Sounds boring.
A set type of skill that only changes by attunement means you have 4 skills that just do different effects instead of skills that are different with different effects like we have now.
This would really make it boring playing Ele because this is really simple and makes the Ele play like every other class just with different effects. It would require less thought to play ele which is not why I personally play Ele and get bored of my other classes easily.
How about we get over the idea that an Ele takes some sort of elite training to play first, and second realize exactly what I’m trying to describe.
For example, each weapon’s auto-attack does the same thing, just with a different graphic and secondary effect. Fireball is damage with an impact AoE component, whereas Water Blast is damage with an impact heal component. Right now these are two separate skills due to attunement swapping, when really they’re exactly the same just with different secondary effects.
ANet could take the attunements and make them offer an inherent bonus, such as Fire adding 50% damage, Water halving damage but increasing heals by 50%, Lightning doubling Blind or Stun duration etc.
The idea is to get rid of four sets of redundant, half or quarter power skills compared to the rest of the professions, and instead make each skill as powerful as any other profession’s and use the attunements to determine their visual and secondary effects. Normalizing the damage of each skill allows easier and better balancing, and while at first it may seem simplistic to the untrained eye, this type of system allows for greater flexibility and skill combos, unrestricted to “rotations.”
As yet another example, ANet could make the Dagger #3 the movement skill for Eles. Make it a 10 second CD comparable to other professions. Then you’d have Burning Speed, RtL, Magnetic Grasp and an undetermined Water movement skill (Path of Ice, Slippery Ground?) on the same skill slot, depending on which attunement you were in. If you use RtL it puts the skill on CD, and you’re unable to access the movement skill until the CD is up. Which puts the requirement on the player to make sound tactical decisions rather than burning through every skill CD as soon as they come up.
In turn, this means that balancing the Ele would no longer penalize less used, non-meta builds due to nerfing the one power build, because skill rotations wouldn’t really exist as they do now, it would be more about using the appropriate attunement at the right time, instead of blasting through all attunements and cooldowns to maximize damage.
