Guild Wars 2

This is a major change so I don’t expect it to actually happen, but I found I liked the idea so I wanted to know what other people thought.

At the moment our “versatility” comes from having access to 20 skills. In practise this amounts to a complicated rotation. Now I’m sure some people get along with this really well, but I’m a bit disappointed that it doesn’t pan out the way I envisaged. Rather than swapping tactically between the elements I find myself using ALL the skills to stay alive.

Instead I wondered if the attunement cooldowns were reversed, how this would affect play? So at the moment if I swap from Earth to Fire it puts earth on a 15 sec cooldown and water and air on a 1 second cooldown. But what if swapping to Fire put Earth on a 10 second cooldown and Water and Air on a 1 minute cooldown?

This is clearly a pretty huge nerf but to counter it we could get proper weapon skills, with decent cooldowns and autoattacks. Swapping to Air would be a tactical decision, “do I need that mobility for this fight?”, rather than, I’m done with Fire, might as well apply a blind before dropping to Earth. The flip side is in any one combat we would have the fewest options of any class (Except an Engineer with no kits)

An interesting idea— but why is a huge penalty even necessary? The defining feature of the elementalist is supposed to be versatility. Right now the price we pay for attunement swapping, as you note, actually makes us less versatile NOT more, because all of our skills are half-skills (compared to other classes) and no attunement can really stand on it’s own. Also we are locked into what the developers give us— while other professions have a little bit more flexibility because they get to choose what they swap to.

I get where you are going and do think that increases the cooldown on attunement swapping could give room to the developers to make each attunement more viable all by itself. But it would also require a huge overhaul of the profession. Can you imagine playing staff and being stuck with fire and earth on 1 minute cooldowns?

I think ArenaNet would only do this as a last resort, because it would basically be removing what is supposed to make the elementalist special.

Rack.4930:

…I find myself using ALL the skills to stay alive.

This is what the class was designed to do.

Rack.4930:

Rather than swapping tactically between the elements…

This is not.

Changing the attunements that drastically would change the class at a fundamental level and make it something completely different. If you’re interested in a tactical role-changer, you’ll have better luck campaigning in the suggestions forum for a new class in future expansions. Which sounds like a good idea, actually.

Rhyse.8176:

Rack.4930:

…I find myself using ALL the skills to stay alive.

This is what the class was designed to do.

Rack.4930:

Rather than swapping tactically between the elements…

This is not.

Changing the attunements that drastically would change the class at a fundamental level and make it something completely different. If you’re interested in a tactical role-changer, you’ll have better luck campaigning in the suggestions forum for a new class in future expansions. Which sounds like a good idea, actually.

And you were sitting in on which ANet designer meeting when you heard this? Because I see no evidence to support your claim, we have dozens of traits which reward you for staying in an attunement you have specced for, but unfortunately none of them make up for our ineffective weapon skills.

I recognise why this can’t happen, if nothing else a lot of people will have rolled elementalist because it has the most complicated skill rotations, it just struck me as an interesting idea for a class, weapon, trait or other option. If there are changes down the line that make the elementalist viable as a tactical role changer I imagine they will be in the form of trait that provide scaling benefits.

Within the current framework it seems like Elementalist flexibility is going to be a rough deal. How do you make a skillset that is balanced for staying in for several minutes and dropping into for 2.5 seconds? It might be straight up possible without any mechanical alterations but I suspect not.

Rhyse.8176:

Rack.4930:

…I find myself using ALL the skills to stay alive.

This is what the class was designed to do.

Rack.4930:

Rather than swapping tactically between the elements…

This is not.

Changing the attunements that drastically would change the class at a fundamental level and make it something completely different. If you’re interested in a tactical role-changer, you’ll have better luck campaigning in the suggestions forum for a new class in future expansions. Which sounds like a good idea, actually.

The class needs to be changed at a fundamental level, because it is fundamentally flawed.

At its core, elementalist has to juggle 20 skills at one time instead of 10. But elementalist is not allowed to be more effective than other classes (in fact, most of the time it is LESS effective than other classes). So it gets twice as much work to do (juggling 20 skills instead of 10) and gets no reward for doing so, because that would be “imbalanced”.

Isila.2574:

Rhyse.8176:

Rack.4930:

…I find myself using ALL the skills to stay alive.

This is what the class was designed to do.

Rack.4930:

Rather than swapping tactically between the elements…

This is not.

Changing the attunements that drastically would change the class at a fundamental level and make it something completely different. If you’re interested in a tactical role-changer, you’ll have better luck campaigning in the suggestions forum for a new class in future expansions. Which sounds like a good idea, actually.

The class needs to be changed at a fundamental level, because it is fundamentally flawed.

At its core, elementalist has to juggle 20 skills at one time instead of 10. But elementalist is not allowed to be more effective than other classes (in fact, most of the time it is LESS effective than other classes). So it gets twice as much work to do (juggling 20 skills instead of 10) and gets no reward for doing so, because that would be “imbalanced”.

Did you even played elem ? Doubt that , with all the combo fields, tons of control, and damage abilities i feel superior to other professions considering what i can do in a fight.
Less effective what a joke

You may feel superior, but that doesn’t make it so. Yeah, you’ve got a ton of abilities, and you can chain them together into this big, extravagant sequence that looks really flashy and neat — too bad a warrior outperforms you by pressing 2.

Take the classic S/D Updraft→Dragon’s Tooth combo. You go into air, use Updraft to knock the enemy down, then flip into fire while you’re in mid-air of the Updraft animation to crank out a Dragon’s Tooth — looks flashy and, hey, now you land that nice damage DT that you would never land against a target that wasn’t floored. Great skill combo, right?

Or you could have just rolled a class that lands attacks that do the same damage as DT without having to do all that attunement-swapping, CC-applying setup.

Regarding attunement swap I’d just like to see that if you’ve invested in a trait line like fire, that the CD on fire is lowered a bit too, in addition to the CD reduce from Arcane.
The penalty for swapping to another attunement for a bit is lower because you’d be able to get back faster to an attunement you’ve put several points in.
Wouldn’t be such a massive change either..

Oh theirs the problem your using S/D , to bad you didn’t try other weapons before talking about professions balance. Playing as a staff DOT elem full rampagers 20/0/30/0/20.

Fire
1. AOE auto attack
2. Huge aoe with low cd
3. 1 button pres that applies an aoe dot
4. 3rd roll for evade
5. BEST ingame skill against buildings or bosses that take a lot of space and dont move (TA last boss)

I wont explain all of the elements, if you dont understand what power your wielding in your hands then the elem is just not for you.

Rack, I get your idea and tend to agree. Though my thoughts on this ages ago was an even simpler approach. Only allow a choice of 2 or 3 attunements, the other/s being locked out completely. Then the devs can improve all attunements and be less worried about Ele being OP because they are suddenly great in all areas at the same time.

But short of a revamp that will never happen, I’d be happy if they just made Air match its description and be our true single target damage attunement.

If you’ve played other classes, then you’ve noticed that the #3,4,5 skills for ele are significantly longer than most non-ele #3,4,5 skills, but don’t have a better effect.

For example: Compare Air/Staff #4 to Warrior/Warhorn #4. Same effect, but a 20s cooldown for warrior and a 30s cooldown for elementalist.

Meteor Shower is an exception. It’s the compansation skill that carries the ele on it’s shoulders.

Take the classic S/D Updraft?Dragon’s Tooth combo. You go into air, use Updraft to knock the enemy down, then flip into fire while you’re in mid-air of the Updraft animation to crank out a Dragon’s Tooth — looks flashy and, hey, now you land that nice damage DT that you would never land against a target that wasn’t floored. Great skill combo, right?

Or you could have just rolled a class that lands attacks that do the same damage as DT without having to do all that attunement-swapping, CC-applying setup.

But good players don’t mindless spam updraft JUST to setup the DT combo. You’re looking at it with tunnel vision. The point of updraft is NOT to set up a DT combo, the point is to interrupt/knockback the target. The added perk is that it seamlessly sets up for a DT combo, should one choose to do so at that time.

This is why I shake my head whenever I watch a PvP video with an Ele that does RTL and mindlessly uses updraft, then switches to fire to land DT. Dude, that’s some fancy button pressing you pulled off but you didn’t use blinding flash OR Lightning strike when you had air up, that’s free damage and a blind you left on the table!!! They’re both instant, you could have used them WHILE you were in RTL!! Wtf?!?

Sure, sometimes the class is frustrating, and i’d like to see the multitude of class bugs fixed (that alone would bring us up to par with other classes) but we’re in no way, shape, or form “fundamentally flawed.”

Spifnar.4712:

If you’ve played other classes, then you’ve noticed that the #3,4,5 skills for ele are significantly longer than most non-ele #3,4,5 skills, but don’t have a better effect.

For example: Compare Air/Staff #4 to Warrior/Warhorn #4. Same effect, but a 20s cooldown for warrior and a 30s cooldown for elementalist.

Meteor Shower is an exception. It’s the compansation skill that carries the ele on it’s shoulders.

Well yah. Considering we have twice as many #3, #4, and #5 skills as every other class, it kinda makes sense that some of them carry a longer cooldown…

At this point I would rather have my skills costing energy and attunements with no cool-downs at all.