Guild Wars 2

By weapon swapping, I mean doing so would put ALL your elements on a 10 second cooldown, preventing you from going from element to element, unloading the entire skill bar and swapping to the next.

Now, before the “uber leet pro” attunement swappers start complaining on how “this would ruin the class!!1!!1”, hear me out. If you dumped your usual 30 points into arcane, you’d still be getting 60% off the cooldowns. That’s 4 second swaps, 3 if you use the rune set for -1. That’s still pretty kitten fast, and you’d still be able to go ADHD on your opponents, flopping from one element to the next, dumping your load into them. No, this wouldn’t make you overpowered because you’d still do crappy damage in any individual element.

Now, what would it mean for those who don’t dump 30 points into arcane?

I’m sure most people are aware elementalists do kitten poor damage in any single element. You pretty much need to swap between all the elements in order to stay competitive. But if we take away the ability to swap between 4 elements in 4 seconds, then the individual damage of an element could go up. Maybe grandmaster traits could further cement this by offering a lot of power to that element. Someone sitting in fire would be a danger ALL the time (at least, while they were in fire), instead of for 5 seconds every 30-45 seconds. Putting them under attack would force them into, say, earth, which they may not be spec’d for and thus they’d be more survivable, but their damage would be lower for the next 10 seconds until they could get back to fire.

Someone could go 30 points deep into two elements and play more like a regular class would with their two weapons. Damage / control, or damage / support, support / survivability, or so on. You’d still have your other elements there for when kitten hits the fan, and they’d be no worse off than they are now untalented. Having 4 “weapons” would actually feel like a perk, instead of a trade-off (like a ranger’s pet, or a necromancer’s second health bar).

Comments and criticism?

the skills were designed around attunement swapping. Forcing everyone to put 30pts into arcane just to be able to use the skills as they were designed would limit the amount of viable builds substantially.

Sorry, but no. Just a bad idea.

And that’s why I said grandmaster traits would offer a lot of power instead of their current level of “meh”. That element would become suitable to sit in 90% of the time.

Please put at least some thought into the comments.

Yashimata.2986:

And that’s why I said grandmaster traits would offer a lot of power instead of their current level of “meh”. That element would become suitable to sit in 90% of the time.

Please put at least some thought into the comments.

I could ask the same of you.

I’ll ignore the fact that you didn’t address the core concern of my statement and simply move on to your contradiction in logic. Explain to me please how being forced to pick one other GM trait, aside from the 30 we’ve already dumped into Arcane just to make our class work again, will offer the class more viable builds rather than fewer in addition to making the class function better?

Here’s a question: What’s your current build, play style, and focus of game play? Because I can tell you right now this idea would never work for PvP.

Bad idea is bad

I’d quote you, but the forums don’t appear to want to show that button today.

Please explain how having two fully fleshed out and stand-alone “weapons” with two more half-decent weapons would “limit the amount of builds substantially” If anything, it would increase the amount of builds because you could go Earth / Air, Water / Fire, Fire / Arcane, or any combination thereof, instead of just Arcane / little bit of everything else.

The idea is elementalist would work WITHOUT dumping 30 points into arcane. If you chose to do so, then you’d be able to flop back and forth between elements similar to how you do now. The fact you haven’t even addressed this point in my post shows you haven’t put any thought into the post above and beyond “current status quo = good, everything else = bad”.

You’re talking about fundamentally changing the basis of our class. If you were to change attunements to a global cooldown of 10 seconds when you swap, you severely limit the amount of damage we can dish out as is.

Even if you were to boost the base damage as you wished, what good would it do? You would just rotate your bursts to the end of the CD which leaves you spamming auto’s for 6 seconds or until you feel safe and other classes wouldn’t even fear you because they know you can’t burst when you swap attunements.

The reason why we can currently “burst”, is because we have the ability to swap attunes without a global CD, pop our skills and switch to the next attunement while other skills are on CD.

Sorry, hackks was pretty much right. Bad idea is bad.

so what i’m basically understanding here is you want people to put 30 trait points into a single element just for something that makes only that element slightly better, and also that you want a major nerf to ele gameplay in general?

First off, he has been putting thought into his posts, at least, everything I’ve seen him say has had thought put into it. Anyway, the class isn’t effectively played at the moment by sitting in one attunement, and I don’t see how changing the grandmaster trait in each line would make this style viable. Secondly, the elementalist really thrives on creating and benefiting from various combo fields, which require quick attunement swaping to detonate. Even if you had a 3 second cd for attunement swaps overall, it still would be too slow to allow for continued use of combo fields that you see may elementalists use in pvp. Also, you completely kill combo field use for those who don’t trait into arcane, which severaly damages the group utility the elementalist brings. Enough thought for you?

I’m having hard time understanding your issue and reasoning behind your proposed changes. It almost seems like we’re not playing the same game.

If you don’t like attunement swapping (which is all I’m getting from this) there are 7 other classes that might be more suited for you.

hakurface.2619:

You’re talking about fundamentally changing the basis of our class. If you were to change attunements to a global cooldown of 10 seconds when you swap, you severely limit the amount of damage we can dish out as is.

Even if you were to boost the base damage as you wished, what good would it do? You would just rotate your bursts to the end of the CD which leaves you spamming auto’s for 6 seconds or until you feel safe and other classes wouldn’t even fear you because they know you can’t burst when you swap attunements.

The reason why we can currently “burst”, is because we have the ability to swap attunes without a global CD, pop our skills and switch to the next attunement while other skills are on CD.

Sorry, hackks was pretty much right. Bad idea is bad.

But what if you didn’t have to rotate elements to burst? You could just sit in fire (or air) and do all your bursting. Entertain that thought for a moment. How would that look?

wertyuio.8630:

so what i’m basically understanding here is you want people to put 30 trait points into a single element just for something that makes only that element slightly better, and also that you want a major nerf to ele gameplay in general?

Not slightly better, a lot better. It wouldn’t be a nerf; it’d be a change. You could put 30 points into a trait line to have a powerful element, or you could continue putting 10-20 points in every line and be able to continue to swap around at will.

thejoshknight.4697:

First off, he has been putting thought into his posts, at least, everything I’ve seen him say has had thought put into it. Anyway, the class isn’t effectively played at the moment by sitting in one attunement, and I don’t see how changing the grandmaster trait in each line would make this style viable. Secondly, the elementalist really thrives on creating and benefiting from various combo fields, which require quick attunement swaping to detonate. Even if you had a 3 second cd for attunement swaps overall, it still would be too slow to allow for continued use of combo fields that you see may elementalists use in pvp. Also, you completely kill combo field use for those who don’t trait into arcane, which severaly damages the group utility the elementalist brings. Enough thought for you?

He’s still missing the point of the post. It’s a “What if”, not “lolz this idea is bad k?” IF this is how elementalist was played, how would it look in comparison. Yes, if you continue to apply how it CURRENTLY works to how it COULD work, of course it’s going to look terrible, because our skills are terrible unless you chain terribly small damage skills together to get something not quite as terrible.

Edit: Missed a section of your post. You’d still be able to combo with yourself, you just wouldn’t be able to fit ALL your blast finishers into ONE combo field.

class isn’t effectively played at the moment by sitting in one attunement

Thank you captain obvious. Yes. I know. I’m saying what if it was played effectively by sitting in one element? Apparently this is difficult for elementalists to wrap their mind around. You still swap elements as the situation arises, you just don’t do it as often. WHAT IF you need AoE? You go to fire and you don’t need to go to any other elements to get your AoE. Apply that to the other elements. Imagine that.

hackks.3687:

I’m having hard time understanding your issue and reasoning behind your proposed changes. It almost seems like we’re not playing the same game.

If you don’t like attunement swapping (which is all I’m getting from this) there are 7 other classes that might be more suited for you.

I love attunement swapping. I like being able to go from AoE when it’s needed, to supporting or trying to save myself with earth. I love the spells, I love the class in general. What I don’t like is swapping elements every 3 seconds. When we can swap elements so easily, people exploit that and the damage gets nerfed (see: every single beta weekend). If we can’t swap as easily (or don’t need to), then we can have single abilities that don’t suck by themselves.

In GW1, elementalists were basically chained to a single element. You could sometimes dual element and there were a few skills that let you totally mix it up with all four, but those builds were terrible and never worked. Now we have the exact opposite problem where if you’re not using every single element at least twice every 30 seconds, you’re doing it wrong. We need a middle ground.

Someone suggested in another topic that the grandmaster minor trait for each element could give that one attunement a drastic cooldown reduction, allowing you to return to it very quickly after switching to another element.

For example, a heavy fire build could drop into water for a quick cleanse and be back to fire within a couple seconds without losing much DPS, as opposed to 9-15 seconds like it is now. A supporty water build could swap to earth/air when they need CC and be back to water in a snap. Earth/Fire would have two skill sets swappable almost at will, and two others that would be still be useful for occasional cooldowns.

The biggest problem I can find with that idea is that it would require the 2-3 skills for each attunement to be viable for sustained use. That’s not the case as often as I’d like it to be for a setup like this. Perhaps a small trait investment in each line would buff those skills a bit, so one person could have sustainable air and fire damage, while another person could go full Arcana plus a few points in everything else to play like we do now. This also puts an opportunity cost on each skill’s power, so individual skills might even be able to be buffed a little.

If you still wanted to play the attunement roulette, there would still be plenty of combinations of Arcana + various amounts of low-mid traited elements. This isn’t aimed at removing swapping at all, just at making more builds viable that focus on just one or two elements.

EDIT: To clarify, I don’t think a longer global cooldown is the answer, but I do think there are ways to make it work. I do agree that each element needs some kind of investment to gain its full power, because that would do SO MUCH to help break our Arcana addiction.

Haette.2701:

Someone suggested in another topic that the grandmaster minor trait for each element could give that one attunement a drastic cooldown reduction, allowing you to return to it very quickly after switching to another element.

For example, a heavy fire build could drop into water for a quick cleanse and be back to fire within a couple seconds without losing much DPS, as opposed to 9-15 seconds like it is now. A supporty water build could swap to earth/air when they need CC and be back to water in a snap. Earth/Fire would have two skill sets swappable almost at will, and two others that would be still be useful for occasional cooldowns.

The biggest problem I can find with that idea is that it would require the 2-3 skills for each attunement to be viable for sustained use. That’s not the case as often as I’d like it to be for a setup like this. Perhaps a small trait investment in each line would buff those skills a bit, so one person could have sustainable air and fire damage, while another person could go full Arcana plus a few points in everything else to play like we do now. This also puts an opportunity cost on each skill’s power, so individual skills might even be able to be buffed a little.

If you still wanted to play the attunement roulette, there would still be plenty of combinations of Arcana + various amounts of low-mid traited elements. This isn’t aimed at removing swapping at all, just at making more builds viable that focus on just one or two elements.

EDIT: To clarify, I don’t think a longer global cooldown is the answer, but I do think there are ways to make it work. I do agree that each element needs some kind of investment to gain its full power, because that would do SO MUCH to help break our Arcana addiction.

Thank you for being the first person to actually consider a change and responding accordingly. I would also agree that a quick swap back to a main element with 3 sustainable skills would also be an acceptable change. I totally respect that you don’t think lengthening the cooldown is the right way to do it, but we do need some sort of middle ground.

Again, here’s the thing, even if you were to boost the base damage of Elements, WHY would you want to stay in a single element. The class itself is designed around rotating Attunements. Our combos,burst and utility come from stringing multiple skills from multiple Attunements.

Quote isn’t working right now.

“But if we take away the ability to swap between 4 elements in 4 seconds, then the individual damage of an element could go up.”

No. It’s now 4 elements in 6 seconds. There’s no need to boost the damage because all you would be doing is spamming autos once you burn your skills. So you’re asking to be buffed for basic damage after you burn your skills when you have 15 others. Working like weapon swaps is a good idea and could offer more build diversity but wouldn’t matter. We still need to be in bunker to be viable. Instead of 20 points in Arcane it would be 10, leaving the other points to be put in Water/Earth.

hakurface.2619:

Again, here’s the thing, even if you were to boost the base damage of Elements, WHY would you want to stay in a single element.

I’ve suggested one possibility, which is that base power would be about the same as it is now, but a small trait investment would provide buffs that are specifically designed to make one element better at prolonged use.

So if you maxed water, your low-CD water skills would naturally become more useful than air/earth/fire and you could viably stay in that element most of the time, but you would still have the ability to swap to other elements for their clutch CDs and quickly return to your “favored” element.

Done properly, Arcana would not be nerfed by this because they would still have the option of making all their elements a little better and rotating the smaller cooldowns like they do now.

hakurface.2619:

Again, here’s the thing, even if you were to boost the base damage of Elements, WHY would you want to stay in a single element. The class itself is designed around rotating Attunements. Our combos,burst and utility come from stringing multiple skills from multiple Attunements.

Quote isn’t working right now.

“But if we take away the ability to swap between 4 elements in 4 seconds, then the individual damage of an element could go up.”

No. It’s now 4 elements in 6 seconds. There’s no need to boost the damage because all you would be doing is spamming autos once you burn your skills. So you’re asking to be buffed for basic damage after you burn your skills when you have 15 others. Working like weapon swaps is a good idea and could offer more build diversity but wouldn’t matter. We still need to be in bunker to be viable. Instead of 20 points in Arcane it would be 10, leaving the other points to be put in Water/Earth.

I see. You’re talking from a purely sPvP standpoint (the one thing I don’t really do in GW2). I mostly stick to PvE and WvW.

Why you would want to stay in one element is because, in this hypothetical situation, it would be the best damage. Imagine a high DPS skill bar; no need to fish through every single element, using one burst skill before whisking off to the next. It would all be right there, in one element. We’re designed to be able to swap roles, but it doesn’t need to happen so quickly. We don’t need to be stuck in this situation where we have to bunker down so hard under attack or risk dying.

Something needs to change.

Haette.2701:

I’ve suggested one possibility, which is that base power would be about the same as it is now, but a small trait investment would provide buffs that are specifically designed to make one element better at prolonged use.

So if you maxed water, your low-CD water skills would naturally become more useful than air/earth/fire and you could viably stay in that element most of the time, but you would still have the ability to swap to other elements for their clutch CDs and quickly return to your “favored” element.

Done properly, Arcana would not be nerfed by this because they would still have the option of making all their elements a little better and rotating the smaller cooldowns like they do now.

Another acceptable solution. Thank you.

I think I’m getting a better sense of what you’re asking for now, you can thank Haette for that.

However, the reason I enjoy my Ele so much is because of the attunement dancing and the versatility and complexity it brings. I like how my Ele plays, the only things I’d change are some traits, the function of some skills, and the obvious bugs.

I’m really not looking to simplify my Ele. Not in the least. That would destroy my interest in the class and I know I’m not the only one who would feel that way.

btw, what arcane addiction? I hardly ever put more than 15 points in the tree. Never more than 20. What I’d really like are the Fire and Air traits to be a bit more appealing.

Yashimata.2986:

hakurface.2619:

Again, here’s the thing, even if you were to boost the base damage of Elements, WHY would you want to stay in a single element. The class itself is designed around rotating Attunements. Our combos,burst and utility come from stringing multiple skills from multiple Attunements.

Quote isn’t working right now.

“But if we take away the ability to swap between 4 elements in 4 seconds, then the individual damage of an element could go up.”

No. It’s now 4 elements in 6 seconds. There’s no need to boost the damage because all you would be doing is spamming autos once you burn your skills. So you’re asking to be buffed for basic damage after you burn your skills when you have 15 others. Working like weapon swaps is a good idea and could offer more build diversity but wouldn’t matter. We still need to be in bunker to be viable. Instead of 20 points in Arcane it would be 10, leaving the other points to be put in Water/Earth.

I see. You’re talking from a purely sPvP standpoint (the one thing I don’t really do in GW2). I mostly stick to PvE and WvW.

Why you would want to stay in one element is because, in this hypothetical situation, it would be the best damage. Imagine a high DPS skill bar; no need to fish through every single element, using one burst skill before whisking off to the next. It would all be right there, in one element. We’re designed to be able to swap roles, but it doesn’t need to happen so quickly. We don’t need to be stuck in this situation where we have to bunker down so hard under attack or risk dying.

Something needs to change.

Haette.2701:

hakurface.2619:

Again, here’s the thing, even if you were to boost the base damage of Elements, WHY would you want to stay in a single element.

I’ve suggested one possibility, which is that base power would be about the same as it is now, but a small trait investment would provide buffs that are specifically designed to make one element better at prolonged use.

So if you maxed water, your low-CD water skills would naturally become more useful than air/earth/fire and you could viably stay in that element most of the time, but you would still have the ability to swap to other elements for their clutch CDs and quickly return to your “favored” element.

Done properly, Arcana would not be nerfed by this because they would still have the option of making all their elements a little better and rotating the smaller cooldowns like they do now.

Another acceptable solution. Thank you.

ugh. I don’t like that context in the least. sticking to one attunement in that regard would pigeon hole your role and largely be regarded as a nerf to dynamic and versatile class.

I actually REALLY like this idea.

As it stands, do to damage you swap between fire, air, and earth pretty much as soon as you spam all your abilities in the attunement. Yes I know thats not 100% accurate – you’re not going to waste projectile reflects, obsidian flesh, cripples etc if they arent needed but for the most part you put ALL your damaging abilities on CD, swap attunements and repeat. At the same time putting abilities on top of each other for combo effects.

Traiting doesn’t seem to approve of this though. There is a trait line for each attunement. You almost NEED 20 points in arcana, which means you can pretty much only put points into two attunements, even though you always use three of them in combat. And to NOT be a glass cannon, you have to put points in water – an almost completely supportive tree, and nearly useless to most non supportive players aside from the +vitality.

I would prefer each attunement to be a little more specialized. I would be in fire for damage mostly, possibly for multiple targets.

You would switch into earth when the enemy gets close to gain toughness, and a good mix of abilities that have both a defensive and offensive side to them – similar to how many mesmer abilities have a beneficial aspect for them, and a negative effect for the enemy.

Water would probably still stay a sort of supportive attunement, swap if you need an extra heal.

Air would be probably single target dps with a focus on utility – blinds, swiftness.

I think that having the OPTION of sticking with two main attunements, and actually being able to trait them to be powerful, and sacrificing the fast attunement swaps by simply not choosing arcana. This would add multiple build types, while keeping the ele how it currently is. Simply add a grandmaster trait to make the attunement more powerful. Possibly add a master trait so you could sort of specialize in two different attunements without having to blow 30 points in both.

I really like this idea and would be thrilled if the devs considered it at all. Not only would there be as many builds as already exist, but it would nearly double the amount of viable builds.

hackks.3687:

I think I’m getting a better sense of what you’re asking for now, you can thank Haette for that.

However, the reason I enjoy my Ele so much is because of the attunement dancing and the versatility and complexity it brings. I like how my Ele plays, the only things I’d change are some traits, the function of some skills, and the obvious bugs.

I’m really not looking to simplify my Ele. Not in the least. That would destroy my interest in the class and I know I’m not the only one who would feel that way.

btw, what arcane addiction? I hardly ever put more than 15 points in the tree. Never more than 20. What I’d really like are the Fire and Air traits to be a bit more appealing.

You’d still be able to attunement dance, it’d just require more investment into the appropriate line. You really should try the arcane line. I hate it myself, but it’s just so required to get anything done. That feels pigeon-holed to me. I used to have 30 fire / 20 arcane, but after swapping them I don’t think I could ever go back the other way. Fire was giving me.. 5 stacks of might? Occasionally, when I stuck in the element longer than I’m “supposed” to? 30 arcane gives me like 20 stacks of might in exchange for having to play ele like I have ADHD and can’t pick one element to stick to for longer than 4 seconds.

I would like nothing more than to be able to spec something that currently would be very silly like 30 air / water, and be totally viable.

I’m pretty sure I understand the motivation behind this op. there is a contingent of players that really want elementalist to be more like the traditional stand back and blast wizard. Or they want to be able to just stay in one attunement forever and be pure dps, healer or cc support.

But here’s the thing…you may want ele to be like that but that is not how the class was designed. It was clearly designed with frequent attunement swapping in mind, Introducing broad sweeping changes to our main class mechanic that will imbalance everything just so you can play the class the way you think it should be played makes no sense.

Instead…just try another class. You might like engineer, you can really focus and entire build around one of their kits and it works well if you want.

Have you read this thread at all? I don’t want to stay in one element all the time. I like standing back and blasting with my staff as much as I enjoy getting in there with my daggers, dodging attacks and putting the hurt on my enemy before dodging back out again. I love the dynamic, fluid ability to flow from one element into the next. I just don’t want to do it every 3 seconds.

I have 9 character slots. 8 of them are each of the classes. Each of them are at least level 30. No other class is as fun mechanically as the elementalist. Engineer is pretty close, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

Yashimata.2986:

Have you read this thread at all? I don’t want to stay in one element all the time. I like standing back and blasting with my staff as much as I enjoy getting in there with my daggers, dodging attacks and putting the hurt on my enemy before dodging back out again. I love the dynamic, fluid ability to flow from one element into the next. I just don’t want to do it every 3 seconds.

I have 9 character slots. 8 of them are each of the classes. Each of them are at least level 30. No other class is as fun mechanically as the elementalist. Engineer is pretty close, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

So let me get this straight…you don’t want to switch attunements frequently, and for that reason alone you think that the entire class mechanic should be changed and the entire class rebalanced just so you can play it how you would like?

What about the tons of other people who like the way the attunement swapping works now? I’m sorry, but this just seems really selfish and fairly pointless.

If constant attunement swapping was a broken or problematic class mechanic then I could see wanting to overhaul it, but it’s not. It works fine, you just want to change it because the class doesn’t play the way you want it to, which is ironically basically what I said in my first post just for a slightly different reason,

I couldn’t even entertain this thought. Not being an kitten or anything, its just attunement swapping is what makes the ELE.

Staying in one attunement would just be boring and drastically promote auto attack spamming as sitting in one attunement an ele would use his skills and then just spam auto attack until he could switch. I can’t stand the thought of that.

Creslin.1758:

But here’s the thing…you may want ele to be like that but that is not how the class was designed. It was clearly designed with frequent attunement swapping in mind, Introducing broad sweeping changes to our main class mechanic that will imbalance everything just so you can play the class the way you think it should be played makes no sense.

Ideally they’re still swapping quite often for clutch cooldowns, but are able to spend more time in their preferred element without dragging down their effectiveness so much.

I totally understand what you’re saying, and I’d probably stick with a multi-element, rapid-swapping build no matter what because it’s so kitten fun and unique. Still, it doesn’t hurt me at all if other people have the option of building a little closer to a traditional mage.

Honestly, I’d be just fine if Anet stepped in and said that no, we’re never supposed to spend the majority of our time in one element. That wouldn’t hurt me or the people who like the class as is. I’m just having fun thinking of ideas here.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

I couldn’t even entertain this thought. Not being an kitten or anything, its just attunement swapping is what makes the ELE.

Staying in one attunement would just be boring and drastically promote auto attack spamming as sitting in one attunement an ele would use his skills and then just spam auto attack until he could switch. I can’t stand the thought of that.

You posted after I started typing this up, but my response works for your post as well.

Creslin.1758:

So let me get this straight…you don’t want to switch attunements frequently, and for that reason alone you think that the entire class mechanic should be changed and the entire class rebalanced just so you can play it how you would like?

What about the tons of other people who like the way the attunement swapping works now? I’m sorry, but this just seems really selfish and fairly pointless.

If constant attunement swapping was a broken or problematic class mechanic then I could see wanting to overhaul it, but it’s not. It works fine, you just want to change it because the class doesn’t play the way you want it to, which is ironically basically what I said in my first post just for a slightly different reason,

There are a lot of people who find the elementalist is weak. If you paid attention to the betas (I did, since this was my favourite profession), you would see how elementalist damage and cooldowns were nerfed beta after beta because players would quickly swap between attunements, unloading stupid high amounts of burst damage. Those who didn’t go with this playstyle simply saw elementalists getting nerfed beta after beta for no reason. The skills seemed fine on their own! And they were. The problem was when they weren’t on their own. Instead of nerfing the ability to quickly change between elements, they opted instead to make it so you had to quickly change between elements.

Look how other classes behave. They don’t just swap weapons because the new one is off cooldown. Yeah sure they can, and I’m sure there are builds that focus around it. I want an elementalist build that doesn’t need to swap often. I don’t want to swap elements 12+ times in one battle, plowing through one high cooldown ability to the next, just to be able to win. It’s ridiculous. I want a reason to stay in fire when I’m nuking, and a reason to stay in water when I’m supporting. As it stands, there isn’t any reason to stay in either. We even have traits that try to encourage you to stay in one element. NOBODY takes them.

Attunement swapping is a broken mechanic. The more you swap, the better your damage gets. There’s no reason to ever stay in an element longer than it takes to fire off all the abilities in that element, and then you’re right into the next one after that. Look at engineers. They can use kits, or they can use elixirs, or they can use turrets. All of these things work. Elementalist only has one choice, and that’s spam spam spam spam spam.

Haette.2701:

Honestly, I think we’d be just fine if Anet stepped in and said that no, we’re never supposed to spend the majority of our time in the same element. That wouldn’t hurt me or the people who currently enjoy the class. I’m just having fun thinking of ideas that would open up options and broaden the class’s appeal.

An answer one way or the other would be nice. Either we’re never supposed to be in a single element for longer than 5 seconds and I can retire my elementalist, or they’re looking for a solution for other playstyles for the elementalist and I can go on trying to help them find an idea that works.

The OP’s suggestion is to fundamentally change the way the elementalist is played, giving players the option to build for stance dancing instead of making it required to play the class well.

I’m against a drastic change like this to the way the class plays. Here’s one reason why…

It’s simply not feasible to make the elementalist viable in a two spec build without making the stance dance option OP. Even if you somehow balance the numbers for stance dancing to be just as viable as 30/30 into two attunements you’re limiting viable specs to 30/30/10 splits or 30 arcana/X splits. Honestly though, it’s not possible to balance the numbers, because the skills are not designed to support that… meaning the skills would have to be replaced or redesigned. Plus there’s the insane amount of time it will take to roll out such a massive fundamental change in a balanced manner.

I’d much rather see incremental improvements to the elementalist to make more builds viable and make it a little more casual player friendly.

Shockwave.1230:

The OP’s suggestion is to fundamentally change the way the elementalist is played, giving players the option to build for stance dancing instead of making it required to play the class well.

I’m against a drastic change like this to the way the class plays. Here’s one reason why…

It’s simply not feasible to make the elementalist viable in a two spec build without making the stance dance option OP. Even if you somehow balance the numbers for stance dancing to be just as viable as 30/30 into two attunements you’re limiting viable specs to 30/30/10 splits or 30 arcana/X splits. Honestly though, it’s not possible to balance the numbers, because the skills are not designed to support that… meaning the skills would have to be replaced or redesigned. Plus there’s the insane amount of time it will take to roll out such a massive fundamental change in a balanced manner.

I’d much rather see incremental improvements to the elementalist to make more builds viable and make it a little more casual player friendly.

Even if it was limiting non-arcane builds to 30/30/10 splits, it’d still give us massively more viable builds than what we have now. As for skills, you just need grandmaster traits that say they change how some skills work, or something. IDK, I’m not a developer so I don’t know how the numbers would work.

Also, I’d just like to say it’s not a suggestion, it’s a hypothetical situation.

To be honest, every other class is able to sit in one weapon set and do viable dmg/support/healing/whatever and get away with just spamming AAs most of the time. So long as it rewards and doesn’t hurt those of us who like to play the class to it’s fullest via stance dancing I guess it wouldn’t hurt to make a viable dummy-mode for Ele’s. I really can’t see a way for that to happen and be balanced though.

edit: I’d still be tossing 15 points into Arcane though. Boon stacking is our strongest attribute hands down.

edit 2: on second thought, kitten balance. make us OP for a while. we deserve it.

We’ve actually been working on something which does just this (and a lil’ more) over in the suggestions forum. Have a look, and feel free to contribute in any way you’d like.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Elementalist-weapon-swap-2/page/2#post464188

when kitten hits the fan

And this is how a censor takes a dirty image and brings it all the way up to a life-long trauma… Anyway…

I really don’t get this…youdon’t have to swap attunements every 3s. You choose to. And after making that choice, you complain about it and want smb else to…unchoose it for u?!

Conncept.7638:

We’ve actually been working on something which does just this (and a lil’ more) over in the suggestions forum. Have a look, and feel free to contribute in any way you’d like.

An out-of-combat weapon swap is a very different beast from what this topic is about. This is a more fundamental set of changes that would affect attunement usage in combat and build possibilities, weapon swapping is a simple comfort thing.

TWMagimay.9057:

I really don’t get this…youdon’t have to swap attunements every 3s. You choose to. And after making that choice, you complain about it and want smb else to…unchoose it for u?!

Yes. If I want to maximize my damage potential, I do I have to swap that often.

Nothing should be balanced around having to put 30 points into any trait line. Period.

Every Elementalist is already essentially forced to put at least 20 points into Arcane and this would only make things worse.

Elementalist dependance on the Arcane trait line needs to be reduced not increased.

Hence all the ideas aimed at making one or two elements good for heavy use, so that you wouldn’t NEED to swap every five seconds.

Attunement swapping is what makes the class fun. The appeal is that you have access to any of 20 different abilities at any given time. Changing the class in the way you’re suggesting just so you can sit in one attunement and spam the same 5 abilities would be contrary to the entire essence of the class.

Listen, if you need any proof at all that most people enjoy attunement swapping, consider the fact that essentially every competitive Ele build out there starts with 30 points in Arcane. It’s not because Evasive Arcana is so nifty; it’s because people want shorter attunement cooldowns, not longer ones.

If you want to sit there and spam the same 5 abilities all game, there are 7 other classes in the game that would be perfect for you.

Perhaps changing one set of the minor traits to be a stacking buff (that caps) as such:

“casting a X spell increases the effectiveness of FireX spells while in X attunement for Y seconds”

So that way people who want to spec into sitting in an attunement get a benefit, whereas everyone else gets a nice small buff. They’d have to adjust the magnitude of the buff, how much it stacks, and for how long it lasts, to have it fit in with the current buff system (or just come up with a new type of buff).

Rearrange the minor traits such that:
-current 15pt becomes 5pt
-current 5pt becomes 15pt
-current 25pt gets replaced with above

So that way people who want to dance can spec evenly and get the benefits, and people who want to specialize in an attunement or two get more bonuses for doing so.

And, ofc, you’d have to impose a new cooldown setup for attunements. Haven’t thought that far ahead.

I think it could work, but it would definitely be revamping a class that already (mostly) works, and would be a lot more work than they’re probably intending on doing

Edit: Even though I think the class works, I definitely think they should’ve considered the people who wanted to go for more of a classical Mage feel by sitting in one attunement when designing the class with a “play how you want” ideology

mouse.1689:

Listen, if you need any proof at all that most people enjoy attunement swapping, consider the fact that essentially every competitive Ele build out there starts with 30 points in Arcane. It’s not because Evasive Arcana is so nifty; it’s because people want shorter attunement cooldowns, not longer ones.

Ignoring “fun” and “enjoyment” for a moment, consider your own fact that essentially every competitive ele build starts with a large investment in Arcana. That’s a sign of the other lines providing poor returns on an investment in them, relative to Arcana’s benefits. That’s not a good thing.

Panda.8169:

I think it could work, but it would definitely be revamping a class that already (mostly) works, and would be a lot more work than they’re probably intending on doing

Agreed, I’d rather they didn’t do anything at all until at least the bugs are fixed, and then nothing huge until we see how everyone works when everything works. This is definitely a “class getting overhauled for the new expansion” -type thing.

To answer the title question: Ele’s would become rangers that shoot fireballs instead of arrow, with no pets. Bad idea.

The problem you’re looking to address I think is that it’s not worth it to spec into one element. There’s two reasons for that, one it doesn’t offer any real advantage, and two it’s actually punished since you NEED to be able to swap for utility abilities, and then you’ve lost all your spec advantages for the next 15 seconds. This brings up two obvious solutions:
-20 and 30pt traits need to be buffed.
-Cooldown for a specialized attunement needs to be reduced. I mean like down to 5 seconds for your spec. That way you can swap when needed, and then be back to your primary. The 25 pt passive traits would be a great place to put this. Numbers wise, 50% cooldown reduction (after Arcana) would be great. That’s 7.5 in two elements max, or 5.0 secs in one element with 30 arcana.

There’s no way this would be overpowered, since each element is fairly limited on its own you’re giving up a lot of versatility to get this. It opens up the way to buffing single or double elemental specs though without overpowering or nerfing attunement swapping builds.

Ignoring “fun” and “enjoyment” for a moment, consider your own fact that essentially every competitive ele build starts with a large investment in Arcana. That’s a sign of the other lines providing poor returns on an investment in them, relative to Arcana’s benefits. That’s not a good thing.

Not arguing that point at all. But that’s an entirely different problem, and the solution most certainly doesn’t involve forcing people to stay in a single attunement the majority of the time.

Other trees simply need more incentive to spec deeply into them. I’d be incredibly surprised if the devs aren’t already aware of this and planning to address it.

30 pts in arcane atm is pretty much mandatory, at least for me.

Ability to self combo and swap attunes faster is fairly intergal to play ele with any sort of success.

And that’s the problem; we are pigeon holed into one trait line out of pure neccessity.

That is wrong and goes against ANets supposed design goals or so it seems to me.

I honestly think the 10 point arcane trait elemental attunement should be baseline for elementalists.

Until it isn’t, we only get 60 trait points. This is no choice at all. Any build that doesn’t have 10 in arcane is kitten vs one that does, regardless of whether the person pves, spvps, wvws, supports, dpses etc.

The trait shouldn’t be nerfed, it’s required. It should be baseline.