Guild Wars 2

Hold your tears, what I am going to propose is the concept of weapon swapping on Elementalist. I know we have 20 skills to utilize where other classes have 10 (considering weapon swap) and I know that it would be kind of silly if we had 40 moves but just hear me out.

This change most likely would not be balanced in spvp and this argument is mainly for the sake of wvw/pve. As an elementalist who frequents spvp often, I don’t think in-combat weapon swapping would be fair for elementalists in spvp.

Elementalist can only truly be effective at close/mid range with a scepter or dagger in main hand (non bunker build) and can only be truly effective at long range with a staff. In wvw a staff is pretty much the only choice we have right now in terms of tower/keep assaulting/defending. With weapon swap other classes can switch between these roles with ease.

This is where the weapon swap change would come in. It would definitely have to work differently than the other classes considering elementalist’s attunement swapping mechanics. It would have to have multiple cooldowns attached to make it fair. A reasonable suggestion “not final numbers” would be a 30 second cooldown on weapon swapping and a 5 second cooldown on 1-5 skill usage in combat.

If none of these changes can be done, atleast add in an out of combat swapping option so that it is a bit more managable in wvw/pve.

as a convenience I would not mind the ability to out of combat weapon swap.
other than that…

You can weapon swap out of combat already, just press H, it takes a few extra seconds, engineers have to do the same thing.

In combat swaps might work with a lengthy cooldown, I think 30 seconds wouldn’t be long enough.

The OP comes from the potential of swapping back and forth. With something like a 180 sec cooldown (like an elite skill) you really are only going to swap at most once per fight in most cases. So it becomes a choice of deciding that this is a long range fight and that is a short range fight and swapping accordingly. But no swapping back and forth during a fight, that would definitely be OP.

Actually, now that I think about it, what might work best is the ability to swap once in combat but you are locked out of swapping again until you go out of combat. Perhaps a bit more complicated to code, but would probably be more balanced.