Guild Wars 2

What do you guys think? Heals? Boons? DPS? CC? Mobility? Escapes? What combos would be OP?

My suggestion that I made in my second post I wanted to highlight:

3. What if even though we can weapon swap, our attunements shared the same cooldowns on both weapons? So if you’ve used your bursts on SD, when you switch to DD, those similar skills will also be on CD? Now, you can no longer abuse fire attunement in SD and DD together. You can’t abuse staff heal with DD/SD heal.

Focus Defense added to off hand dagger mobility, access to all auras at once, don’t you think that sounds a bit strong? There are many more combos such as mass AOE such as Ice Bow in Fire staff into Dragons Tooth Phoenix.

It would be too strong, but at the VERY LEAST they need to put in a better system
for swapping weapons when out of combat.

This is especially true for staff builds, in which you want to use daggers when in
open world for more mobility (otherwise a staff ele is a sitting duck unless around
people or behind walls).

Well depending on your build, if you had a weapon swap and enough invested in fire then swapping weapons would give you 10 skills that you can have maxed out damage on. If you invest in Water then weapon swap would make the Ele an actual Healer allowing people to start forming traditional trinity groups again.

The game is set up to force players into attunement swap, they want us to be a jack of all trades and master of none. If they granted us an in combat weapon swap – they would have to nerf all our individual skills and/or the traits to enhance the attunement trees in order to keep players from focusing too heavily into one aspect and thus break their design.

Weapon set 1 allows only D/D or S/F. (nothing else we can use is there? not sure..)
Weapon set 2 allows Staff only.
Put this on a CD, lengthy if need to.

Fixed!

There, now a year or so until this is implemented & we can enjoy game properly ;p

weapon swap on an ele is kitten edly OP, even out of combat…example, i would be a bunker ele but swap to s/d stack 20+ might, auramancer it to group, swap back to staff right before engagement…yes we do that now but making easier on the fly would be OP…

I think we are fine without it, i do however wish as some suggested for a system that would allow not only pre-configured weapon sets but traits/runes/sigils. Having three or four different builds profile ready before hand that i can swap to would be great.

And there’s always some hidden combo that nobody thinks about until after weapon swap is added. Seriously, if you’re any good at playing the elementalist, it should be obvious why in combat weapons swaps aren’t the way forward.

I mean, Deathcall already found a way to abuse it if it’s out of combat. Shouldn’t be so hard to understand why it’s not ok to have 40 skills interact with eachother…and conjures.

Fields. Its the fields plus the blast finishers staff + D/D would go fro hard to kill to near impossible.

The only way I can see weapon swapping not being OP is if attunements cds are shared when you swap. For example if you use staff fire 5 then swap to d/d, fire 5 is still on CD. Also if you recently changed out of fire and swap weapons, that cd is still there.

I feel the healing/defensive skills are what would be really OP. You already have one sets water attunement, then you can wep swap for another round. Plus putting down a long lasting water field and then spamming blast finishes in it. As for outside of combat wep swap? That’s just like manually switching weapons, so there would be no problem.

all of the above
you can now pop Obsidian Skin and then use Churning Earth
or use pheonix dragon tooth burning speed ring of fire fire grab for hilarious burst
or etc.
just too much everything

Deathcall.2104:

weapon swap on an ele is kitten edly OP, even out of combat…example, i would be a bunker ele but swap to s/d stack 20+ might, auramancer it to group, swap back to staff right before engagement…yes we do that now but making easier on the fly would be OP…

I think we are fine without it, do however wish as some suggested for a system that would allow not only pre-configured weapon sets but traits/runes/sigils. Having three or four different builds profile ready before hand that i can swap to would be great.

You can already do it out of combat -.-

I’ve gotten so used to do it takes me a second. I personaly want an out of combat swap so i can stop using my inventory for it or an in combat swap that puts every attunement but the one you’re on in a 10sec cooldown. I dont see anything OP with that.

Imo, combo fields with blast finishers aren’t much of a problem with staff into dd. DD only has 2 blast finishers (though imo, churning earth takes too long to use as a blast finisher) so there’s only 1. And the leap from magnetic grasp.

The only way to combo a lot is using Staff and then SD. You can use a eruption > combo field > dragon’s tooth > pheonix > arcane wave > EA roll. That’s 5 blast finishers but that only makes us on par with PRE-NERF EA.

Did pre-nerf EA make us OP? No, not exactly. It was our heals that made us OP on staff. But that’s a bunker problem that imo, Anet should address separately. So, I believe that combos aren’t that bad of a problem. You’re cycling through a LOT of your spells to combo

The next OP thing would be ou heals. Staff heals used with DD/SD heals would definitely be OP. If weapon swap was available, this is the first thing devs should touch.

The next OP thing would be our burst strings. We would be able do staff to dd/sd strings. eruption > lava font > DD/SD burst. Or SD into DD burst. But imo, these strings would take a long time to use, even longer than Hundred Blades. And the first phase of the SD or Staff burst can be dealt with with a simple dodge. Don’t sit in the lava font or dragon’s tooth. Also, obsidion earth into churning earth isn’t OP at all. Churning earth is super easy to dodge. I don’t care if you have lightning flash. Just time your dodge roll and you’ll avoid it no matter what. Give players time and imo, churning earth will no longer work in PVP or WvWvW once players get used to playing against DD ele. It’s like learning to avoid bullrushes and HB.

The next OP thing could possibly be our escapes in conjunction with mobility. Using RTL to get away with lightning flash is awesome. Then mistform. Now, combine that with AoE Frost and AoE stun and cripple from staff and no one can ever catch up to you. Ever. Eles would also have perm swiftness. The ele would be like the little gingerbread man. “Can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread Ele.”

1. Now, how much of the OPness would mitigated with a long CD on weapon swap?’

2. If necessary, what if we used fishbait’s idea? Weapon 1 must be staff. Weapon set 1 can be SD, DD, SF, or DF. Therefore, long string bursts are no longer possible as staff is not really capable of burst damage. The only thing left to worry about is healing OPness.

3. What if even though we can weapon swap, our attunements shared the same cooldowns on both weapons? So if you’ve used your bursts on SD, when you switch to DD, those similar skills will also be on CD? Now, you can no longer abuse fire attunement in SD and DD together. You can’t abuse staff heal with DD/SD heal.

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Just give us out of combat swapping. People already can do this with non-user friendly way…

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Yea because you would be juggling the 40 skills at the same time… Think before posting.

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Yea because you would be juggling the 40 skills at the same time… Think before posting.

~.~ the love is strong in this one….

plasmacutter.2709:

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Yea because you would be juggling the 40 skills at the same time… Think before posting.

~.~ the love is strong in this one….

I hate unfounded critisism… So far you were agaisnt 3 different changes to elemtalist based on nothing. If i allow this to get unnoticed it will hurt the class. Bring valid points and ill take them, but dont come here saying weapong swap would be stupid because now you would need 20 more keybinds to handle the second weapon skills… come on man

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Yea because you would be juggling the 40 skills at the same time… Think before posting.

~.~ the love is strong in this one….

I hate unfounded critisism… So far you were agaisnt 3 different changes to elemtalist based on nothing. If i allow this to get unnoticed it will hurt the class. Bring valid points and ill take them, but dont come here saying weapong swap would be stupid because now you would need 20 more keybinds to handle the second weapon skills… come on man

It’s just how you phrased this. I’m trying to approach this with critical thinking and trying to tackle this from different sides. OP? Or not OP? That is the question.

Responding with an emotional reaction is fine, just be wary that when responding with emotions, others will respond likewise. Why? Because emotional reactions usually result in emotional responses in others. It helps to respond with both emotion and a clear line of logic. The logic will help others understand where you’re coming from and understand why you feel this way about the subject.

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Yea because you would be juggling the 40 skills at the same time… Think before posting.

~.~ the love is strong in this one….

I hate unfounded critisism… So far you were agaisnt 3 different changes to elemtalist based on nothing. If i allow this to get unnoticed it will hurt the class. Bring valid points and ill take them, but dont come here saying weapong swap would be stupid because now you would need 20 more keybinds to handle the second weapon skills… come on man

not 20 keybinds.. 20 more skills, which then have to be optimized and chosen at a split-second notice in an ever-changing combat scenario on a profession which is rated as one of the twitchiest in-game.

Studies have been made on this, and the current 20 skills people have to choose from on-the-fly are at the edge of what the vast majority of human minds can take before severe mental fatigue kicks in.. the kind of mental fatigue that opens individuals up to Pavlovian levels of suggestibility.

It’s a very valid point, it’s based on hard scientific evidence, and you have no right to trot out the insulting language simply because you’ve never stumbled across the literature.

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Mentioning F keys and changing mouse gave me the impresion you were upgrading for more buttons. I assumed the wrong thing and for that i apologise. Regarding the studies… idk maybe they exist and I havent seen them, maybe its true, but I come from asian MMOs where with 3 modifiers and a razor naga i still had some rare skills on mouse clicks and i felt perfectly fine with all that load. In fact the reason i picked elementalist is the fact all other classes feel really simplistic.

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Mentioning F keys and changing mouse gave me the impresion you were upgrading for more buttons. I assumed the wrong thing and for that i apologise. Regarding the studies… idk maybe they exist and I havent seen them, maybe its true, but I come from asian MMOs where with 3 modifiers and a razor naga i still had some rare skills on mouse clicks and i felt perfectly fine with all that load. In fact the reason i picked elementalist is the fact all other classes feel really simplistic.

The studies in question show the rate of mental fatigue increases as a compounded function of:

A – the number of choices

B – the weight of each choice’s consequence (penalty for making a wrong choice)

C – the amount of time alloted to make any one choice.

While most MMO’s stack heavily on A and C, they compensate by mitigating B which has a much larger impact on the mental state of the individual. (incidentally, the studies also show that simple sugars.. e.g. junk food.. can help recover some of this in the short term, hence why many silicon valley firms provide free sodas and sugar-snacks to their knowledge workers)

In GW2, screwing up a chain can compel you to break combat or lose initiative (for a time extended enough to be permanent).

In most other mmos you have substitutes that can recover your position. (hence “B” is mitigated)

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.. I’m glad GW2 punishes people for their mistakes.. but given this, it’s much more taxing on the mind.

plasmacutter.2709:

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

weapon swap on an ele juggling 4 attunements would be incredibly overpowered.

The complexity would one-hit-crit-kill pretty much every ELEMENTALIST.

juggling 40 abilities and 5 f-keys would be murder… i’d have to replace my gaming mouse and would probably spend 75% of my time cursing under my breath because i missed the earth attunement and swapped weapons.

Mentioning F keys and changing mouse gave me the impresion you were upgrading for more buttons. I assumed the wrong thing and for that i apologise. Regarding the studies… idk maybe they exist and I havent seen them, maybe its true, but I come from asian MMOs where with 3 modifiers and a razor naga i still had some rare skills on mouse clicks and i felt perfectly fine with all that load. In fact the reason i picked elementalist is the fact all other classes feel really simplistic.

The studies in question show the rate of mental fatigue increases as a compounded function of:

A – the number of choices

B – the weight of each choice’s consequence (penalty for making a wrong choice)

C – the amount of time alloted to make any one choice.

While most MMO’s stack heavily on A and C, they compensate by mitigating B which has a much larger impact on the mental state of the individual. (incidentally, the studies also show that simple sugars.. e.g. junk food.. can help recover some of this in the short term, hence why many silicon valley firms provide free sodas and sugar-snacks to their knowledge workers)

In GW2, screwing up a chain can compel you to break combat or lose initiative (for a time extended enough to be permanent).

In most other mmos you have substitutes that can recover your position. (hence “B” is mitigated)

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.. I’m glad GW2 punishes people for their mistakes.. but given this, it’s much more taxing on the mind.

Interesting indeed. I can’t argue against that, even if the mental fatigue acts differently on every person, it would be a poor choice from anet if they implement it this way. Probably they though of this and tried to compensate weapon swap with conjures, but they fall short atm, some tweaking might be enough.

I still don’t see anything wrong with a quality of life out of combat weapon swap.

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

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

Please read my second post to be fully informed about my proposition and criticisms about weapon swap.

SecondtoNone’s second post pretty much covers it. There are a few advantages ele would get from weapon swap in terms of heal, burst, and escape but most of them could be eliminated or mitigated by using one of the 3 suggestions he list at the bottom.

Another thread also made a suggestion that I like which is to make in-combat weapon swap an elite skill with something like a 120-180 second cooldown.
You get a benefit…you can swap your weapons in-combat once per fight unless it is a really long fight. You will be able to get one burst, heal or escape string out of it but no more than that.
It also has a cost…it takes up your elite slot.

People would use a long cooldown in-combat weapon swap to go from staff to d/d but only a soon-to-be-dead idiot would use it to go from d/d to staff in any pvp fight.
You would get one extra burst, which is what elite skills are for.

It would be insanely overpowered to have mid combat weapon swaps. Imagine having 40 CD skills handy. You would be invincible in bunker spec for sure. Endless healing.

Malcastus.6240:

It would be insanely overpowered to have mid combat weapon swaps. Imagine having 40 CD skills handy. You would be invincible in bunker spec for sure. Endless healing.

You didn’t put any thought into that, you didn’t address any of the points the OP made, and you evince no understanding, why did you bother posting?

I recently started doing out of combat weapon swapping and it feels a little too good to be true. So far, I’ve just been going between d/d and staff for the mobility and stacking swiftness and fury via Zephyr’s Boon. I’ll occasionally try combing the two blast finishers in */d earth, but again, that’s generally with an ice field for more Zephyr’s boon goodness.

Being able to swap in combat would be insane and incredibly fun (or maybe just a refreshing change). I imagine the most “OP” aspect of swapping in combat would be the additional AoE heals and control (stun, knockback, chill, cripple) skills. Though, as someone else mentioned, Elementalis pre-EA nerf weren’t exactly OP with all the heals they had.

I was hoping people would read my second post and start a good discussion, but perhaps a bump would help. But please, think, ponder, and consider the various options and sides of the argument.

Just looking at d/d with staff here.
Staff air>5> earth>5>2> fire>2>3 dagger>air> rtl> 5>(would still be in 2 aoe from fire)> rest of dagger burst. Opponent as been imobo/stunned for the majority of the combo.
Staff>water>5>3> dagger>2>5 > earth> 4. never die ever.

SecondtoNone.7549:

I was hoping people would read my second post and start a good discussion, but perhaps a bump would help. But please, think, ponder, and consider the various options and sides of the argument.

Just about everything was already said on this topic, so no real reason to continue to milk this thread.

Regizer.1763:

SecondtoNone.7549:

I was hoping people would read my second post and start a good discussion, but perhaps a bump would help. But please, think, ponder, and consider the various options and sides of the argument.

Just about everything was already said on this topic, so no real reason to continue to milk this thread.

I thought my ideas were interesting but I suppose not. Ah, well.

You know what I think would be cool? If we were able to use 4 different weapons instead of the two.

What’s this nonsense you speak of!?!? Two would be too many my ignorant fellow!

But wait!!! You could only equip 1 weapon per attunenment. Kinda like our conjured weapons. So you could have a dagger for fire, a staff for water, a scepter for air, and a longbow for earth.

This would of course mean tons of work developing skills for the weapons and balancing them, so I never expect to see this, ever. But it popped into my head, so I thought I would share.

It would be fun. Staff and d/d would be a major buff.

SecondtoNone.7549:

What do you guys think? Heals? Boons? DPS? CC? Mobility? Escapes? What combos would be OP?

It’s not a matter of what is OP and what is not. The point is to make a character that suits your style. I know that there are a lot of great options, but you can’t have them all. That’s the whole point. You need to make a choice of which things you want the most. If elementalists had all skills available for swapping all the time, then warriors would need to have all of their abilities too. Then it would be like WoW where everyone can do the same thing and trust me, we don’t want that.

A long cooldown of 30-60 seconds (or even more) between weapon swaps in combination with skills being disabled for 5 seconds after weapon swap will prevent many if not all potentially OP combos from being executed.

These changes are obviously for Elementalist only and could even be applied to Engineer however their weapons don’t affect combat as much as their kits.

Whats the problem with pressing the inventory button and then double clicking the weapons you need? This just seems as a lazy man fix, rather then something that would fix our proffession. I switch between all weapon sets (d/d s/d s/f staff) and I never thought to myself I NEDDD WEAPOSN SWITHC!

People want to switch weapons while in combat because they may be kept in combat during a meta event while a champion spawns. It is much safer and more effective to fight in a group with a staff against a champion, however, throughout the earlier chains it is up to personal preference on what weapon sets you use. Many things can keep you in combat during a meta event that are beyond a player’s control, area effects that cause conditions/damage such as poison or chill. A player may also come across an unfamiliar scenario and realise that a different weapon set may be more appropriate for the situation however they are forced to get out of combat which requires kiting.

I posted a simple solution above. There just needs to be a skill downtime after weapon swapping to prevent potentially OP combos.

Occam.9841:

Malcastus.6240:

It would be insanely overpowered to have mid combat weapon swaps. Imagine having 40 CD skills handy. You would be invincible in bunker spec for sure. Endless healing.

You didn’t put any thought into that, you didn’t address any of the points the OP made, and you evince no understanding, why did you bother posting?

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.

Alright, I said bunker (healing/toughness/condition fx) before. You will be able to use four healing skills, instead of two. You can do a D/F, S/D combo and have loads of CC (count them. There are plenty), 4 secs invulnerability, even more condition removal (which already isn’t a problem if you spec for it), far easier access to applying conditions etc.

Now with a more bursty spec, and condition removal, you can put a LOT of damage on your opponent with all all the skills handy. Again, 4 sec invulnerability, ability to deflect arrows, pin people to the ground for 2 secs (in which time you can toss a DT and Phoenix on your opponent). The amount of diversity and skills would allow you to heal all the time (then imagine having a 20 sec CD main heal ability on top), being able to apply tremendous amounts of slow, other disablers, AoE and single person damage, protective skills, condition removal and condition damage that it wouldn’t even be funny anymore. I only touched upon a S/D, D/F combo.

Sure, eles would be amazing, but everyone else would be left behind, which would result in whining and even more nerfing/buffing/balancing all across the board, taking even LONGER to manage. What a headache it would give Anet and the players.

Instead Anet needs to fix the already existing skills and traits, to make more ele builds viable, which they are working on to my knowledge. While we have to live with frustrating long animations of skills, low damage etc., it would be best to address them so Anet can evaluate said things and improve what needs to be improved. All we can do is to be patient really. The game is still fairly new and lots of things needs to be fixed/addressed.

Edit: So, you folks want different things, CD’s on swapping (longer than a warrior fx) and skills. I missed that part earlier. However, imagine the enormous task of balancing it. Other classes would want the same, and Anet hasn’t even fixed the current issues yet.

Chipster.6713:

SecondtoNone.7549:

What do you guys think? Heals? Boons? DPS? CC? Mobility? Escapes? What combos would be OP?

It’s not a matter of what is OP and what is not. The point is to make a character that suits your style. I know that there are a lot of great options, but you can’t have them all. That’s the whole point. You need to make a choice of which things you want the most. If elementalists had all skills available for swapping all the time, then warriors would need to have all of their abilities too. Then it would be like WoW where everyone can do the same thing and trust me, we don’t want that.

What this person said. Eles are already diverse. Can’t have all the goodies. If you run with a big group, grab a staff and stay behind, if running alone, pick a more close range roamer set of weapons. I pop out the staff before I have to smash trebuchets often, or stand on the top of the building in Battle of Khylo, then switch back when AoE from afar isn’t necessary anymore. While you need to be out of combat, it isn’t that big of a deal.

SecondtoNone.7549:

3. What if even though we can weapon swap, our attunements shared the same cooldowns on both weapons? So if you’ve used your bursts on SD, when you switch to DD, those similar skills will also be on CD? Now, you can no longer abuse fire attunement in SD and DD together. You can’t abuse staff heal with DD/SD heal.

I guess my second post is pretty long but this is the main suggestion I thought was interesting. I just like the idea of having even more spells to play with as that’s why I started the ele in the first place. It’s complex and challenging and hell, I think it’d be cool if it was more so. Just me, of course. This suggestion tries to give the best of both worlds without making it OP. Shared CD between skills from either weapons.

I’d like weapon swap because I think it’d make the class more fun—and that’s all that matters. I’m just wondering what could be done to make it less OP if weapon swap was available.

I’m sure I’m not the only ele standing in pvp with DD and wishing I had a long-range weapon when someone’s standing on the clocktower shooting away at me and I can’t do anything because I want to cap the point.

The thing is, one of the major changes the developers intended for Guild Wars 2 (compared to GW1) was to separate the skills in order to reduce the amount of possible combinations. This was done in no small part because they were so tough to balance.

So, even if I agreed with everything you claimed (which I do not) I still don’t see them adding more possible combinations between the weapon sets. Sure, they could probably balance it. However, they chose to implement them this way so they wouldn’t have to. Because now, they only have to worry about balancing the combinations relatively to the other combinations (which as we’ve seen so far, isn’t a simple task either).

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?

i could definately handle that level of complexity, and it would def be overpowered. tho, maybe it would be cool if we could choose 1 weapon with no swap, or 2 attunements wed have access to combined with swap. same number of skills, but more combos

I think I would get more out of having D/D and Scepter/Focus on swap rather than D/D and staff.

Occam.9841:

zip

Ok, how about this, aura build with 30 arcana and ea, s/f and d/d

start in s/f water, 3s chill,drop comet, swap to fire, shield, firewall, drop dragons tooth and phoenix on it, earth and roll to wall, magnetic wave, obsidian flesh, earth 3, air 2 3 and knockdown, swap weapon to d/d rtl, updraft, normal d/d combos yada yada.

Throughout out the fight your opponent has been cc´d, dazed, knocked down, blown away or forced to dodge your spells. You gained 12 stacks of might and invulnerability for 4 seconds before entering d/d, after that hell of alot more boons.

Or take another scenario, bunker d/d and staff.
D/d bunker which is arguably one of the best bunkers, suddenly notice that your key skills are on cooldown? No worries, swap to staff and you have a clean set of skills and heals to use.

…well, i really wouldn´t need to say anyhting but obsidian flesh.
4 seconds of invulnerability at the start of the fight, without sacrificing any cooldowns or utilities. That alone would be insanely powerful.

Strang.8170:

Occam.9841:

zip

Ok, how about this, aura build with 30 arcana and ea, s/f and d/d

start in s/f water, 3s chill,drop comet, swap to fire, shield, firewall, drop dragons tooth and phoenix on it, earth and roll to wall, magnetic wave, obsidian flesh, earth 3, air 2 3 and knockdown, swap weapon to d/d rtl, updraft, normal d/d combos yada yada.

Throughout out the fight your opponent has been cc´d, dazed, knocked down, blown away or forced to dodge your spells. You gained 12 stacks of might and invulnerability for 4 seconds before entering d/d, after that hell of alot more boons.

Or take another scenario, bunker d/d and staff.
D/d bunker which is arguably one of the best bunkers, suddenly notice that your key skills are on cooldown? No worries, swap to staff and you have a clean set of skills and heals to use.

…well, i really wouldn´t need to say anyhting but obsidian flesh.
4 seconds of invulnerability at the start of the fight, without sacrificing any cooldowns or utilities. That alone would be insanely powerful.

“start in s/f water, 3s chill,drop comet…”
Ok but you haven’t done any damage yet.

“…swap to fire, shield, firewall, drop dragons tooth and phoenix on it, earth and roll to wall…”
You got a combo off but your enemy evaded as soon as you closed to try to catch them with the fire shield. Firewall is a line that no on is going to stand in…still no damage done.

“…magnetic wave, obsidian flesh, earth 3…”
Magnetic Wave and Earth 3 both do only a tiny amount of damage.

“…air 2 3 and knockdown…”
Air 2 does decent damage, 3 and 5 none.

“…swap weapon to d/d rtl, updraft, normal d/d combos yada yada…”
So assuming that you opponent hasn’t done anything but evade your Fire Shield and Flamewall you are at full health and he is at virtually full health. Now you swap to d/d and the real fight begins without you having any advantage that could realistically be called OP.
More likely any conscious opponent would have interrupted your flow somewhere along the way and you would have taken at least as much damage as you did to him.

“…
Or take another scenario, bunker d/d and staff.
D/d bunker which is arguably one of the best bunkers, suddenly notice that your key skills are on cooldown? No worries, swap to staff and you have a clean set of skills and heals to use.”
If there is no timer to swap back to d/d when you want them again, sure that would be very strong. But if there is a timer like the ones that people keep suggesting then you would be royally screwed switching to a staff in the middle of a fight, the spells are just too slow, don’t hit hard enough, and are too easy to avoid.

The clear solution to the dilemma is to give them the same weapon swap everyone else has but either disable it or have it on a much longer cooldown during combat.

Einlanzer.1627:

The clear solution to the dilemma is to give them the same weapon swap everyone else has but either disable it or have it on a much longer cooldown during combat.

Or this suggestion I made in my second post:

3. What if even though we can weapon swap, our attunements shared the same cooldowns on both weapons? So if you’ve used your bursts on SD, when you switch to DD, those similar skills will also be on CD? Now, you can no longer abuse fire attunement in SD and DD together. You can’t abuse staff heal with DD/SD heal.

I think I’ll post it in the first post so people will actually see it and not overlook my way too long post.