Guild Wars 2

Our attunement switching seems to be so full of limitations compared to other classes:

Warrior: Adrenaline – On-demand burst skills and utility with traits that enhance the adrenaline aspect
Necro: Deathshroud – High self-sustain and master of conditions
Guardian: Virtues with on-demand utilities + tons of blocks/protection/heal spells
Thief: Stealth. What and mobility. King of burst.
Engineer: Toolkits with unique “special” skills
Mesmer: Clones and everything is centered around them. Just beautiful.
Ranger: Pets, ok I got nothing.

Then elementalists. What exactly is unique and beneficial to our attunement swapping? I don’t count the fact that we have 20 skills as a benefit since they all have jacked up cooldowns and subpar effects with the expectation that we can use them on a whim. Adaptibility? Sure, but other classes also have decent ways to adapt with each weapon set that actually plays well with the weapon’s playstyle, IE guardian’s Binding Blade into Whirling Wrath. An ele will have to dance around attunements they don’t specialize in just to chain clumsy combos. And with the high cooldown on switching attunements that hamper using the right skill at the right time which seems to be our key strength, it is highly contradicting. IE I just switched from staff Earth to Water for a quick heal but do I stay in Water for the Frozen Ground for when that warrior jumps at my face and do no damage, or risk it and go Fire or Lightning when their CC skills are STILL on cooldown? There’s so much risk at every move we take compared to other classes and for the subpar reward for simply surviving with, again, our low hp and armor/mobility.

This dancing around makes specializing in traits lackluster, hence why so many seem to choose the Arcane line. So shouldn’t our attunement trait lines actually be stronger to balance the fact we can’t stay in one attunement for long? Why do we have one of the lowest hp and armor (less than friggin MESMERS) but have no significant, unique utility on our class-defining attunement swap? 20 skills that work decent vs 10 that work great should balance out, no? Either buff our fire/air/water/earth traits heavily aside from the ones we already “default” to, or have big effects with negative ones, IE Internal Fire do 20% more dmg in fire but take 10% more damage or lock out water attunement for X seconds. The longer I play the ele the more I feel burdened by our class mechanic, having to work twice as hard than other classes for the same results. Oftentimes I spectate others in spvp and just sigh when they just mash on 3-8 skills for a kill, some simply just auto-attacking.

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

Shadowfall.6543:

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

That sounded cool. And the 15 pt traits should be made baseline, or Elemental Attunement. But am still thinking how other classes mechanics are all actively used but ours is…nothing? Maybe as you stay in one attunement a “charge bar” increases then when you switch you activate some charged ability for that attunement. Modify/remove the 15 pt traits. Just something that is inherent without traits.

I feel they should just ditch the attunement cooldowns altogether and call it a day.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that ArenaNet has balanced our health, survivability, utility, damage, etc around having access to ALL our abilities ALL the time. That’s the only thing that makes sense given the current state. The abilities on each bar are either horribly clumsy/telegraphed, or hard to land, or have stupidly long cooldowns, or a combination of all those.

Elementalist was the first class I started in GW2 and it took me all of 1 hour to realize that I’d be spending 99% of my time in Fire attumenent because the other 3 bars (15 abilities) were just pointless fluff. They didn’t help me kill mobs any faster and switching to them screwed me out of my primary damage source for 16 agonizing seconds. It felt HORRIBLY clunky and that feeling hasn’t changed in the slightest even after 200+ hours. Taking that mechanic into PvP was the equivalent of shooting myself in the foot at the start of a race.

Then I looked at Engineers who can also switch between multiple ability bars (kits) with a 1 SECOND cooldown, giving them access to many USEFUL abilities with short cooldowns with no downsides…and a 100% spammable toolbelt to boot. I felt I was always ready for any situation! Dealing damage whenever I wanted, going defensive whenever I needed, switching between the two at will.

As much as I hate comparing different classes, Elementalist basically plays & feels like a VASTLY inferior Engineer. These days the only reason I play Ele in SPvP is because staff can do hilarious things in hotjoins…that’s it.

Shadowfall.6543:

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

Wow that sounds like a cool game.

hmm.. I actually find the mechanics of elementalists to be supreme.
BUT that said. only as high arcane speced. to change often between aspects.
I’m only talking pve. (I don’t do pvp). but love that with a staff and 30/0/0/20/20 I could do fair damage. and quickly change to healing the group . swap to control and so on… but absolutely a must with high arcane…
the new change… just meant that i still had to be high arcane. . kitten my survival a bit. (loss of mist form regain) (long story but it was great with runes of vamp.).

Survival… survival—— that is the main problem… if you do the aspect dance perfectly and blind and dodge and unsteady ground just right.. its great… one mistake and a champ still often one shots you….. and all that for ´damage that is only equal to most other professions…
My main issue after the nerf…. please give us something useful in water 10 talent….

Wintel.4873:

I feel they should just ditch the attunement cooldowns altogether and call it a day.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that ArenaNet has balanced our health, survivability, utility, damage, etc around having access to ALL our abilities ALL the time. That’s the only thing that makes sense given the current state. The abilities on each bar are either horribly clumsy/telegraphed, or hard to land, or have stupidly long cooldowns, or a combination of all those.

Elementalist was the first class I started in GW2 and it took me all of 1 hour to realize that I’d be spending 99% of my time in Fire attumenent because the other 3 bars (15 abilities) were just pointless fluff. They didn’t help me kill mobs any faster and switching to them screwed me out of my primary damage source for 16 agonizing seconds. It felt HORRIBLY clunky and that feeling hasn’t changed in the slightest even after 200+ hours. Taking that mechanic into PvP was the equivalent of shooting myself in the foot at the start of a race.

Then I looked at Engineers who can also switch between multiple ability bars (kits) with a 1 SECOND cooldown, giving them access to many USEFUL abilities with short cooldowns with no downsides…and a 100% spammable toolbelt to boot. I felt I was always ready for any situation! Dealing damage whenever I wanted, going defensive whenever I needed, switching between the two at will.

As much as I hate comparing different classes, Elementalist basically plays & feels like a VASTLY inferior Engineer. These days the only reason I play Ele in SPvP is because staff can do hilarious things in hotjoins…that’s it.

In early beta or before the first beta, Eles had either no cooldown or a really low cooldown on attunements. Karl would stomp people so hard. LOL.

Biomanz.9302:

Thief: Stealth. What and mobility. King of burst.

Actually Thief class mechanic is Steal, not stealth, which actually isn’t that useful. Stealth is just as easy on a Mesmer, and Mobility well we’re really not that mobile… Other then that I agree with you on the limiting mechanic and it needs to be reworked.

Dasenthal.6520:

Biomanz.9302:

Thief: Stealth. What and mobility. King of burst.

Actually Thief class mechanic is Steal, not stealth, which actually isn’t that useful. Stealth is just as easy on a Mesmer, and Mobility well we’re really not that mobile… Other then that I agree with you on the limiting mechanic and it needs to be reworked.

One small note – it isn’t as easy to stealth on a Mesmer as it is on a Thief…and technically, as Theif gets special attacks from being in stealth, it is somewhat of a class feature.

every class deserves a limitation
the inadequacy of our skills, base stats, and traits synergy is moreso a detriment to our profession than attunements

Quite easy:

We are the only profession with 4-5 downsides to our core mechanic.

I mean…did you ever seen downsides for stealth, or for adrenaline etc?

Nobody said “you got adrenaline you deserve your dps reduced….”

Someone instead had the brilliant idea to think:
You have 20 skills then you need:

-DOUBLE cooldowns
-LOWEST armor
-LOWEST HP
-awful DPS
-LOCKED into 1 range with no weaponswap
-awful autotattack

And so on….

If ele wasn t just an endless pile of nerfs on a possibly strong class mechanic maybe would be strong :/

Wrunt.4892:

Dasenthal.6520:

Biomanz.9302:

Thief: Stealth. What and mobility. King of burst.

Actually Thief class mechanic is Steal, not stealth, which actually isn’t that useful. Stealth is just as easy on a Mesmer, and Mobility well we’re really not that mobile… Other then that I agree with you on the limiting mechanic and it needs to be reworked.

One small note – it isn’t as easy to stealth on a Mesmer as it is on a Thief…and technically, as Theif gets special attacks from being in stealth, it is somewhat of a class feature.

Yeah, Thief has four class specific mechanics:

-Initiative (therefore no CD on weapon skills)
-Steal
-Dual Wield skills (other classes have their #3 determined by main-hand weapon)
-Wide access to stealth combined with the special attacks from it

Just clearing this up

LordByron.8369:

Quite easy:

We are the only profession with 4-5 downsides to our core mechanic.

I mean…did you ever seen downsides for stealth, or for adrenaline etc?

Nobody said “you got adrenaline you deserve your dps reduced….”

Someone instead had the brilliant idea to think:
You have 20 skills then you need:

-DOUBLE cooldowns
-LOWEST armor
-LOWEST HP
-awful DPS
-LOCKED into 1 range with no weaponswap
-awful autotattack

And so on….

If ele wasn t just an endless pile of nerfs on a possibly strong class mechanic maybe would be strong :/

I can only agree m8, as I had written here numerous times. Ele mechanic (and Engi too) is maybe the best idea Anet put into this game, however they are constantly closing it to destruction by those nerfs. I would give practically anything to have my beta Elementalist back, it was the best class I’ve ever played in MMO, and I’ve played a lot of them, trust me

cheshirefox.7026:

every class deserves a limitation
the inadequacy of our skills, base stats, and traits synergy is moreso a detriment to our profession than attunements

It is true other classes could use more limitations, even though they seem to be powercreeping them away.

Ele gets punished 2x, as others have said. Most of our skills are worse versions of other class’s skills, on a longer cooldown. Added onto that, they are put behind an extra layer of attunement cooldowns (which would be a fair tradeoff for the extra skills).

What they really need to do is give our skills (including autos) just the proper power level to make them usable. I could list all the useless/underpowered skills on every weaponset,but it would probably be easier to list the skills that are about balanced.

I also want to add, that I am REALLY sorry that cantrip ele dominated the meta at one point! It was a long time ago and I think eles have served their penance. I’d like to be a real class again someday!

BlackBeard.2873:

^

i’m sorry that pvp ruined “game of the year” that may have actually had a chance to be game of the year.. i think elem has served its penance.. there, fixed that for you

I agree. I think giving us huge skill cooldowns AND Attunement cooldowns was a terrible move. Elementalists are supposed to be adaptable, but being locked out of one or more Attunements means that not only are we unable to adapt to a fight properly, but also that our rotations become easily predictable and exploitable. Combined with the lowest health and armor, it just makes basic survivability a huge chore.

On top of that, so many of our traits have “on Attunement swap” effects which would have to be redone if Attunement cooldowns were done away with. Not to mention reworking Arcana to do something else.

It’s just messy all around. Maybe at this point it would help just to lower the CDs across the board on our skills, AND get rid of global Attunement recharge (but not previous Attunement recharge.)

Wintel.4873:

Then I looked at Engineers who can also switch between multiple ability bars (kits) with a 1 SECOND cooldown, giving them access to many USEFUL abilities with short cooldowns with no downsides…and a 100% spammable toolbelt to boot. I felt I was always ready for any situation! Dealing damage whenever I wanted, going defensive whenever I needed, switching between the two at will.

As much as I hate comparing different classes, Elementalist basically plays & feels like a VASTLY inferior Engineer.

That’s my opinion on it too. I don’t feel adaptive as elementalist because the cooldowns of the skills themselves are so long that I can’t stay “offensive”, “healing” or “defensive” for more than a few seconds. So instead of me deciding on my “stance” for however long I want/need to play like that, I feel obligated to switch through attunements, use the strong skills, and then move on. My play is always going to be a mix of all, unless I’m doing trivial pve content where I can just camp in fire with the staff.

I’m not sure just removing the attunement cd would even fix that. I think I might even prefer an attunement cd increase if it meant shorter cds on the skills themselves. Either way, having BOTH downsides of long skill recharges and attunement cds feels extremely unnecessary.

Shadowfall.6543:

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

They probably need to go back to something like that. Just making a caster-only version of Elemental Attunement (exchange healing ripple and soothing mist) would be a good base.

Elemental Attunement, or some minor version of it, should be a base feature. As it is now, speccing for it is the only way to turn the class feature into a bonus, not just another set of cooldowns to manage.