Guild Wars 2

I cant believe we have to tell you what exactly would be op..when its pretty much EVERYTHING.
Even if you get to swap only ONCE in battle every 5 min or so you could do crazy combos and have too much control and survivability so it would be op and battle changing in spvp essentially.
Even if you get attunements shared cooldowns on the weaponsets or even at the skills themelves then it would still be op.
Even if you had too choose 2 attunements for every weapon set like air water for staff and fire earth for d/d IT WOULD STILL BE OP.
Every weaponset has advantages and disadvantages and bypassing them with swapping would break the class..no need to go deeper and explain specific combos cause there are too many.Ele is already strong in pvp..

Occam.9841:

zip

What the s/f intro does, is not mad damage, not everything revolves around damage.
Your opponent won´t be just sitting there dodging, he will havetried to damage you during those skill chains, but instead he was cc´d damaged slightly, forced to use energy for dodges, if he´s bad/doesn´t know ele skills maybe he even used utility and most of the time you´ve been completely safe and fully in control.
Now as you swap to d/d, you´re propably nearly at full health, your skills are all there, no cooldowns used, no energy wasted, buffed with stacks of might and the remaining invulnerability.
Your opponent however has wasted his energy dodging your attacks, if not he´ll be starting at much lower health, he propably will have used some of his cooldowns, his self buffs will be running out and all the time he´s been froced on defensive.

That´s not equal footing to start a fight.

On the staff part…you apparently have not seen staff bunkers, or have any concept of what a bunker is?

I am simply trying to initiate a nice civil discussion. If you are incapable of acting with proper decorum, please simply leave. Before posting, please remember the keyword when posting in a forums: respect.

MistyMountains.3751:

Most ele builds already have 2 + stuns or knockdowns…add in weapon swapping and you’re talking about ele’s with 3-4+ stuns/knockdowns in their builds >.> ya that wont be OP one bit…well at least if they added that people would stop complaining about thieves lol

Someone’s never played warrior :O hammer has 3 stuns then you can go off hand mace for a Line aoe projectile or shield for a weaker but still effective mist form and stun I count 4 stuns/knock downs most which are aoe

CyanideRayne.2413:

MistyMountains.3751:

Most ele builds already have 2 + stuns or knockdowns…add in weapon swapping and you’re talking about ele’s with 3-4+ stuns/knockdowns in their builds >.> ya that wont be OP one bit…well at least if they added that people would stop complaining about thieves lol

Someone’s never played warrior :O hammer has 3 stuns then you can go off hand mace for a Line aoe projectile or shield for a weaker but still effective mist form and stun I count 4 stuns/knock downs most which are aoe

But that ele would have 4 stuns and 36 other skills that include nukses ,sustain ,healing,mobility,soft cc,conditions,invulnerabilities and boons..
lol..no matter what restriction you put it will make the class op.
They could find a weird way to introduce weapon swap and also put a heavy penalty to it but that would be too much trouble and will also create heavy unstability to the class..
It would be seriously op to some situations and completely useless in others.In short too much trouble for something that is not needed.Not to mention that it would also skyrocket the complexity of an overly very complex class relatevily to the rest of the game

It wouldn’t be OP, but it’d make individual abilities too weak.

Keep in mind most weapon sets have 1-3 abilities on fairly long CDs. Usually the 4/5 abilities.
Now imagine you had eight sets of these abilities, compared to other classes’ two. It shouldn’t be that difficult to imagine that this could easily become a balance problem, unless each individual ability was very weak. At which point it feels meh to use, 40 weapon abilities or not.

What about having the option of either Attunement Swap OR Weapon Swap.

System as it is now, single weapon, 4 attunements.
OR
Have 2 weapon sets, but locked into 1 attunement.

You’d have to use Hero panel to designate it, and can only decide out of combat, like we do now with switching weapons from inventory.

Occam.9841:

Malcastus.6240:

…
ANYTHING like that would be overpowered. Look at it from a PvP perspective. If you honestly think that it isn’t overpowered, you don’t know the profession and its capabilities at all.
…
… DPS (I don’t have to explain that casting Meteor Storm in an area, then start Churning Earth and flash in the midst of a group of enemies, Earthquake, also having Ring of Earth to slow their escape, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Firegrab, then swapping back to staff for a Static Field, Eruption and whatever one can mix together, will result in the ele being able to handle any situation from afar and up front, having twice the potential as before).

I’ll just quote a tiny part of your ridiculously long unreadable post because it so well illustrates what the people against weapon-swapping are getting wrong (as well as how you know the profession and its capabilities but don’t understand them at all).

You start with Meteor Storm, ok, that casts slow, you can’t move while casting and it puts a big red ring that tells enemies how far they have to walk to avoid damage but you probably did hurt the one who was afk.

“Churning Earth and flash in the midst of a group of enemies…”
Well you made you enemies move apart with your Meteor Storm but maybe 2 moved in the same direction, ok so you hit them with that and the rest of your d/d string.

“… then swapping back to staff for …”
Weren’t you paying attention, pretty much all the people in favor of weapon swap have been suggesting timers that would prevent you from going back to your first weapon so quickly.

“…Static Field, Eruption and whatever one can mix together…”
Static Field gives a 2 second stun, Eruption is a 1.75 second cast, not sure what else you think you can “mix together” in that remaining 1/4 but you better make it fast because your enemy is about to counter-stun you and rip your face off.

Also, that string you theory-crafted,
“…Ring of Earth to slow their escape, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Firegrab, then swapping back to staff for a Static Field, Eruption,,,”
You go from Earth to Fire to Air and back to Earth in 3.75 seconds…care to share your secret for how you shorten your attunement timer so much…is it a hack…or are you just spouting off on the forum without understanding what you are talking about?

You are a very angry person that loves taking things out of context it seems. Chill out and behave, please. Your attitude was hostile from your first post, and is about to escalate. I edited the first post to ease the reading for your eyes.

It was just a random scenario. Imagine being at a lord at Legacy of the Foefire. Many people protecting. The scenario would cause trouble there for sure (and complaining about elementalists afterwards no doubt).

And yes, I didn’t count in a 30+ sec weapon swap CD, or whatever people threw on the table of suggestions. Just highlighting the troubles of a normal swap, but I suppose everyone would see that as being too overwhelming.

You wrote: “You go from Earth to Fire to Air and back to Earth in 3.75 seconds..”

What? I never put a time on it, but you did apparently. You also cited me wrong. Fire with staff, then earth and fire with D/D, then air and earth with staff again. If there was a normal weapon swap CD on it, you could chain those (still in the lord scenario), then add time for dodges, heal and utility skills you activate meanwhile. Just a random silly string I made up on the spot. Not taking into account a 30+ sec weapon swap CD, as mentioned earlier.

While having a 30+ CD would help, it still would prove a hard thing to manage for Anet. They haven’t even come close to balancing/fixing current traits and skills for the different professions. I really can’t see this being implemented in the near future.

I can understand the frustration with not being able to do anything against long range attackers from a vantage point, if having D/D equipped for instance. However, we’ll likely have to get accustomed to swapping weapons out of combat manually for now.

Roxy Painter.3691:

What about having the option of either Attunement Swap OR Weapon Swap.

System as it is now, single weapon, 4 attunements.
OR
Have 2 weapon sets, but locked into 1 attunement.

You’d have to use Hero panel to designate it, and can only decide out of combat, like we do now with switching weapons from inventory.

You’d still have the same problem of having way too many potential skill combinations.

Remember people, there’s a REASON why skills are separated. The idea is to limit the amount of skills, and especially the amount of combinations. That’s why other classes have weapon swap, but the engineer and elementalist get kits and attunements.

ArenaNet doesn’t want more combinations, they prefer to keep them in check. So this whole debate is pointless because none of you keep the game design in mind with all of your suggestions.

I read your post and it doesn’t make any sense. Particularly this statement: “What? I never put a time on it, but you did apparently. You also cited me wrong. Fire with staff, then earth and fire with D/D, then air and earth with staff again.”

I think you’re confusing weapon swapping cool down with attunement cool down. Just because you swap to a different weapon set it does not mean the attunement cool down will reset. We’re not asking for a seperate attunement cool down on weapon swap – just the ability to swap weapon sets. Attunement will remain the same.

Using your example, if you’re using staff and cast MS then go to earth and switch to D/D, you cannot go back to fire for 15s (base recharge rate).

I think some of these arguement can be solved by better defining the perimetesr or restrictions that come with weapon swapping.

I.E.
Weapon swapping on 10-30 sec cool down. Does not reset attunement cool downs on weapon swap.

We need weapon swap. Other classes get a choice of two excellent ability racks, often offering alternate range or function….whereas half our abilities are pointless.

Take air staff. It’s used for travel and fails to deal damage properly. In fact, only two of its 5 functions are actually intended for damage dealing. The travel power is something warriors get on a banner and their banners alone make our attunements look terrible.

If you took a good weapon like greatsword and stuffed all the banner powers onto it and then took away warrior weapons swap, then thats where we are, more or less. Other classes can be specialist in two areas and have none of their space wasted with nonsense as its all available to them in other ways. We have half our abilities unused, filled with junk, or non functional with our traits.

1 example:
staff earth 2, water 5, switch to s/d, fire 2 and 3, later 4 then earth 4

You just did 3 aoe heals, 4 if you roll in water, and 3 stacks of might while casting damagers. This is assuming all weapon skills share a cd across attunements, and disreguards any cooldown on weapon switching.

Biomanz, I am going to take your post seriously. I will check how the abilities actually work together and see if they do in fact add up to something OP. Then I’ll consider whether there is some way to mitigate that strength if necessary.

staff e2 cast time 1 3/4 seconds
staff w5 cast time 1 second
s/d f2 cast time 1 second
s/d f3 cast time 1/4 second
s/d f4 cast time 1/4 second
s/d e3 … I’m going to stop there because if you switched out of earth the instant you started to cast staff e2 only 4 1/4 seconds (maybe 5 1/4 with a roll) have elapsed meaning you cannot attune to earth again yet.

So we’ll allow you 4 aoe heals (altho that’s a long time for an ele to stand in one place).
I won’t try to calculate how much this would heal for, let’s just go all the way and say that it would be a full heal for 5 people.

Now the question is, is that OP?
We’ll just say that it is and go on to the question of is there some way to mitigate that OPness.

Well, one suggestion someone else came up with and that I mentioned earlier in this thread is to make weapon-swap an elite skill with a 120-180 second cooldown.

So the question now is. would an ele elite skill that allowed for a full aoe heal be imbalanced?

As I look thru the other classes elites I find the Guardian elite skill Tome of Courage.
Tome skill 5 Light of Deliverance Fully heal up to five nearby allies.
Not only that but the cast time for Light of Deliverance is 4 1/4 seconds just like your ele combo.
That seems reasonably balanced to me, two elite skills that take the same amount of time to get the same benefit. The ele skill is a little harder to pull off but close enough.

Weapon swapping on an elementalist brings 4 more weapon sets to the table. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking from this point on to realize what kind of ungodly, non-stop combos you can make. Just off-hand I can already think of a near perma stun-lock chain that would absolutely decimate.

I wouldn’t be against a method of hitting a button to swap weapons outside of combat, however, if only to avoid the tedium of doing it manually. I’d be all for that.

Suggest your chain and lets analyze it.

It’s strange that people have been spouting off a lot of rage about how OP it would be without providing logical back up, especially when a number of suggestions have been listed to mitigate abuse of certain weapon swap strings. I like my idea of, well, for example: You use water 5 for a heal in staff and then switch to DD for water 5, but you can’t, because water 5, even in DD, is on CD.

What about give elementalist switching weapons like other professions have, but switching would work only out of combat?

now I have to switch it manualy in hero page(U), I using D/D + Staff and when I switch from d/d to staff one dagger come to same place where staff was and second come to first empty place in inventory(from above) so I can sell it accidently

I’d love to have the 2 extra weapon slots just so that i don’t have to switch in the hero panel and have my dagger getting mixed in with my looted equipment when switching to staff.

The secondary weapon set swap should only be available when OUT SIDE of combat. It won’t make the profession OP in anyway.

It will make it friendly to switching weapons without have to open the hero panel, or double click when opening your inventory.

The engineer should have it added too.

SecondtoNone.7549:

It’s strange that people have been spouting off a lot of rage about how OP it would be without providing logical back up

That’s because you trivialize the issue. having acces to too many skill combinations was the major flaw of Guild Wars 1. It made it virtually impossible to balance. ArenaNet restricted skills a lot more in Guild Wars 2, yet you continue to ask them to drop their core game mechanic.

And apart from that, there are enough tools available to fix the issue that you claim to have. The conjured weapons could be rebalanced for example. Adding weapon swap will add a ton of potential issues that can be avoided simply by making a choice. And even then, Anet will have to tread lightly because even though YOU may not be able to think of an overpowered combination, doesn’t mean that someone eventually will. The more combinations, the more potential for disaster.

That’s what Guild Wars 2’s about. You can’t have it all. So it’s pointless to ask to get it all. You have to choose. Elementalists aren’t less restricted than other professions. They have different restrictions. That’s part of the fun, to have differences between professions, and if you wanna play one, you’ll have to work with what you got. Not demand that they’re made the same to other classes + some more.

I never played guild wars 1 but ok, I’ll take your word for it.

You can have a second weapon the day the Engineer can equip 8 kits without using up a single utility slot.

That is all.

-Travail.

SecondtoNone.7549:

It’s strange that people have been spouting off a lot of rage about how OP it would be without providing logical back up, especially when a number of suggestions have been listed to mitigate abuse of certain weapon swap strings. I like my idea of, well, for example: You use water 5 for a heal in staff and then switch to DD for water 5, but you can’t, because water 5, even in DD, is on CD.

It’s so bloody obviously overpowered that I shouldn’t need to list examples. Your own desire to mitigate how overpowered the set could with weapon swapping by placing special restrictions on it should be enough proof for you. Or at least, I’d imagine it should be since you’ve already entertained the idea and arrived at a similar conclusion to the rest of us who have apparently failed to provide “logical back up”.

Unless you just think things without understanding why you thought them, and then immediately move into performing action without reason.

Occam.9841:

Suggest your chain and lets analyze it.

You still haven´t replied to my last post….i feel left out

Second weapon slot would give the ele access to up to 40 weapon skills+his utilities. That’s why weapon swap would be op.

@ Strang
In your last post you argue that the chain you gave on the first page would give you some advantage in timers and energy if it all landed before you weapon-swapped.
Any class that opens a fight landing their preferred chain will have some advantage in timers, energy, or health.
That in and of itself is not OP.
Those timers and energy your opponent used were defensive. He is about to open up his cc/attack chain. You’ll use your defensive abilities then his defensive timers will be reset and the fight goes on.

@ Malicious
The number of abilities you have access to is not OP in and of itself.
If all 40 abilities sucked it would help to have so many of them.
If you can find some specific combination please share so we can analyze it.

Basically the majority of weapon skills is usefull no matter how you look at it therefore the amount of available skills would make a second weapon set definitely op.
Ele is among the strongest and most versatile classes right now. Giving them even more versatility is never going to happen.

You’re asking for specific combinations? Pick whatever you want it’s just way over the top. Imagine S/D+Dagger/Focus. More healing, more auras, invuln, more condition removal, projectile reflect, projectile immunity, more knockdowns, daze, 1 more fire field and holy kitten lots of blast finishers. How is that not op.

That’s not a specific combination.

You are purposefully missing the point now. Having 40 different abilities to respond to a situation is so far above and beyond what anyone else is capable it should be obvious without having to sit here listing the dozens of specific combinations I can use to kill someone. When you have 40 different abilities to choose from you don’t blindly apply a combo. You just decimate.

When you can DO everything, always, whenever, you can’t be anything BUT overpowered.

Warkupo.1025:

You are purposefully missing the point now. Having 40 different abilities to respond to a situation is so far above and beyond what anyone else is capable it should be obvious without having to sit here listing the dozens of specific combinations I can use to kill someone. When you have 40 different abilities to choose from you don’t blindly apply a combo. You just decimate.

When you can DO everything, always, whenever, you can’t be anything BUT overpowered.

Good response. I agree, but you also bring up an interesting point.

Now, what would happen if the ele had the response to everything? What if all classes had a response to everything? Would this make it a boring game because we have all the answers? No, I don’t think so. The hard part then would be finding the right answer for the right question asked during the right situation and would make the game much more strategic and challenging… But a kitten to balance.

Of course, this (and the thread) is pure theorycraft and being discussed out of curiosity and in the pursuit of knowledge–the forever tantalizing question, “What if?”

SecondtoNone.7549:

Warkupo.1025:

Having 40 different abilities to respond to a situation is so far above and beyond what anyone else is capable it should be obvious without having to sit here listing the dozens of specific combinations I can use to kill someone. When you have 40 different abilities to choose from you don’t blindly apply a combo. You just decimate.

When you can DO everything, always, whenever, you can’t be anything BUT overpowered.

Good response.

Indeed a good response. It’s also pretty much the same answer everyone else has given you.

Look at the Ride the Lightning issue that got fixed today. The net result of that is virtually the same as adding a second weapon set to the ele: more acces to more skills. Now, you could argue that it was due to specific skills you could acces, but other weapons have skills like that as well.

Ride the Lightning was quickly found as overpowered, and Anet responded almost as quickly by applying a hotfix. The elementalist got a taste of what it would be like to have acces to twice the amount of skills. And it was shown to be too powerful.

Convinced now?

ThiBash.5634:

SecondtoNone.7549:

Warkupo.1025:

Having 40 different abilities to respond to a situation is so far above and beyond what anyone else is capable it should be obvious without having to sit here listing the dozens of specific combinations I can use to kill someone. When you have 40 different abilities to choose from you don’t blindly apply a combo. You just decimate.

When you can DO everything, always, whenever, you can’t be anything BUT overpowered.

Good response.

Indeed a good response. It’s also pretty much the same answer everyone else has given you.

Look at the Ride the Lightning issue that got fixed today. The net result of that is virtually the same as adding a second weapon set to the ele: more acces to more skills. Now, you could argue that it was due to specific skills you could acces, but other weapons have skills like that as well.

Ride the Lightning was quickly found as overpowered, and Anet responded almost as quickly by applying a hotfix. The elementalist got a taste of what it would be like to have acces to twice the amount of skills. And it was shown to be too powerful.

Convinced now?

It’s a discussion, sir. Not an argument. I’m not sure why you keep trying to turn it into one. Relax.

The thread becomes quite ridiculous when thread itself burst into endless flaming especially by the people who use capital characters….

Anyway, I play elementalist and really liked playing it with staff. Most people do and staff is simple to use and gives a lot freedom to use skills more less anyway you want except element CDs to be kept eye on. But, most people like me never fully appreciated other weapon sets that can be extremely powerful.

Those 4 elements can be seen as weapons and people must think more of possible combinations (combos and rotations) of abilities that belong to different attunement. This way, elementalist can give fantastic results, true it is demanding but giving weapon swap like to other classes is really op. There are 2 very good abilities on focus in Earth that can make huge dissbalance if secondary weapon is D/D or staff combination.

Instead of within combat, weapon swap would be nice to be added out of the combat. Just as other utility skills can’t be changed in combat, neither weapon should (for elementalist). And this is already suggested on other thread.

Here is good example:
In dungeon, I usually make good support with my staff, doing a lot of AoE damage across all elements. But some bosses are better to be attacked with different weapon. Some elementalists like me do this by opening Hero panel, manually swapping the weapon and catching up the teammates. In CoE, there is plenty situations like this and depending on the part of the dung, I change staff, D/D or S/F as needed. This takes time and my teamates can suffer until I get to them. It would be nice once we dispose certain group of enemies and Out Of Combat CD is off, to be able to swap.

It is similar situation in SPvP where elementalist don’t know enemies and certain enemies are better handled with different weapon set. So quick OOC weapon swap is nice. Same goes for WvW. I assume people would like to chase other people with D/D but when in zerg fight people would like to change weapon to Staff maybe without going into Hero panel.

SecondtoNone.7549:

It’s a discussion, sir. Not an argument. I’m not sure why you keep trying to turn it into one. Relax.

To be honest, I’m not sure why you think I’m arguing rather than discussing, but I’ll apologize nonetheless for the confusion.

The main reason I made the post because I don’t understand why you were suddenly convinced when someone repeated the same argument for the umpteenth time.

Also, I meant to add another example situation to the table through the Ride the Lightning issue. It shows what happens when elementalists are given acces to more skills during combat, and as such could be seen as an example why weapon swapping in combat shouldn’t be added.

But I meant no personal disrespect to you.

ThiBash.5634:

SecondtoNone.7549:

It’s a discussion, sir. Not an argument. I’m not sure why you keep trying to turn it into one. Relax.

To be honest, I’m not sure why you think I’m arguing rather than discussing, but I’ll apologize nonetheless for the confusion.

The main reason I made the post because I don’t understand why you were suddenly convinced when someone repeated the same argument for the umpteenth time.

Also, I meant to add another example situation to the table through the Ride the Lightning issue. It shows what happens when elementalists are given acces to more skills during combat, and as such could be seen as an example why weapon swapping in combat shouldn’t be added.

But I meant no personal disrespect to you.

That’s because I do know it’s op. That’s why my suggestions all involve ways to limit it so it wouldn’t be. I like the idea of weapon swap and would like theory craft whether I’d be possible to implement in a toned down version for the ele. People just kind of ignored my long second post where I make points and asked questions and instead went on to yell in caps and in strings of exclamation points of how op it is.

SecondtoNone.7549:

That’s because I do know it’s op. That’s why my suggestions all involve ways to limit it so it wouldn’t be. I like the idea of weapon swap and would like theory craft whether I’d be possible to implement in a toned down version for the ele. People just kind of ignored my long second post where I make points and asked questions and instead went on to yell in caps and in strings of exclamation points of how op it is.

Well, to be honest, I don’t feel your proposed restriction is anything of a restriction. It also doesn’t take into account if similar purpose skills are on different slots (Cone of Cold is in slot 2 and Geyser in slot 3, for example, so they could still be used after oneanother in your proposal).

If they ever do plan to implement an in combat weapon mechanic for the elementalist, then you cannot do it half-baked. It shouldn’t be an optimal combat strategy in any way, similar to the racial skills. So maybe if all the weapon’s skills went on cooldown equal to their own cooldown, then maybe it would be acceptable.