Guild Wars 2

I love that the elementalist has so many options due to attunement flipping, but what I don’t love is starting new elementalist characters. Compared to other professions, we have to unlock way more weapon skills.

Let’s compare the elementalist to the warrior.

The warrior has 40 weapon skills to unlock. 32 of those are terrestrial skills, and you’re guaranteed to unlock one in the tutorial. That means we can whittle the terrestrial warrior weapon skill list to 31 unlocks.

The elementalist on the other hand has 64 weapon skills to unlock. 48 of those are terrestrial skills, and you’re likely to unlock one in the tutorial. That means we can whittle the terrestrial elementalist weapon skill list to 47 unlocks.

I haven’t actually sat down to count out kills but I believe it takes ~40 kills to fully unlock a weapon. The second slot takes ~3, the third ~5, the fourth ~12 and the fifth ~20. For the sake of comparison I’ll be using these numbers for this topic, so keep in mind that I am aware that they may not be accurate.

Let’s assume that each kill takes on average 14 seconds, including travel time, any time spent dodging or healing, etc. This number may not be accurate, but for the sake of a sterile model it is what I’ll be using in this topic.

The warrior must unlock 31 terrestrial weapon skills. Each terrestrial weapon requires the following number of kills to complete:

At our static average of 14 seconds per kill, it will take our warrior 4,816 seconds to grind out her skills. That’s 80 minutes of time spent only grinding skills.

Now let’s look at the Elementalist, who must unlock more skills with less weapons. The elementalist must unlock 47 terrestrial weapon skills. Each weapon requires the following number of kills to complete:

At our static average of 14 seconds per kill, it will take our elementalist 6,720 seconds to unlock his terrestrial weapon skills. That’s 112 minutes of only grinding out weapons — 32 more than the warrior. While it’s less expensive/time consuming to get his hands on his weapons, the elementalist is still limited by his level-based attunement locks (Air at 3, Earth at 6). He simply will not unlock all of his skills before level 6, which is a luxury the warrior has.

My suggestion is to reduce the number of kills the elementalist requires for skill unlocks by 25%. This will mean the elementalist will still need the most kills (at 360) but will be much closer to the second-highest skill profession (warrior at 344). The other option would be to make unlocking slot 2 in any given attunement unlock that slot for all attunements on the weapon, and to meanwhile triple the kill requirements per skill. That method would change the required kills to 360 too, which again is in the same ballpark.

I specifically chose the warrior as the example profession because the warrior likewise has a very rough time unlocking everything. For the elementalist to (in practice) take almost twice as long to set up is a joke. The warrior is only really required to pick a main/offhand and a ranged option. Once she does that she can forge ahead with them for the entire rest of the game. Elementalists are required to learn how to utilize attunement swapping, which is twice as many skills once a weapon set is chosen. I should be ready to go with a new character within an hour. Otherwise I’m not learning anything.

I created a new elementalist a few days ago and spent (no exaggeration) four hours grinding the little drakes outside of Astorea almost non-stop just to unlock my skills. During this grind I obtained at least one of each of my weapons via drops, reached level 6 (using an exp booster), and did the “stop the termites from eating the tree” event three times. That isn’t fun. It’s also the opposite of what Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet are supposed to be about.

The reason I sat there grinding my skills rather than playing through the game and questing is exactly because I knew how many elementalist skills there are and how long it would take. If I had not sat around grinding I wouldn’t unlock my skills until long past level 20. The challenge of the elementalist is in learning the attunement system and swapping tactically. In order to do that, the player needs to have access to all of her skills much sooner.

I’m not able to test out or choose a weapon set if I have to grind out hours and hours worth of skills. It’s counter-intuitive and counter-productive. I (begrudgingly) did it, but I felt it necessary to voice some concerns for the sake of other players.

This is not a big deal at all. There is absolutely no reason you need to sit outside the starting area killing the same mobs over and over again. You can go continue grinding while still unlocking your skills. While you may understand attunement swapping and the power that comes with it, a new player who is low level is much better off just sticking to each attunement as they level it up in the starting zone. All of the mobs there will essentially allow autoattacks to kill them with ease and new players can unlock all of their skills with some time just by playing the game. It will also allow them to focus on single attunements to figure each the benefit and power of each. This was intentional I’d assume.

Next time, just run around and unlock your skills while doing some normal level progression. It is not a requirement to begin the game with all skills unlocked. You would have been much better off just playing the game normally and unlocking the skills slowly.

It took me about the same amount of time to unlock all skills on my elementalist, only I remember having fun while doing it because I wasn’t grinding mobs in a single area. It’s not like you HAVE to unlock all skills asap. What Serp said, starting area mobs are not that hard. Just play and have fun.

And if this is your first elementalist, believe me you won’t be able to choose your favourite weapon set that early on anyway. With the multitude of skills we get, you really need to put in some time to learn how to play each weapon properly, otherwise you’ll just get stomped later on.

With all due respect, I wouldn’t be better off. This isn’t my first elementalist — I was doing an intentional experiment to figure out how long it would take someone to do that. Data isn’t a bad thing, and neither is perspective.

When the class description is “you get to swap elements!” and playing the class translates into “you get to swap elements — but only after you spend several hours of game time smacking centaurs/dredge/ghosts/spiders!” then something’s wrong. I really don’t see how a new player is going to benefit from not swapping weapon combinations often while leveling up, out of fear of having no skills to use.

It’s cute until about level 9 when you’re already several hours into the game. By that point I’m pretty sure the majority of new players have grasped the basic concepts of their profession’s quirks and are ready to start experimenting. Stunting early experimentation makes for bad long-term players, even in a super casual sense.

Using that logic, we should get all skills, gear and trait points handed to us after character creation… is that what you’re saying?

Beside, as you said… several hours into the game, when the majority of players have grasped the concept of their class, they have all their basic skills unlocked. I call that good design, unlike in some other MMO’s where you have to spend a month on a given character to unlock all available skills.

Furthermore, to keep the learning curve nice and level, you want to ease new players in. You don’t want to heap 20 skills / weapon set on them in the first hour and leave them flailing. Sure it may be (very slightly) boring and frustrating for seasoned players, but they’re not the ones who you base your design on when thinking about early character progression.

This may be the silliest thread I’ve seen in the Elementalist forum. Even by your own calculations it would take less than two hours to unlock everything. The starting areas are not hard and new players would be overwhelmed if presented with all the skills at once.

It takes hardly any time for skills to unlock as you’re playing normally. I’m sorry that you felt compelled to “grind” in the starting area, but I guarantee you that you don’t need to.

I used Dagger/Dagger for my first three or four days on my Ele. I unlocked the skills for those weapons very quickly, and didn’t worry about it.

Around level 20 I decided to unlock the rest of my weapon skills. i.e. Staff, Scepter, and Focus. At level 20 it takes 1-2 kills per skill unlocked. I unlocked everything in less than 5 minutes.

I don’t see why this is an issue.

I did it while leveling from level 1 I basically got one of each weapon and leveled with it normally when the skills maxed I switched to a different weapon and leveled with those. Pretty sure I had them all unlocked before lvl 10. Its definitely better to do it low level when it doesnt really matter what weapons you use.

Start the fight in fire, switch to the element you want to unlock before the creature dies

This is a total non issue. Level up as you normally would and what I did was just level up weapons as they dropped for me, but always going back to my primary weapon after. It’s not a grind and it’s not hard. No need to rush it.

Out of all the “issues” that apparently face Elementalists, you choose the biggest non issue ever in the history of non issues to discuss. Seriously how much time did you waste on this? Not once when I have levelled any profession have I ever, ever been concerned about how long it was taking to unlock those abilities.

If you spend this much time worrying about such a pointless aspect of the class, I only shudder to think what you might come up with in regards to Elementalists over all. Probably an analysis of how Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t fall correctly.

Oh and if a player is taking until level 20 to unlock all the weapon abilities, well then I’d suggest computer games aren’t for them lol.

I’ll admit, I haven’t rolled an Ele yet. I came to these forums in prep to roll one today. But I will say this. On my highest level toon, a Guardian, I hit 60 without unlocking all the skills. I picked a weapon set I liked and stuck with it.

About 60, I decided to carry one of each weapon with me, and I found out I didn’t have ANY mace skills, shield skills, or focus skills unlocked, so I went to grind. It’s literally one kill, one skill at that level. You don’t even have to wait as long as I did to get to that point.

Loco.4561:

Out of all the “issues” that apparently face Elementalists, you choose the biggest non issue ever in the history of non issues to discuss. Seriously how much time did you waste on this? Not once when I have levelled any profession have I ever, ever been concerned about how long it was taking to unlock those abilities.

If you spend this much time worrying about such a pointless aspect of the class, I only shudder to think what you might come up with in regards to Elementalists over all. Probably an analysis of how Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t fall correctly.

Oh and if a player is taking until level 20 to unlock all the weapon abilities, well then I’d suggest computer games aren’t for them lol.

tl;dr
“Hey I didn’t read the opening post. Also, I am awesome and you are a terrible player.”

Very constructive. Apparently I hit a nerve with people. Kudos to me. I already moved on so like, keep posting or whatever, but I won’t be checking this topic. My work’s done.

I leveled all my skills in less the 20mins in the starting zone, aggroing as much as I could and using aoe skills to insta kill it. (Of course I lvled 1 set up doing quests till I was high enough to destroy everything [+3 lvls should do it]).

I leveled the set I wanted then did the above at a later date to the other sets.

Kerithlan.1659:

tl;dr
“Hey I didn’t read the opening post. Also, I am awesome and you are a terrible player.”

Very constructive. Apparently I hit a nerve with people. Kudos to me. I already moved on so like, keep posting or whatever, but I won’t be checking this topic. My work’s done.

“Hey, I just realised that everybody is making fun of me and my careful calculations were wasted, so I’m gonna pretend I don’t care and try to move on with dignity while secretly watching the topic hoping smb will agree with me”.

You made pointless test of an issue that doesn’t exist. Your test actually proves how unimportant the whole thing is. Then when people told you that you are doing it wrong(ele was my first char, I left CF with all weapon skills unlocked by just doing all hearts and a few events I ran into), you got all butthurt and decided to use the most unbelievable forum excuse ever(“I didn’t actually mean that, I was just trolling, yay me”). You also misunderstood every single post. You didn;t hit a nerve, cause there is no nerve to hit. People were just amazed by how useless this whole topic is.

Lastly, unlocking ele skills is not an issue for anybody with a working computer(which I assume is the entire playerbase of GW2, exceptions exist as proven by OP).

Pff, jeez. this is an mmorpg, this isnt some singleplayer game where you have everything you want within 30 mins. Also yust do quest and get spells meanwhile, dont go grind the same stuff, thats yust ruining it for yourself.

what i did was choose a main weapon and then, around level 30, i unlocked the skills for each attunement/weapon then. it takes one kill per to unlock each weapon skill.

i was done in less then five minutes. it only takes absurdly long if you want to unlock every skill right at level 2.

Weapon Skill ‘Grind’? You’ve got to be kidding me… Looks like I lived to see the day when someone complained about ‘weapon skill grind’ in Guild Wars 2.
kitten I’d give away all of my toons and level up a new Ele if I had the chance to unlock twice as many skills as I actually got to. But I rather wait for an expansion pack.

I have noticed this, and I actually and I came up with an idea. what if every kill made in say fire attunement (just an example, it should apply to all attunements) counts for say, half a kill (again an arbitrary example, the number would have to be extensively balanced) for the other attunements (in this case, water, air, and earth).
(heres hoping Arenanet reads the forums)

Personally, I dislike any non-cosmetic grind in MMOs.

I’m not about to say that this complaint isn’t a bit silly, though.

use your favourite weapon until you get higher lvl.

then you just need to kill a few mobs to unlock all.

Our balista was under attack. i had scepter + focus in bag.
but i had no skills unlocked in it. none.
But now i need to deflect incoming balista fire…

so, i jumped down the wall.. and kill 2 – 3 birds.
i unlocked 1 skill / kill.
(i was lvl 80).

Not tested if this work on low level.
But try go to wvw.. and kill some mobs.
i get 1 skill unlocked / kill. on my weapons.

worth a try ?

Loco.4561:

Out of all the “issues” that apparently face Elementalists, you choose the biggest non issue ever in the history of non issues to discuss. Seriously how much time did you waste on this? Not once when I have levelled any profession have I ever, ever been concerned about how long it was taking to unlock those abilities.

If you spend this much time worrying about such a pointless aspect of the class, I only shudder to think what you might come up with in regards to Elementalists over all. Probably an analysis of how Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t fall correctly.

Oh and if a player is taking until level 20 to unlock all the weapon abilities, well then I’d suggest computer games aren’t for them lol.

rofl

sorry OP but in the time you did that test you could have easily Mastered all Weapon skills in the game on ele.

you should also realize that just tagging a mob gives you the kill so just hit several events tag all mobs and be done with it in about 10 minutes.

@OP

You’re missing a few things… if you’re at a higher level and have a high level set (say, level 10) and you fight a level 1 monster… you can nearly 1~3 shot it.
Making skill grind infinitely faster.

I did this, had only the few Fire/Air skills I used most for killing, then went back to the level 1 area and just AoE’d everything to death.

And I’m not sure if it’s a bug or not, but I hit 20 or 30 (forgot) on my Mesmer and I only had 2 weapons unlocked. I think after a certain level, any kill you get you get a skill done, I switched weapons and took me 5 kills per weapon to unlock it… (I leveled 1~20/30 through crafting).

It’s still a grind, but it’s not hard or annoying at all… you just have to be smart on how you grind it.

140 extra kills is nothing, just join some events with lots of weak mobs. Also you can aoe several mobs down more easily on an ele than a warrior.

You spent 3 times the time needed to unlock all elem weapon skills while writing this post.

Unlock fire, ride till level 5, AOE events and switch attunements to unlock everything else. Once you are level 5 use glyph of storms. Tada, everything levels easily after that.

Wanna unlock other weapons? Wait till 20 if it bothers you that much. 1 kill per skill and done.

why did this old post get bumbed back up :S.

It’s clearly a non-issue. The point of the unlocking skills is not the process, but what it gives you – gradual pace of learning each feature of a skill. Point is to slowly gain new skills to get accustomed to each before gaining a new one. And having higher total number of skills, doesn’t mean the learning process needs to be any faster.

Goal is not to have newcomer standing still and hovering tooltips for what the skills do, as he is unlocking them too fast.

Unlocking trident was the biggest grind… followed closely by unlocking staff… Really tho, I was running around with the staff, autoattacking stuff and doing random events and for the big events(Champion of the Sun, for example) I just reverted to a fully unlocked D/D set.
If you kill the stuff you can kill easily and have an alternate set at hand which is fully unlocked, grinding the stuff is np and also does not put you at any risk… Grinding air and water attunements is tedious tho cause the damage is so friggin low…
But again, level 11, level 14 max, if you don’t drop a focus from the get-go, and you got all your skills unlocked.

At warrior: Not even sure right now whether my lev 80 warrior got his mace unlocked^^

i dont realy mind having to unlock lots of skills to have this as an advantage later on, the thing that disturbs me more is for example D/D water atunement is hard to unlock since the progress of unlocking only continue’s while you make a kill in that atunement. and when in water atunement 3/5 skills dont do damage it makes it kinda hard. but at the end again… tottally worth it