Guild Wars 2

I never really used any of the Glyph of Elementals, but the recent announcement got me looking at these two skills.

Glyph of Elementals Change (Dulfy.net)
Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Glyph of Elementals now have secondary abilities you can activate. When pressed, the elementals will activate these skills on their next skill usage. This allow you to have more control when using these elementals.

As it stand Elemental pets have existing secondary skills that they use at random and just kind of run around like a spaz. I think it will be great improvement to control these secondary skills. This also got me thinking the age old question as to why Elemental pets are not permanent?

Glyphe of Lesser Elementals is a 60 second with a 45 second cooldown, 36 with Quick Glyphes. This means you can keep this pet up indefinitely (never seen one die ever), granted with the monotonous (not fun) skill activation to summon them. Why not just make both the lesser and greater a permanent summon? Granted you would have to rebalance pets, but it would be worth it.

The Inscription (master) trait can still be made to work on the primary and secondary cast, thus not losing any of it’s potential. As it stands Inscription has a very low proc rate (due to high cooldowns on glyphs) making it just as useful as Elemental contingency.

I am sure that I am not the only one who has brought this up, and have not seen any valid argument as to why this can’t be implemented.

The cooldown on pets don’t start until they die. Making them permanent means that you lose the flexibility of picking the best one for the current fight. One of the concepts for glyphs is that their skill-cap is higher because you need to time the glyph usage with your attunement rotation to get the best effect at the proper time.

I wish, summoner type would be neat. :/ To bad there isnt a trait for perm pet

They would be insanely OP if they were permanent. The Elementalist pets are very strong, and the Ele itself has access to a very large kit of skills. Keep in mind that the Water Ele heals for about 6.5k on its special ability. That’s equal to an outright heal on most classes. Unless you nerfed the Elementals, of course, but part of what makes them special is that when the Elementalist summons its pet, it really does have an impact (which will be far more noticeable when we can control the activated abilities).

Also, do we REALLY need more classes running around with petting zoos around them? Minion Master Necromancers and Spirit Rangers are already obnxious to look at and fight, and turret Engineers are pretty annoying too. I really don’t want to add Eles to that list.

#Unrelenting AI love needs to end

^^
Even if it could be funny, pet builds are lame and stupid.

I just found out the cooldown resets after the Elemental dies. Like I said I never use it beacuse of the crappy AI. I did however mention that if they were permanent, they would have to be rebalanced.

I am also not saying Glyphs themselves are useless. Glyphs of storms is a is pretty solid and the new patch will have it working a lot better. More control over elementals on the lesser and greater glyphs is much needed because of the terrible AI they currently have.

Glyph of Renewal I have never really used, but I can see it’s potential.

Glyph of Elemental Harmony is a very solid heal skill.

Inscription if it procs on use of Elemental skills, I can see opening up a whole new way to play Ele.

Who knows the AI control might be all that we needed to fix elemental pets. It will be interesting to see. A 6k heal is useless if you are at full health and your pet is healing you due to crappy AI.

I think 60 seconds is fine due to the lesser elemental having access to two skills and the elite elemental having access to three skills. With the upcoming buff, that would bring the skill total to three for the lesser elemental and four for the elite elemental.

I think the bigger problem is the AI and the survivability of the elemental. Other than the earth elemental, the others are pitifully fragile not to mention some attack types make absolutely no sense E.G: the fire elemental having the lowest health but attacks in melee.

Sunshine

Love the idea!

We still fall under the caster category, so it’s even better

at the end of the day, Ele utilities are competing with cantrips, which add a great deal of survivability, and are backed up by great traits to boot.

glyphs offer very little survivability (currently) and worse, have really weak trait options. even after the changes, i still think glyphs (and signets) won’t stack up.

i’d really like to see tempest defence and lightning rod merged and a new glyph-oriented GM trait added.