Guild Wars 2

I would just like to add that I have the same problem with Heat Wave (which makes sense as it also fires three projectiles when used). I don’t think I’ve ever hit anything with it :P

StinVec.3621:

Seath, you can click the “Tools: Edit Topic” link that is underneath the actual topic title at the top of the page below the red “Add Reply” words to change the title of your thread.

Capital! The title has been changed to more accuately describe the issue. Thanks! Of course, I haven’t had a chance to log in the last few days so for all I know it isn’t even an issue anymore :P

It looks like you’re right. I just tried it with the Radiant Vambrace skin and the same thing is happening. Regardless, it still needs to be rectified. I can’t imagine a virtually unnoticeable amount of clipping being nearly enough to warrant making pretty much every glove skin in the game pointless to have if you happen to be wearing Nightmare Armor. Especially considering there are plenty of other glove skins that are just gloves (no armguards) that people could use instead if they wanted that look. (Which I obviously don’t) As such, I can’t imagine this change was intentional.

Edit: Is it possible for me (or one of the devs) to change the title of this topic to something more along the lines of “Nightmare chest armor overwriting glove skins”? Seeing as my initial assessment of the issue was a bit inaccurate, I’d like the title to be a little less misleading. Thanks!

When I logged in today, I noticed that the exotic Acolyte gloves that I wear looked radically different than normal. I tried logging out and back in, which didn’t work, and eventually checked the trading post to see if the entire armor set was altered. It looked exactly the same as usual with one notable difference: the part of the gauntlets that covers the forearm was now seemingly part of the coat skin!

The first photo attachment depicts the way I normally look (It’s an older picture, so the shoulders are different). The second shows the way I looked when I logged in today. The third shows me wearing the gloves and coat together.

Here’s the weird part (shown in attachment four): If the gloves aren’t equipped, but the coat IS, the bracer part of the gloves is missing entirely! This convinced me that this was not simply a redesign of the armor (and a nonsensical one at that) but a bug involving the way the armor interacts with itself. The armguards only appear if BOTH the coat and gloves are equipped at the same time but not if only one or the other is which I can’t imagine is working as intended. I know it’s not the most pressing matter, but I would really appreciate if the gloves could be changed back to the way they were as soon as possible. Thank you!

As a side note, I don’t think weapon swapping my way would require any less skill to play well than the current system. If it takes skill, patience and situational awareness to play using the skills we have now, how would using those same exact skills in slightly different combinations make it any easier?

I’m seriously asking, by the way. If someone can point out a weapon combination that would make Elementalists unstoppable, please point it out and I’ll shut the kitten up.
I mean, if ArenaNet (or anyone really) came out tomorrow and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that using my method would be flat-out better than using all four elements on one weapon at a time, I would gladly withdraw my suggestion and agree that weapon swapping for elementalists is simply not a balanceable mechanic. (Without a total reworking of the class anyway, but I certainly wouldn’t want that either. Except for making Ether Renewal usable underwater :P) But I truly believe that it has the potential to work and give everyone (read: every ELEMENTALIST lol) more freedom to play the way they want to. That was kind of the philospophy of this game in the first place, wasn’kitten

(Edit: I’m trying to say “wasn’t it” but instead it changes it to whatever THAT’S supposed to be…)

Isende.2607:

imagangsta.1349:

Seera.5916:

No to this idea and to Seath’s idea, which I will post in that thread as to not go off topic here.

This idea gives Elementalists too many skills compared to other classes and I play Elementalist. And as I play solo, I do sometimes wish I could switch out to staff if I need to get farther from a foe to increase my survivability if it’s a harder hitting, but close range enemy. Not to mention when I go up against the dragons it’s not safe to be within scepter/dagger range most times so I try to remember to swap out to staff but I do forget sometimes (and usually that forgetting happens against Jormag).

I don’t think you understand what he is saying…try re-reading what he wrote SLOWLY this time. He’s saying per weapon gets 2 attunements, for example: dagger/dagger would get fire/earth while staff would get air/water. Anyways I think this could work, i don’t see why it couldn’t be implemented into the game…elementalist wouldn’t have access to any more weapon skills than it already has…so I vote yes.

considering i love ALL of the attunement abilities available on ALL the weapons currently usable by the elementalist, i would absolutely despise having my attunements limited to what i currently had equipped, just so i could pick up a “handy” weapon swap. again — elementalist takes a lot of patience, understanding, skill, and situational awareness to play well. if you do not like the way it’s currently designed then i strongly second the motion — apparently elementalist is not the profession for you. in my ever-so-humble opinion, the design of the elementalist makes it one of the most challenging and, therefore, fun professions to play.

ever.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Elementalist too. I even tried switching to my allegedly “all-powerful” level 80 warrior for a while and actually found him MUCH harder to play since I was so used to my current playstyle and skills. I’m far from the best there is, but I’m confident that I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing at least most of the time. (I managed to beat Liadri the Concealing Dark and get that five gambit achievement (not on Liadri of course lol) in the Queen’s Gauntlet, so that’s something. You may not think it’s hard but it is for an elementalist :P)

To be perfectly honest, even if ArenaNet did decide to implement my suggestion, I probably wouldn’t even use it myself. (I MIGHT use water on staff because I really like Healing Rain and Frozen Ground, but that’s about it.) Kitten, my current build focuses on lightning hammer, so this weapon swapping malarkey doesn’t even really affect me at all at the moment.

Really, the only reason I posted it in the first place is because I wanted to offer a different, hopefully more reasonable, approach to the issue rather than spamming the suggestion box with another “We need 40 weapon skills because of… the reason!” post. (No offense to the OP. Heh, like that somehow makes it less offensive!) It has, from the very beginning, been my hope that using a single weapon set with all four attunements like everyone is doing now would be just as viable an option as splitting the attunements between two sets so no one would feel “limited” to having to split them just to remain competitive. In other words, I’m trying to instigate more player freedom in terms of build variety. If you prefer using one weapon set with all four elements, as you clearly do, have a Mardi Gras! However, I don’t think it’s asking too much to allow others who don’t like being limited (if I may borrow a word from you) to having all four sets of their weapon skills determined by a single weapon. The greatest, and possibly only real strength, of the Elementalist is their versatility and yet they’re one of the only classes that can’t mix and match their weapon skills.

I actually just had a thought: what if instead of an actual weapon swap, we simply select our attunement as normal and automatically swap weapons as we do. So, if fire and earth are assigned to Scepter/Dagger and water and air are on Staff, rather than switching to the staff and THEN picking an attunement, switching to water or air would automatically use the Staff skill set and switching to earth or fire would switch back to Scepter/Dagger. That way we wouldn’t have to worry about introducing a new weapon swap cooldown nor would there be a problem with swapping weapons and having the wrong attunement activated when we do. We’d basically just be mixing and matching our weapon skills.

The current attunement swap cooldowns would still obviously take effect as normal.

I’m not sure if “punished” is the best word to use lol. After all, it was never my intention of making weapon swapping the “best” option, just an additional option. Like I said, I didn’t go over every combination of weapons/skills but I would hope that, if this system was implemented, using a single weapon set would still be perfectly on par with a dual weapon set. It’s just a matter of sacrificing a bit of the admittedly good synergy among the current weapon skills for the ability to switch to close/long range at the drop of a hat if that’s more important to that particular player or in a particular situation. So, ideally, people who don’t want to change the way they play wouldn’t feel obligated to. And if we can score some additional build diversity at the same time, so much the better.

Bismuth pointed out that Elementalists might opt to have a focus on their second set for the additional defensive capabilities, which he believed would make them too powerful. Too me, on the other hand, I see it as sacrificing the exceptional might stacking you get using the dagger on the off-hand (churning earth and earthquake in a ring of fire, anyone?) for obsidian flesh etc. Trading offense for defense seems perfectly balanced to me!

The cooldown for weapon swapping would definitely require some thought to make sure it isn’t too long or short. But they could always throw in a trait to reduce it.

As for the underwater stuff, I agree I’d love an additional weapon choice there too, but honestly, of the few classes I’ve played, I don’t think any of the underwater skills are quite up to snuff with the on land stuff. Here’s hoping ArenaNet never releases an all underwater dungeon or something lol. To be fair though, I used to hate the trident too, until I started being REALLY aggressive with my attunement switching and found it to be a lot of fun. Well, relatively fun anyway… Sure it requires quite a bit more speed, timing, skill and familiarity with the class than most of the alternatives but, hey, welcome to being an Elementalist! I do wish they hadn’t nerfed the damage on Whirlpool, though. Dropping a champion to half health with one cast was pretty nice! I’m starting to see why it got nerfed…

Anyway, I’m glad the idea is growing on you. It makes me a little more confident that I’m not an idiot to think it could work. One down (well, two including me) 3,499,998 to go!

Seera.5916:

No. I’ll explain.

I main an Elementalist. And 99.9% of the time, I’m soloing content and there’s not a soul around on my server.

I play scepter/dagger as it puts me mid-range which works against a majority of the enemies.

While I tend to spend most time in Fire and Air, I do sometimes switch to Earth for the interrupt and blind. Not to mention my Elite is the Elemental and the Earth one is great for a solo since it will pull the enemy to hitting him and not me and I’ll use that when I’m struggling or know a fight will be tough. And I will switch to water if I need the regeneration it provides through switching to it and through Skill #5, Cleansing Wave which heals and removes a condition. And I’m pretty darn good fighting in Water attunement and I’ll typically change out of it once my health goes up and typically to Earth for it’s defense adding until Fire is out of cooldown (I’m pretty good at getting my health up quickly once I’m in water).

And staff wise I tend to use all four attunements as well so your solution just cripples me if I want to take advantage of having a staff as back up.

Not to mention when I’m fighting Dredge, I tend to go more Fire and Earth and I wouldn’t want to have to reset that up every time I change enemy type (I tend to focus on the blinding aspect of Air and Dredge are immune to blind and at least Earth’s blind will hurt them if I forget and activate that skill anyway)

It’s better than the staff’s water heals which either heal for little (healing rain) or require you to pretty much be stationary (geyser).

And for me when I’d want to be ranged is when the enemies are hitting hard and I just need some time to heal.

So tying my hands by forcing me to lose the highest DPS attunement in order to switch would be counter intuitive and would hurt me more than help me.

Maybe you didn’t read the whole thing, but I also include a paragraph in which Elementalists would be allowed to assign all four attunements on one weapon set (which is the way it works now) at the cost of giving up their ability to swap weapons. All I’m suggesting is giving us the CHOICE to weapon swap if we want to. If you like the current system, by all means stick to it and switch your weapons the long way keeping all four attunements on both sets, but give other people who don’t typially use all four attunements on one weapon set the option to split them up. No one would be FORCING you to split attunements between weapon sets and, as far as I can tell, everyone wins. Or maybe I misunderstood what you were saying?

Adine.2184:

because 20 weapon skills isn’t enough……..

Take a look at my suggestion. (Link to it above) I think I’ve figured out a way that Elementalists can have weapon swapping while still only having 20 weapon skills and at the same time leaving the way the class currently works (i.e. one weapon set) completely in tact if the player prefers to play that way. It’s really just giving them a way to switch from close range to long range mid-fight if the fight calls for it without being forced to use conjured weapons. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable and would promote build diversity.

At the very least, maybe ArenaNet can increase the range of Ice Bow to 1,200 or something so people who like daggers and scepters can still transition to long range in combat if they need to. Then again, with the changes to conjured weapons ANet announced, maybe they already are?

rhodoc.2381:

As a start, if you change your weapon, you start with the all skills with full cooldown if you are in the combat.

I think that would be penalizing weapon swapping to the point of uselessness.

I actually just made a suggestion last night that would allow elementalists to swap weapons without giving them access to any additional weapon skills:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Balanced-Elementalist-weapon-swap/first#post2903320

As for underwater abilities, seeing as the trident is our only option, this system clearly wouldn’t work. However, I think our underwater abilities are pretty versatile as they are. Although, I certainly wouldn’t say no to an extra usable weapon type! I also wish we could use ether renewal underwater, but that’s not really relevant to this conversation…

I think that’s pretty much it. I’d be interested to know your guys’ thoughts and, of course, if anyone discovers that allowing an Elementalist to use Phoenix on top of Frozen Ground would cause the universe to implode or something, feel free to point it out. I haven’t looked at every combination of the different weapon skills, but I can’t imagine there’s anything there that would break the game. Although it’s possible a slight skill tweaking might be necessary.

Better yet, if anyone has suggestions of how to refine the idea to balance it better (as it is admittedly a bit rough) I greatly encourage that as well!

The one problem that I can foresee at this point (other than possibly feeling the need to build more than one legendary) is how the attunement cooldown may make combos harder to pull off with weapon swapping. What I mean is, let’s say you DO want to cast Phoenix on top of Frozen Ground: You start off in water attunement on your staff, then switch to your scepter. However, the last attunement you used on you scepter was earth, so you’re forced to switch to fire putting earth on cooldown. But what if you NOW want to use Churning Earth on that ice field? It would be gone by the time you can switch back. Of course using Churning Earth first probably wouldn’t work since the long channel time would make it difficult to switch to fire and pop Phoenix before the Frozen Ground is gone.

The point is it would add complications to an already complicated playstyle, so if you guys have suggestions of how to overcome these problems, feel free to voice them. The only one I could think of is to give us a two or three second grace period on weapon swap to switch attunements without activating the cooldown. However, you would only be allowed to switch one time during this grace period.

Anyway, feel free to discuss or ignore me entirely, whatever…

The search bar in the forum doesn’t seem to want to work for me so I apologize if this idea has been presented already but I haven’t seen it in the handful of Google searches I did so here goes:

I’ve heard that ArenaNet purposely designed the Elementalist to not be the best at any particular role instead opting to make them the most versatile class in the game. While that’s all fine and good and the whole four attunement thing certainly lends to that idea, the inability to switch from long to close range and vice versa quickly and easily seems contradictory to it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the conjured weapons (my build focuses on them at the moment in fact) but most people probably don’t have room on their utility bar for that luxury.

Of course, giving Elementalists the ability to swap weapons outright would be madness! They already have twice the amount of weapon skills as any other class (not including Engineer bundles) so giving them two times more would be ridiculous. Awesome, but ridiculous. Instead, I propose a system in which the four attunements can be split up between two sets of weapons.

What do I mean by this, you ask? I’m getting to it, just calm the kitten down! Let’s say I’m running your typical D/D fire and earth combo field extravaganza but would love to back it up with the longer range staff abilities, just in case. (By the way, there is no 1,200 range conjured weapon, so no help there.) Rather than being stuck in near melee range, I think Elementalists should be allowed to assign the four elements to each of their weapon sets while only allowing a maximum of four total attunements. So, on my D/D set, I would only be allowed to use fire and earth spells, and if I switch to my staff, I can only use water and air. This way, we would still only have 20 weapon skills as normal, but we would now have the ability to switch from close to long range or combine the abilities of multiple weapons like every other class.

Of course, if you like the current setup of having all four attunements on one weapon set (I know how much you guys like your lightning whip) you would obviously be able to assign all four elements to a single weapon set as normal. (Incidentally, I’d prefer if we were allowed to keep our other weapon set equipped to save bag space simply losing the ability to swap weapons in this case, but I won’t be heartbroken if we couldn’t. Or maybe this could be where that out of combat weapon swapping everyone has been asking for could come into play?) The point is to give us the OPTION to swap out our skills if we choose. More options typically leads to more build diversity.

It should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, I’ll also add that a one/three or three/one element split should be allowed as well because… why not? After all, the Elementalist is supposedly the most versatile class, so why not make them as versatile as possible? Imagine how many combinations of weapons/elements there would be (or just do the math I guess…) and how much our build diversity could potentially skyrocket if we were able to combine our skills in so many ways!

I’ll even take it one step further, although I don’t expect this to happen: Allow Elementalists to double up their elements. Do you like the fire skills of the staff AND scepter? Assign fire to both! Of course, there would still be a hard limit of four attunements, so by doubling up on fire, you’d have to sacrifice water, air or earth. The problems I foresee with being able to “specialize” in certain elements that way is that it may make us TOO good at certain things. Having two sets of fire and air abilities for example may be giving us access to too much damage to be balanced. I honestly haven’t really worked out the logistics of this scenario so I don’t know how game-breaking it could potentially be. I’m just spitballing…