have said the optimal way to play the Elementalist is attunement dancing – switching between each to use situation appropriate spells and not spending too much time in any one of them.

Okay, I can totally get behind that. It makes sense from a lore perspective and is fine class design. What I can’t get behind is the extent to which the Trait lines don’t support this playstyle (mostly).

Arcana is the exception to this and supports it very well; it reduces the Attunement cooldown significantly and adds things like Elemental Attunement that actively buffs you for switching attunements. Sweet! It synergizes so well with the intended playstyle of the class.

And then you get to the other trait lines. These are full of bonuses that only affect conditions applied by one attunement (e.g. burning) or that give very nice bonuses as long as you’re in one attunement. Lingering Elements (20 point Arcana passive) can help with this somewhat but it’s still sort of a weird one; if the class is about versatility and element switching, shouldn’t the trait lines reflect that?

Helix.4183:

So, as everyone is well aware, the game designers have said the optimal way to play the Elementalist is attunement dancing – switching between each to use situation appropriate spells and not spending too much time in any one of them.

That is just a lie they tell us because they don’t want to put in the resources to fix the class. If what they said was true, our attunement CD would be lower.

The trait of the class says otherwise especially the alacrity traits.

The thing is at the release the ele worked very well, it’s aoe damage compensated for the super slow casting time. In fact it worked a little “too well”. They started to nerf little by little and didn’t realize they were breaking the class.

It’s when they finally removed combos we’ve been using for over 6 months that I realize nothing could be done if they kept going in the that direction and made new characters…

It’s been months with only threads here on how to save that class and apparently the developers haven’t took notice.

Maybe if we started reporting threads for making too much sense, that will get someone’s attention?

Even if Anet wanted to fix the class, and all other classes for that matter. They won’t simply because its the casual players that dictate what happens – they complain about Class X you can bet it will be nerfed, They say Class Y is weak you can bet it will get a buff.

They ONLY care what the mass of causal players think and that is where they went wrong, sure some things needed to be addressed but as soon as they saw what they could do when they complain just look at what has happened…

I think there are enough people that agree Eles need to be fixed somehow. The task now is to think of a way that they can do it properly, without backtracking on their standing declaration, as that seems to be taboo with most developers.

Solkard.5136:

Maybe if we started reporting threads for making too much sense, that will get someone’s attention?

Probably only a moderator’s attention.
They really need to start listening to people’s ideas. I’ve seen some pretty good ideas on these forums that simply got ignored.