Guild Wars 2

I would look at dapheonix’s d/d guide and just trait as much of it as you can at each level.
Concentrate on survival and get used to moving constantly as a cloth melee.
Gear for vit and toughness. Heal a lot, attunement swap constantly.
Learn your self combos. With daggers you will start with fire4 combo field then attune to earth for e3 and e4. Arcane Wave is also a blast finisher so try using that as one of your utilities. That combo string will give you a fire shield and 6 stacks of might.

Move to Tarnished Coast server.
Our peak hours seem to be noon to midnight US EST.
If that is when you play you’ll find lots of flipping.
If you play the other half of the day…move to Tarnished Coast we could use more people in those time zones.

Armor of Earth plus 30 points in Water
Water III Soothing Disruption Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor.
Water XI Cleansing Water Remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally.
25 point Water Bountiful Power Deal 2% more damage for each boon on you.

That all adds up to Armor of Earth breaks stun, cures a condition, and grants 4 boons, which adds 8% damage.

I find it very useful.

It sucks that people who only go into WvW to do the jumping puzzle but not fight get more badges of honor than the people who fight but don’t do the jumping puzzle.

Bunzy.8674:

my advice would be stay out of wvw until you gear/level up.

you just become free kills for the enemy.
I have killed thousands of low levels just by pressing 1.

I disagree. Unless EB and all 3 borderlands are queued having one more person of any level is better than not having that person.
There are so many thing that they can do that contribute to server success even if they are relatively easy kills.
They are one more load of supply to build that treb your trying to throw up fast, one more person on an arrow cart, one more set of eyes to alert about attacks (give numbers, location, and whether they are putting up siege, please), one more body to dilute AoEs, one more person casting AoE heals on the rams, one more person casting immobilize on the d/d ele divebombers, one more dolyak killer, etc.

DivineBeing.2086:

… if you’re running through a tower/keep, please “Use” the siege for just one second. This is called “ticking” so the siege doesn’t disappear…

I suggest renaming this practice…it should be called “tickling” the siege.

Sapphic.3925:

Is there no PVP way to grind gear as in WoW? (I realise the game is entirely different, but I’d rather assumed the ‘PVP only’ route was possible?)

thanks, though…

S

There is a PvP way to grind gear.
Save the karma you get from capturing towers etc.
There are vendors in Orr that sell exotic gear for 42,000 karma per piece.
It’s what I wear, I have never even gone into one of the dungeons or finished the storyline.
Look up karma armor sets on wiki to find which kind you want and where the vendor is. [I play a d/d ele and I wear the Balthazar set with altruism runes]

I bought my daggers with badges of honor and jewelry from the tradepost.

I think you made the right choice to limit yourself to burning and bleeding.
I found your table readable and useful. Thanks for posting it.

I think my condition damage is pretty low right now…like 150. Most of my condition damage comes from might stacks which vary during the course of the fight.

For a while I tried a condition build, 30 in earth and undead runes (toughness, condition damage, bonus for 6 is 10%(?) of toughness converted to condition damage). I have been noticing that my kill speed seems slower since I switched to 0/10/0/30/30 and runes of altruism/water.
I like the new runes too but I do notice the difference.

I like the damage of FGS but I don’t like losing access to my other skills.
I prefer Glyph of Elementals because it adds damage without losing access to the other skills.
In all tho I am not that crazy about any of our elites.

Boon duration

A 10 stack of Might gives 350 power AND condition damage.

I leveled my ele from about 25 to 80 entirely in WvW.
I have never been in any of the dungeons even once.

I buy my armor with karma, weapons with badges, and jewelry with gold.
Since I saved all that stuff while I was leveling I was able to get most of my exotics when I hit 80, not sure how long it would take you starting from now.

I am using the karma armor from the Balthazar guy in Orr. Three pieces of it are PVT, the other three are Prec/Tough/Con Dmg. If you wanted all PVT like many people recommend there is probably a different karma vendor in Orr that sells what you want, I just never looked into it because the gear I have works well enough for me.

The Orr armor costs 42,000 karma per piece. Even without a guild, running with the zerg you should be able to earn enough karma to buy a piece every day or two.

So ele are already OP because they have 20 skills where other classes only have 10?
Or maybe the number of skills isn’t what makes something OP.

I made a silly math mistake above…450 badges in 6 hours is a badge every 48 seconds.
Sorry for my error.

Sometimes I get 2 badges per kill, sometimes one, a lot of the time I don’t get any badges even for a solo kill.
If you claim 450 badges in 6 hours you’re saying you got an average of one badge every 75 seconds.
I guess it must be true because no one has ever lied on the internet.

I always carry one in WvW and you are right…any ele who doesn’t is wrong.

I also tried traiting a bunch of different ways to see if I could find one that made the focus usable as my always-equipped weapon but I didn’t find one that worked well enough. The focus does add a lot of defensive strength and there may be a traiting that makes it work but I’ll leave it to someone else to discover.

I have found one WvW use for focus in addition to treb-blocking. S/F is great for surviving the push into SM castle lord’s room during a 3-way clusterfight.

1) How much do you think small group/solo play helps your server in WvW?

2) What color is your server most weeks?

That’s not a specific combination.

@ Strang
In your last post you argue that the chain you gave on the first page would give you some advantage in timers and energy if it all landed before you weapon-swapped.
Any class that opens a fight landing their preferred chain will have some advantage in timers, energy, or health.
That in and of itself is not OP.
Those timers and energy your opponent used were defensive. He is about to open up his cc/attack chain. You’ll use your defensive abilities then his defensive timers will be reset and the fight goes on.

@ Malicious
The number of abilities you have access to is not OP in and of itself.
If all 40 abilities sucked it would help to have so many of them.
If you can find some specific combination please share so we can analyze it.

Suggest your chain and lets analyze it.

Biomanz, I am going to take your post seriously. I will check how the abilities actually work together and see if they do in fact add up to something OP. Then I’ll consider whether there is some way to mitigate that strength if necessary.

staff e2 cast time 1 3/4 seconds
staff w5 cast time 1 second
s/d f2 cast time 1 second
s/d f3 cast time 1/4 second
s/d f4 cast time 1/4 second
s/d e3 … I’m going to stop there because if you switched out of earth the instant you started to cast staff e2 only 4 1/4 seconds (maybe 5 1/4 with a roll) have elapsed meaning you cannot attune to earth again yet.

So we’ll allow you 4 aoe heals (altho that’s a long time for an ele to stand in one place).
I won’t try to calculate how much this would heal for, let’s just go all the way and say that it would be a full heal for 5 people.

Now the question is, is that OP?
We’ll just say that it is and go on to the question of is there some way to mitigate that OPness.

Well, one suggestion someone else came up with and that I mentioned earlier in this thread is to make weapon-swap an elite skill with a 120-180 second cooldown.

So the question now is. would an ele elite skill that allowed for a full aoe heal be imbalanced?

As I look thru the other classes elites I find the Guardian elite skill Tome of Courage.
Tome skill 5 Light of Deliverance Fully heal up to five nearby allies.
Not only that but the cast time for Light of Deliverance is 4 1/4 seconds just like your ele combo.
That seems reasonably balanced to me, two elite skills that take the same amount of time to get the same benefit. The ele skill is a little harder to pull off but close enough.

I noticed several things

1) He’s a really good player

2) A lot of the time he is not solo

3) He takes a real long time to kill the 80s

4) He survives being Moa’d…that means it is player skill/opponent lack of skill not class strength

5) A lot of the time he has no target…people just run into his pbAoE

6) One guy stops to do a skill point commune, another does a vista, and a third chops wood

7) More than once when he runs away to heal they stop and fight his pet

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.

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?

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?

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.

Excellent idea Alex.

Put it on the test server.

Until it is tested anyone crying OP is just theorycrafting out their kitten.

On the one hand I think it’s a great utility skill.
On the other I don’t use it.

The only reason I don’t use it is that I am traited to get more benefit from Cantrips (regen and vigor).
For pure save-my kitten survival WvW I would slot Mistform, Lightning Flash, and Arcane Shield. But I use Armor of Earth in place of Arcane Shield because Armor of Earth gives me four boons (regen, vigor, protection, and stability), that combined with the 25 point Water trait Bountiful Power — deal 2% more damage for each boon on you — gives me a lot of survival PLUS an 8% damage boost.

maddoctor is right about how it works the question is if it is intended to be that way.
[edit cuz Bsquared responded while I was typing — if not the second time, then very likely on the third use you will die unless enough time has gone by]

20 points in Fire for IX Fire’s Embrace — when you activate a signet, you gain a fire shield for 3 seconds — proc’s Zephyr’s Boon.

Alternatively, without using Zephyr’s Boon, 20 points in Air for VIII Inscription —grants a boon associated with your current attunement when you cast a glyph -- doubles the duration of the swiftness boon of Glyph of Elemental Harmony.
If you also have either III Quick Glyphs — glyphs recharge 20% faster — or +30% boon duration (from 30 points in Arcane or from runes) then the swiftness last longer than the recast of the heal glyph.
[edit: You can use Zephyr’s Boon and Inscription and some +boon duration stuff to get perma swiftness also of course]

Mistform first
2 ways to clear conditions when you go into mistform

1) use Ether Renewal heal, it cures a condition every pulse

2)trait both
water 3 Soothing Disruption Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor.
and
water 11 Cleansing Water Remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally.

I use the second.

Damage
Well from a keep wall you must have been using a staff. You can’t kill anyone who’s even semiconscious with a staff because there is no spike damage so all they have to do is watch for when there health goes down a bit then take 2 steps outside the red ring that tells them exactly where your AoE is going to land.

Zenyatoo.4059:

… until you have said exotic gear you will be at a severe disadvantage.

I’d recommend getting a set of the yellow invader gear from the karma vendor in WvW unless your leveling gear is already better.
It is PVT and while you will be at a slight disadvantage I wouldn’t call it severe.

In combat weapon swaps because so much of the time in WvW a d/d ele is literally bringing a knife to a gunfight.

A weapon swap with a long cooldown — something like 20 or 30 seconds — has been suggested before.
Some very vocal d/d eles always shout it down OP!OP!OP! because they have no idea how weak they would be stuck with a staff for 20 seconds.

Maniac,
It sucks that someone is doing that.

I play on Tarnished Coast and in my experience the vast majority of WvW’ers there would rather have a good fight than have an unfair advantage.

I am not in any guilds but my suggestion would be to try to contact one of the TC guild leaders if you are hampered by a siege cap. You could probably arrange to have TC take whatever tower or keep is packed with garbage siege, destroy the siege, and then let FA take the keep back.

The 2 guilds I see on regularly that take leadership roles and that I would trust to make such an arrangement are [TV] and [PINK].

I am not sure about any bonuses or abiliities (maybe, maybe not) but I like the idea of the orbs being something that could act like a ‘borderlands commander’ icon.

Make it so that you have to unlock the ability to pick it up so not just every noob and troll grabs it. Perhaps some number of WvW kills or keep captures.

Another thread talks about how hard it is to make money in WvW compared to pve, this makes it so pve’ers have an easier time buying a commander icon than pure WvW’ers.
Orbs could be a way for people who have put the time into WvW to have a temporary commander icon.

There are too many so I just skimmed but I don’t think most of those ideas would be improvements except doing something about badges.

Raincrow.1840:

Can you go into some more detail here? What do you mean by a “white focus?”

Others have covered it pretty much but to make it more clear, by ‘white’ I meant the cheapest, lowest quality focus that you can buy from the weapon vendors (the ones that are found everywhere and mostly exist just so you can ‘sell junk’ to them).

Few elementalists use a focus as one of there main weapons but every elementalist should carry one in WvW and equip it when siege engines or a wall needs to be protected from enemy treb or catapult shots.

There is no need to buy an expensive focus or to keep it updated when you level if this is all you use it for. The cheapest one works just as well as any other.

I’ll use this space to organize additions if any.

I think that’s a good idea.
In fact I already started a thread with a few of the tips I thought a new player might like to know.
I did that just 2 days ago but it has already sunk to page 5 with no comment lol.

Anyway here are my tips
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Low-Level-WvW-Tips/first#post855974

There are 2 reasons why there would be the appearance of 2v1, one tactical and the other mathematical.

Tactical
If server A is beating up server B, server C can reasonably expect that server B’s defenders will be too busy to respond while they ninja some camps or towers. Also, server C can reasonably fear that server A will have enough defenders to spare for an attack on them if they call attention to themselves by flipping anything.
Server A knows this and allows server C to go about relatively unmolested.
To server B this looks like an alliance but it is really each server just doing what is in it’s best interest.

Mathematically
If servers A and B are tied in points and server C is far behind and server A takes a camp from server C, then server A takes the lead by 5 points.
But if server A takes a camp from server B instead then server A moves into the lead by 10 points.
The assests of you nearest rival are worth twice what the assests of the lowest server are.

Since there have been a few recent threads by people wanting to get into WvW and since whatever earlier advice threads there were are buried I thought I’d start a new one with some basic stuff.

If you are interested in WvW this game allows you to do it no matter what level you are.

Be aware that your stats get buffed to 80 but your gear doesn’t. This makes you a bit weak but it doesn’t make it unplayable.

While you are low level and unfamiliar with WvW you are probably best off staying with large groups rather than roaming with a group of 5 or so looking for small group fights.

Just because you are low level and can’t hit all that hard doesn’t mean you can’t contribute to the fights. Crowd control works whatever level you are, so do group buffs, heals, and whatever utility your class has.
In fact, one of the strongest WvW abilities in the game, blocking treb shots, can be done by a naked level 1 elementalist using a white focus. You can’t keep a tower wall standing all by yourself but you can make it take 2 to 3 times as long to knock it down (3 eles could protect a wall from a treb indefinitely).

Always carry supply. Always take it from supply camps when you go thru them, never from towers or keeps.

Build the siege equipment people put out. Don’t wait for others to do it, they may need to kill defenders first and they will be faster at it than you but everyone’s build speed is the same. If you can afford it carry some yourself and place it if needed.

Man siege equipment if you know what your doing (or even if you don’t and there is no one else around). They are easy enough to figure out.

Arrow carts do great damage whatever level you are. A handful of people using arrow carts can defend a tower against a much larger group.

Rez people right away. As long as it is safe enough so that you don’t get killed before you get them up you will probably be contributing more by doing that than you would be doing trying to get kills (and you get xp for it).

If you are worried that you are taking the place in WvW of someone higher level who could be helping your server more, if there is no queue, then you are not taking anyone’s place.
If there is a queue and you feel guilty about it, check if there is a borderland with no queue.
I wouldn’t really worry about it tho, if you are doing the things I said above you will be helping more than what a lot of people do in WvW.

If anyone else has any tips they want to offer I am sure newer players would appreciate it.

Ele stack lots of boons, necro can turn them into conditions which really messes them up.

Another hint that any class can use:
Many ele open in air attunement with Ride the Lightning (gap closer) followed by knockback then they put up their stun aura and swap to fire for the next gap closer, if you hit them you will stun yourself.
The fire gap closer is going to be followed by a combo field so they can get some might stacks. Evade and try to get some space then start whatever cc/burst rotation your class has.

The people who think a weapon swapping ele would be OP are making what is essentially a math error.
They think about the abilities a d/d ele would gain by swapping to staff mid-fight but they are not paying attention to the abilities they lose access too for the duration of the time they have the staff out.
They think about it as (STAFF+DAGGER)
when it is really (STAFF+DAGGER)/2
It is the average of the 2 weapon sets, a strong set and a weak set. That makes its power between the 2, not above the strong.

What I really wish for is a voting system where if enough people vote for a good commander it prevents them from logging out ;-)

Elementalists can change between attunments, which is kind of like a weapon swap, but they alone of the classes cannot change between something appropriate for a ranged fight and something appropriate for a melee fight.

Warriors can go from axe or sword to rifle.
Thief can go from d/d to shortbow.
Ranger can go from bow to melee weapons.
Engineers can swap between grenades and bombs or many other choices.
etc.

Weapon-swapping elementalists would have 40 skills available but many of them would be redundant — 8 would be auto-attack.

And I think a lot of people are missing the point that an elementalist who swapped from a staff to d/d when the enemy closed would become stronger but an elementalist who swapped from d/d to staff would become weaker. Yeah sure swapping to staff mid fight would give you access to a bit more heals or cc but your damage would really suffer and you would be at a disadvantage in the fight until to swap timer was up and you could go back to d/d.

There are elementalist that run in WvW with daggers equipped even tho they are not the right weapon for most of what happens in WvW but how many elementalists use a staff in pvp?

Alright if you like it the way it is. I play a thief now anyway so if you don’t mind being a free kill I won’t keep trying to talk you out of it.

You may not want to compare thief skills to elem skills but those are the skills being used to kill you. And for an elem to kill a thief is an accomplishment, for a thief to kill an elem is nothing to brag about.

I think Kilger brings up the real point of difference between those who think weapon-swapping would be OP and those who think it would not.

he says “[staff and d/d] are both extremely powerful.”

I don’t think that is true.
They are both kind of powerful in their own way but not more powerful than what other strong classes get.

Elem d/d is not more powerful than a thief in melee.
Yeah, sure some of you great players can hold your own against a thief but there are plenty of threads where elem complain about how OP thieves are, there are no threads where thieves complain about how OP elem are.
It’s easy to find post by you great players bragging about how you kill thieves. Thieves don’t brag about killing elementalists, they just accept it as natural.
Staff elem have more long range AoE attacks than thieves, but shortbow thieves get 1200 range clusterbomb AoE. It is faster casting than elem staff attacks and only cost 3 initiative so can be pretty much chain cast.
Thieves can switch between their powerful melee skills and powerful long range skills while in combat.

Bsquared makes it sound like it is only the ‘odd occasion’ of being up on a keep wall where it’s bad being stuck with daggers.
If your goal is to actually contribute to your team in WvW you will have you staff equipped almost all of the time. It is the best weapon for an elem on top of the wall or at the bottom of the wall or in open field stand-offs between big groups which happen all the time in my experience.
What are you going to do with your daggers when 2 large groups are pushing each other across a bridge? Are you going to use one of your gap-closers to zip across the AoE filled no man’s land and try to melee someone. Congratulations, you just got tab-targeted and insta-jibbed by 20 people. We’ll rez you when we get there.
Are you going to sneak around the flank and pick off an unsuspecting straggler?
Ooh, congratulations, you got one! But someone else noticed you and mist form doesn’t clear target like thief stealth does. Well, you lived for a few extra seconds. Don’t worry, just lay there. We’ll rez you when we get across this bridge.

Or maybe you open you inventory and change to a staff for the bridge fight.
Yay! We pushed them back. They have broken and are scattering, all we have to do is mop up now. Yeah, go, chase them down. Nice you landed Shockwave and the immobilize lets you catch up to the runner. Uh oh, he’s turning to fight. Crap your staff attack are too slow. Hurry open your inventory. Oh, I’m sorry you can’t switch to your daggers while you’re in combat. Don’t worry, just lay there. We’ll come rez you once we’ve killed the rest of these guys.

Such anger from the aptly named Animosity lol.

I never said elem were STUCK at 1200 range, I said elem S_UCK at melee range with a staff.

Don’t conjures have a limited number of charges? Or is it a time limit? I forget I only used one once because it seemed pretty subpar compared to the other things I wanted to slot.

If you think elementalists are plenty powerful fine. I enjoyed mine while I played it. Now that I have tried a thief and experienced how much better they are I can’t bring myself to log back on my elementalist but I am not going to delete him. I expect that eventually elem will be brought up to thief level or thief will be nerfed down to elem.

I don’t doubt that there are many fine pvpers playing elementalists, but overall, you don’t see many posts in other threads complaining about how OP they are.

I think Grevender has the right idea, a weapon-swap with a long cool down.

I don’t think it should be out of combat only because that would be no help in cases like where you are running across the map, see someone at a distance, cast a few staff attacks, then they turn and charge you and can do nothing but wish you had changed to daggers before getting into combat.

A weapon-swap cool down of something like 20 seconds would let you set up a combo field, swap and use a finisher to get some burst then everything would be as it is now until the swap timer is up.
And think about what it would mean for the second swap, if you started with a staff then swapped to daggers, if you swap back you will be stuck with your weak-at-close-range weapon for the next 20 seconds.
After that you’d be able to set up your preferred burst combo rotation again but I don’t think it would be OP to be able to do that once every 40 seconds.

A couple of you have said that with weapon swapping elem would be unkillable gods…I really doubt that.
In WvW right now a lone elem is just a free kill. He can’t kill you with his staff — casts are too slow and red ring tells you when to evade — and he has no escape ability.

A weapon-swapping elem would be able to heal a lot, drag out the fight and maybe wear you down but the staff and scepter casts are too slow and even d/d doesn’t burst as much as other classes.

I don’t sPvP myself but when you do, the way it is right now, when someone sees that you are an elem do they run at you or away from you?