Guild Wars 2

For the auto-attack, I’m thinking you could still move, sure, but the other skills would likely have high grade effects in exchange for making you stop moving while the attack animation goes off – risky business for a thief, but potentially valuable if the attacks are good enough.

But remember that it has to go beyond just the rifle weapon. That’s the flexibility, positive and negative, that elite specs allow over just handing the rifle to a vanilla build. If all the Rifle does is root you while firing or something, then a player could just go Rifle/Shortbow, fight until they’re at risk, swap, and start dashing and #5-ing, and using Shadowstep utilities, and dropping stealths, and things like that to get out of dodge.

To make Snipers strong without being OP, they may have to actively reduce the Theif’s innate movement options, like giving some penalty to any shadowstepping, or applying a temporary debuff in which you cannot shadowstep, applying reveal to prevent Stealth, things like that. It would mean that you couldn’t engage in the usual tactics while playing as a Sniper.

That may not be the only route available, but it’s one that might work.

Of course the class would need to offer benefits to all builds, not just rifle builds, but these benefits would be in making thieves stronger somehow in a direct fight, so they would less need to scurry off. One thing I’ve been playing around with is the ability to “steal ammo.” Instead of shadowstepping to a target and picking up a bundle to use, Steal would be changed to leave you in place, reducing mobility, and not create a “stolen” bundle, but would instead create a “pack of initiative,” perhaps 5 Ini that you can activate at will. This would allow Snipers to burn Initiative much faster than other classes, especially when paired with other traits.

No matter the GF visual tell, if you’re not paying attention to the warrior you gonna get shot. Same thing with any one-shot build. If you’re focused on something/someone else you will get killed no matter how long they wind up their attack.

That’s why the overhead tell would be good, you don’t need to be paying attention to the Thief, you don’t even have to know where he is, you’d just see the target and could react accordingly.

I do think that if they make a long range DPS spec, part of the core kit should be something that reduces the Thief’s mobility in exchange for better ability to stand and fight. Even a “melee” Sniper could benefit from that if played right, but a highly mobile ranged Sniper could be too problematic.

Yea, and GF is balanced why? Because of its huge visual tells. Take those away and it’s ridiculously overpowered. Oh wait, that’s what stealth conveniently does.

That’s why I suggested giving the scoped shot a Mordrem Sniper style overhead tell. Even if you’re stealthed and they don’t know where it’s coming from, they know it’s coming and can react.

you mean when i see that the enemy team has a thief and i ask the rev to spot him and pressure him.
any thief if left alone will decap or free +1 to kill fast
another example is when i play support and i see enemy thief i target him so my team will know where it is and they are ready for his burst
so with sniper the enemy team has to be more careful and to put out a counter class or build to it
this result in more rotation, more counterbuilds etc..

You don’t have to agree, I’m just explaining why a mega-burst range option won’t happen in PvP, not asking for agreement.

Aenaos.8160:

Zenith.7301:

I hope you realize how self-defeating this stupid change is for druids.

You’re effectively going to pigeonhole them into healing power by decreasing baseline healing without giving the druid specialization any additions to make it viable in an offensive stat build as a DPS role.

What are these developers doing? They haven’t fixed what makes core ranger and druid dreadfully weak DPS builds, so they have to play a dps/healer hybrid, and with this change now rangers will be forced into healing power gear so they can’t even contribute much DPS at all.

You’re also going to effectively delete druids from open world as they can no longer solo or be self sufficient due to not being able to run dps gear without gutting their celestial avatar survivability/utility.

It won’t be nearly as bad as you describe it,but a healer with healer gear.
God forbid,this is unheard of.

Again though, the tradeoff is what do Druids get in return? If they just lose healing power, then that makes them weaker than they are not, which is not that strong. I can understand them wanting to make Druids use Healer gear if they want to be primary healers, but the Druid class also needs to be functional as a non-healer option, which means that the non-healer gear needs to do enough damage to make up for not being as good at healing.

messiah.1908:

Ohoni.6057:

What if a Thief’s Sniper Shot had a nuclear “tell?” Like what if it did a lot of damage, but took a second or more to cast, and put one of those Mordrem Sniper crosshairs over the target’s head? That way, it’d make little difference in PvE, but in PvP, it would be reasonably easy for the target to dodge or throw up a Reflect/block/etc., even if he were distracted by other opponents.

you will lose the whole idea of sniper…
what if i had and icon which told me when to dodge for a specific huge burst skill…

Yes, but the whole “problem” with a highly bursty sniper in a PvP situation is, players don’t like fighting effective thieves. I mean, no matter how much work you may have to put in to line up a successful assassination, all the opposing player sees is that a Thief appeared out of nowhere, did massive DPS to them that they could do “nothing” about, and then they were downed. Totally “unfair.” But that’s an understandable reaction. Nobody likes to feel, accurately or not, that they were defeated in a way that is out of their hands.

So a fully empowered Sniper is just never going to happen, at least not in PvP. The Snipers themselves might have a ball, they might even mange to make it “balanced” in some way that the statstics prove out that these Snipers do not have better kill ratios than other classes and are largely not gamechangers, but even so, all non-Snipers will feel that Snipers are “way too OP,” because the things Snipers are good at are massive triggers to all sorts of logical fallacies.

So the question is, what to do about that fact?

Not have Snipers at all? That’s one option. I’d like to see them, but ANet wouldn’t put them in if they caused nothing but angst among players of the other eight classes.

A significant PvE/PvP split that made Snipers much more open and direct in their attacks, like a longer range but slower P/P build? That might work well enough, they’d be annoying, but you could see them and start to counter them before they could finish you off, and that would allay the basic “I couldn’t do anything about it” complaints.

I kind of like the idea of the head target though. Yes, it lets the target know that you’re coming. Yes, it means that if a single enemy is guarding a point, you couldn’t post up, fire a massive damage shot that downs or near-downs him before he even knows you’re there and allows you to finish him off before he can get his boots on. Just put that fantasy out of your head because I don’t see it ever being offered.

But what role it does provide is as a strong scout Sniper, a very strong +1 in any fight. You post up at the back of the pack, you pick your target wisely, and you take your shot to change the flow of the battle. Your target will know he’s being targeted, and will react to that. Maybe he dodges, pops a Reflect, pops a block, etc. Well that’s fine, it means he’s burned a defense that he would have used later against one of your friends. Maybe you wait to target an enemy after you think he’s already burned his dodges and defenses, and while he sees death coming, there’s nothing he can do about it.

The crosshair provides a necessary amount of counterplay to the killshot, allowing you to use it, but allowing the opposing player to react. And of course it won’t be the only tool available to you, you’ll have other options to use, but the pressure of being able to single an enemy out and make him sweat should not be underestimated.

Gaile Gray.6029:

One of the most notable changes being made is to the healing values of the Druid as a primary healer. Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly. The reasoning for these changes is that while we are excited about the Druid being an incredibly strong healer, we would also like to see that role as one of many choices in your attribute build.

Will Druids be getting DPS boosts when in more DPSy gear, or is this just a straight nerf in their overall survivability? Reducing their base ability to heal without buffing their other options would not open up any new choices, it would just make all other choices even worse.

What if a Thief’s Sniper Shot had a nuclear “tell?” Like what if it did a lot of damage, but took a second or more to cast, and put one of those Mordrem Sniper crosshairs over the target’s head? That way, it’d make little difference in PvE, but in PvP, it would be reasonably easy for the target to dodge or throw up a Reflect/block/etc., even if he were distracted by other opponents.

You know, while I still favor offhand pistol as my personal choice, I was thinking about the weapon combinations in the game, and realized that the only mainhand weapon that NO class dual wields is the Scepter!

There are sword/sword, dagger/dagger, pistol/pistol, mace/mace, and axe/axe, any other MH weapon can be dual wielded by at least one class, some multiple classes.

So maybe Scepter/Scepter 2017? I guess it could have the same skills people would want from a wand-sword, but it would open up a combo that no other class can have. Double Meteologicus?

PvE does have room for an Ele DPS elite spec though. As new mobs tend to get more and more challenging, you would expect the slow nature of staff to greatly hinder it in a good portion of the newer content.

Yeah, it’s ok for Eles to get a good DPS option for foes that stand very, very still for you, but also have an option that does less damage under ideal conditions, but is more flexible to use.

A potential elite spec that features a Shotgun Rifle and Gadgets (a la Engineer) would thematically fit perfectly as a Spec Ops aesthetic.

Not for Thief though. No. If that;s the best they can come up with then I want OH Focus, OH Sword, and a half-dozen other weapons before they get there. Do not want.

I think the main argument against a long range weapon for Thieves is how broken it would be in PVP settings, snipping people at 1200 range (or even 1500 as some people want a trait to reach Ranger longbow range) while using stealth.

Which is why there needs to be a PvP/PvE Split!!!!!!!!

The exact things that PvE needs would be problematic in PvP.

For that reason, as I’ve proposed several times in this thread, while the class should have a high burst DPS “scoped shot,” and should also have a lower DPS spammable “hip shot”, and the former ability should be lower damage in PvP than in PvE, and the latter higher in PvP so that a PvP Sniper can deal consistent spammable damage whithough having overwhelming burst.

They could also mess with relative impact of Revealed and Stealth.

But again, if they cannot resolve these issues, then Thieves should not get Rifle at all. The only point to a Thief rifle is the sniper angle. There is absolutely ZERO need, from a practical or thematic sense, for a Thief shotgun or whatever. If they cannot make a functional and balanced long range Rifle build, then they should backburner the Rifle as a Thief weapon until they can, and should instead focus on one of the numerous other weapons that could be fun for Thieves.

Ricochet is no longer a trait.

Ricochet will always be in our hearts.

P/P is power, Rifle is power so nothing like ranger shortbow and longbow. What you are saying is that this Sniper spec will have a weapon that is superior to P/P and P/P will be useless for it. And you are OK with it.

And again, that is not what I’m saying, because Daredevils won’t be able to use Sniper, and XPac 3 Thieves won’t be able to use Sniper, and so on. P/P will remain the goto DPS ranged attack for any Thief build that isn’t using the XPac 2 spec.

I also hope that the XPac 2 Spec actually boosts Pistol directly too, much as a Daredevil P/P is better than a vanilla P/P, there could be trait A that is vital to maximizing a Rifle build but useless for non-Rifles, and then trait B that doesn’t add much for rifles but is great for P/P and other weapons, allowing players to build towards P/P if that’s what they’d prefer.

Also, Pistol is more flexible as a weapon since you don’t have to run P/P to use one, you can use P/D, S/P, or D/P if you prefer.

And off-topic, you were so against a Sword for Elementalists because it would be similar to Dagger. But not against this Rifle although it would be similar to Pistol /Pistol, wow.

. . .

I’m actually fighting AGAINST Rifle being made too similar to Pistol. It’s some of the other guys that want to make it yet another close/medium range weapon that would solve nothing. What I want is a LONG range weapon, something that Thieves have never had since the SB nerf, and even before that SB was not great at extreme distances.

And again, Rifle is not my first choice here, I want OH Focus more, but if we are getting a Rifle, then I want it to fill the need Thieves actually have, being able to do strong damage at standoff ranges, rather than some redundant blunderbuss that just duplicates things we can already do with Pistol or SB.

If it’s longer range that P/P AND deals more damage than P/P they why have P/P in the game anymore?

For the Ricochet.

Also, it requires pointing out that the sniper rifle would be restricted to the “Sniper,” so P/P would always have use for Daredevils, and for later Thief specs. Also, P/P is like the Ranger Shortbow, Rifle would be like Ranger Long Bow, you can have both.

We already know how powerful they want Thieves to be at range. We have two examples of it in fact. If the rifle is built around longer range then it’ll be even less damaging than the tools we have now and that’s even allowing for the tragically high level of power creep that slipped into the first round of elite specs (a game warping mistake I think you’ll see reigned in quite noticeably in round two…).

Again, that may be necessary for PvP balance but is completely opposite what Thieves need in PvE settings, hence the need for skill-split.

Your opinion doesn’t prevent something from having the potential to be different.

Nobody’s saying it can’t be different, just that if it’s different it can’t be worth making. If they’re going to make some lame mid-range shot-gunny sort of rifle then they may as well not even bother. I’d rather have OH Focus, OH Sword, MH Focus, OH Torch, Greatsword, MH Mace, MH Focus, OH Mace, Shield, and Longbow in that order, before we get around to another useless mid-range weapon. A mid-range Rifle would be a waste of a good Rifle.

Elite specs, as defined by Anet, are supposed to change the way the core class plays, not replace it. It is entirely expected that changing the way the class plays will make the elite spec better at some things than core, but tempest does not do this. Tempest is the same elementalist we’ve been playing since launch, but with a heaping serve of power creep.

My tempest plays differently than my vanilla Ele. My Tempest does this thing where she charges at enemies while tirling or riding a rock or something, and then all the enemies nearby take damage and stuff, and then it leaves a sort of “tempest” at that location. My vanilla Ele never did that sort of thing. Feels different to me.

The important part is that the base profession is still there. Elite Specs are there to provide a branching path into something that couldn’t be done (or done well) before.

Right. Elite specs are a step forward from the base set. They allow you to do new things, without removing hardly anything from the vanilla (one trait line). It’s pretty much impossible to give players an entirely new mechanic layer, an entirely new weapon, and a new set of optional Utilities, and have it end up equal to the build that has none of those options, not unless it also cripples you as it does do.

However, you can’t be two elite specs at once, so the second elite spec will add new things, but will also be unable to use the HoT spec’s options. Whatever XPac 2 Ele can do, it won’t be Overloads, it won’t be Warhorn, it won’t be Shouts. It won’t be able to do any of that stuff. So they don’t need to try and balance XPac2 Ele against vanilla Ele, they just have to make sure that they are as good as the Tempest.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

For all we know this rifle could be the opisite od what people are saying (high dmg long range) everyone sais hammer was going to be knock down heaven bur look what happened to that.

Sure, but if it’s not high damage long range then it’s junk and I do not want it at all.

That’s why tempest sucks. The way it was designed was simply wrong and now it can never be anything other than ele+ or ele-. People were saying this since the very first bwe and Anet did nothing about it.

No matter what weapon ele gets with its next elite I have zero faith in it. It’s either going to be utter trash that should never be used like the majority of ele options, or its going to be power creep insanity that invalidates everything else in the class.

I’m fine with elite specs being better than vanilla. They are elite specs, they should be objectively better than vanilla. I do, however, expect that future elite specs, which the systems treats as co-equal to the other elite specs, should be balanced against the other elite specs, they should not be an even higher tier. Of course certain elite specs will dominate others in certain scenarios, that’s inevitable, but they should be balanced overall.

Unless there’s a change in policy, that will be the case if it’s the first elite specialisation to introduce a non-2H weapon or the thirteenth. They don’t need to create dual skills for combinations of weapons that can’t happen because you can only have one elite specialisation at once.

Ok, fair point, we’ll have to see if they eventually open up sets with multiple weapon unlocks.

Here is a video of Ele with focus in main and offhand – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UdGFX1zZq0 :p

That’s clearly dagger/dagger.

Why couldn’t a Shotgun Rifle have 450 range autoattack? What about it being Burn and CC based and having a long activating 1500 range snipe as the Stealth skill? Or maybe it fires darts that stick and deal damage over multiple ticks at 600 range and the Stealth skill is an immobilizing bayonet charge followed by point-blank blast?

Ugh, that all sounds awful, do not want. I already have two barely useful ranged options to choose from, I don’t need another.

A quick aside about PvP/PvE splits… They are one of the single dumbest things you can do to a game. Any time you introduce barriers to player understanding between major gameplay modes, you shave years off that game’s lifespan. Its that bad.

PvP is dead. We can’t allow it to drag down PvE, but at the same time we want to cause it as little damage as possible. PvE needs a strong DPS long range weapon for Thieves. PvP doesn’t particularly need this. Anything that would make Rifle fun and useful to a PvE player would make it OP, or at the very least annoying to victims in PvP, and annoyed victims are the worst criers. A PvP/PvE split is almost inevitable to have any chance at a fun Thief Rifle.

I would try to keep it simple and easy to grasp, well informed to the players. Basically, the abilities should function identically, but the big burst “headshot” kind of skill in PvE would do less damage in PvP, so that it doesn’t lead to as many one-shots, while the chip-damage rapid attacks would do lower damage in PvE, while being quite effective in PvP, allowing players to keep pressure on the enemy without that insta-gib attack that the PvE side gets. Both attacks would still be useful in either mode, just in different situations, and players should be able to grasp this, as NO power is used identically in both modes.

Other players represent the apex predator of the game, the enemy that fights back with cunning and a WIDE array of abilities. Rather than split your mechanics, you need to move NPCs upwards towards that threshold. A skill’s PvP behavior is and should be the benchmark for the skill, with its PvE behavior the afterthought even in a predominantly PvE game.

And players that enjoy that can find them in PvP. That many players do NOT PvP should tell you that many players do not seek out that experience. Different players enjoy different things. Just because you do not seem to enjoy the gameplay of Guild Wars 2 does not mean that it’s not the best gameplay for Guild Wars 2 to have.

Personally, I could see some enemies raised up a bit, I mean the new Sloth Queen is clearly a bit of a snore, and even played at it’s most fun, dodging from lava rock to rock, the Mursat Jade is a bit of an HP sponge, but I would take them any day of the week over NPCs that behaved like PvP opponents.

If only we’d already seen that ANet is willing to treat rifles as shotgun-like weapons with relatively close ranges. I mean, that right there would immediately set up a whole series of possible treatments as 600, 900, 1200, or 1500 range weapons or even some sort of mix. Oooo, crazy talk, I know.

I would really hate it if they gave us a rifle that offered anything less than 1200 range on the major DPS. Not only would it be completely redundant with our existing 900 range options, but it wouldn’t make sense thematically either. If they can’t give us sniper rifles then they shouldn’t give us rifle at all, there are several other weapons that would be more fun and useful to the class than a 900- range rifle.

I do kind of like the idea of burning all your initiative for a single burst, although I still think it would be hard to balance for PvP. I mean, yeah, it may be mathematically balanced in a “damage over time” sense, but it would still NEVER be any fun to be doing just fine and then a Thief blasts you for instantly lethal damage from a distance, no matter how many hoops he had to jump through to get to that point.

It needs to be carefully balanced between allowing solid burst from time to time, but not completely overwhelming burst, and then decent sustain for when the burst isn’t working. And as I said earlier, I think this will require a PvP/PvE split, in which the burst is tuned down and the spam tuned up in PvP relative to PvE.

Considering Ele gets 8 Weapon skills and 4 F skills for their elite spec I don’t see why it’d be a problem.

We’re discussing this exact issue over on the ele board, eles get a minimum of eight new skills when they get any new weapon, and they’re already complaining that they aren’t getting two-handers (ie 20 skills). It’s a problem. Still, no class has recieved two weapons in a single update, so even if they do intend to give Thieves “Torch/Torch” at some point, they’d likely only drop it as an OH or Mainhand in one patch, and the other in another.

As for the long game, Thieves get exponentially crazier each time they update the basic kit. Right now there are nine #3 skills available. If they add one more MH, that grows to twelve. If they add another OH after that, that grows to sixteen. If they add another MH, that grows to twenty.

I think I did the math right, might be off one or two. In any case, that last one would mean that to add a single weapon that normally only adds three new skills, on the Thief it would end up adding six, more than a two-hander (three default, one dagger, one pistol, one OH#3). And it only gets worse from there, the next OH after that bringing seven skills to the party on a two-skill weapon.

Yeah, Ele is by far the stickiest class to work with, and they’ll have to get creative with how they plan to add new weapons there, but Thief has issues too, which is part of the reason Staff and Rifle are so attractive. They give five skills, but do not grow the two-hander pool.

I’m not saying that they should never add new one-handers, there are definitely combos I want to see, but I have reasonable expectations on pacing.

edit: OH! and I totally forgot, but Thieves also automatically get another skill with every 2H or MH attack, the stealth swapped ability. So that would be yet another ability added on each time a MH is introduced.

TwiceDead.1963:

Sidenote:
I see a lot of people clamoring for a Focus, of all things. Curious, what would it do? Do people already have a set idea for what kind of abilities it would bring? Other than a generic explanation like “It would support!”? Anybody got any details?

I am all for it if it’s implemented well though.

Cestus! Look through the Focus gallery, many of them are pointy, many of the others are just fun. I want it to play as a drunken brawler set, so players can equip one of the various steins or goblets and bash enemies over the head with it! But yeah, like with Staff it would be employed as a melee weapon, just clocking people with it. I’m just thinking of it as an offhand complement to the MHs though, it’s too much to ask for them to add 10+ new abilities to the class in one go.

Harnel.6810:

One thing that irks me is people keep saying that 1200 range is the sensible max, and that’s not true. It’s the max for most classes yeah, like Warrior and guardian, but the actual max range for weapon skills is the ranger’s Longbow, at 1500. If we’re going for a “long range sniper” setup, I really, REALLY don’t see why we wouldn’t have the actual maximum ranger, which is 1500, given sniper rifles are renowned for their ability to hit targets accurately and hard at massive distances.

As for team support, yeah, that’s something thief consistently lacks. What about something similar to what Warrior does? Any time a thief grants a boon to themselves (maybe fury) they also grant it to allies.

I think a Sniper should have 1200 range for basic attacks, but done right they could have a trait that raises some of the attacks to 1500 range, and it shouldn’t be impossible to balance out.

Doggie.3184:

Used to be able to at least stack 6+ might on people with venoms but they completely removed it. ~.~ rip Thief’s only support build.

For weapons we need a totally new Dual Weapon for both hands. Focus/Focus h2h Monk, Torch/Torch Arsonist, Axe/Axe Bandit, Scepter/Scepter Trickster, Mace/mace Sabotager with baseball bat skin, lol. Stuff liek that opens up more options. Say if they pick Torch you get;
Torch/Dagger
Torch/Pistol
Dagger/Torch
Pistol/Torch
Sword/Torch
All with their own Dual Attacks.
You pick Rifle and you get;
Rifle…
The absolute best option for Thief is a new Dual weapon.
They could also just add Off-Hand sword without an Elite Spec too imo since we already know how to use one. ;/ I really don’t think making an elite for that is necessary.

We also have two perfectly good Range Weapons that could just get more love rather than throw in a 3rd one.

I don’t think we’d begetting two new weapon slots for exactly that reason, any thief OH weapon opens up more skill than any other class’s one-hands, aside from Ele. We might get one, but two is very unlikely. If we don’t get a 2H weapon, I assume we’ll be getting an OH at most. I still hope Focus.

pre-HoT that found elementalist sword skills, which suggests that they’ve at least considered it.

Yeah, although they were mostly filler skills, so who knows it even was a Sword spec and not just something they were knocking together for some other purpose. And they clearly abandoned it for some reason. The optimistic answer is that they didn’t have time to finish that one for HoT so they switched to Tempest and have been working on it since, but it could also be that they did some play testing with it and just didn’t like the core aspects of it.

Pistol certainly has the potential to be interesting… but if they introduce technology into the profession that way, I would like to see them go all the way. Make it an elite specialisation based around reverse-engineered Molten Alliance tech and asuran electro-thaumic ray gun thingies (rest in peace, Barron).

I don’t think advanced tech would be appropriate. Full steampunk and sci-fi is the Engineer’s territory and I see no advantage for Eles to encroach on it. These would be very simple black powder guns, mechanically the simplest of the simple. All the “juice” of the weapon, all that makes them different than a real world ball pistol, would come from the Ele materializing their elemental rounds to fire. They wouldn’t be fancy guns, they would be guns wielded by fancy people.

Broadly speaking, the number of new skills doesn’t matter. The collective impact that they have is what matters.

Assuming that they TRY to make a fun and balanced weapon, the two should be one and the same. I mean I suppose they could give Eles MH Sword but deliberately make 9/12 abilities complete junk that nobody ever presses, so that they would be balanced against the 3 new abilities other classes getting MHs would have, but I can’t imagine the rest of the community embracing that as eagerly as you would.

Not to the same degree (except thieves as noted above, and for them it’s not a big deal since they’re limited by initiative rather than individual cooldowns). Elementalists have a number of skills which all they do is to inflict a Blind (the either do no damage or at best equivalent damage to autoattacking) – most blinding skills on other professions are at least dual-use

Blind is great, I love blind, especially now with breakbars. Blind is a very strong breakbar DoT.

Putting these together, it sounds like you don’t actually care what the skills are, as long as you get to see yourself carrying a pistol.

Halfway. I definitely want to see a pistol, I’ve been fairly clear about that, but mechanically I am 100% behind getting a strong DPS/aggressive ranged offhand. If it happens to be a Torch or a Shield or something, I would think that’s lamer than a gun, but it’s still something I would want to slot, if the abilities are as good as I’d hope.

Which is pretty much what you’ve accused people who want sword of doing.

And I’ve been clear why I just think that’s a bad idea, as the obvious mechanical role for a sword is not something that’s a good fit for Eles, while the counter-intuitive role for it would be something that Eles don’t really need either, and both are things that other classes already do, so it lacks even novelty.

Would everybody be saying how awesome it was if elementalist had been given a pistol in HoT, but the pistol uses the same skills as warhorn does now? I rather doubt it.

Of course not. I’m assuming in my example that it’s a pistol as I described it, a solid DPS/aggressive ranged weapon, not a support/CC weapon.

And as noted above, you’re still having the worst of both worlds – having just one weaponset, but only having the same number of skills as everyone else.

You would have less choice in what you got, since the weapons you slot would define all 10 of your options rather than just 5, but done well, they would present a balanced set of options, a “meta-build worthy” set of ten abilities, so most players should have no reason to complain. If they like what that set offers, they can take it and be competitive. If they don’t like that, they can stick with Tempest.

Unless you also allow weaponswapping as part of the same elite specialisation mechanic that takes away two attunements, in which case it pushes into having the best of both worlds –

If weapons swapping worked too, it would have to limit you to only one element. You keep pushing for “I want everything the other classes have, AND all the benefits that Eles have over those classes.” It’s either/or.

How much something something adds is more than just counting up the number of skills. You have to consider how often those skills are used, how much impact they have when they’re used, whether they have broad applicability or are only useful in niche situations, whether they allow for new tactical options or if they’re just filler, whether they contribute to the possibility of new builds, and a number of other considerations.

and the same applies to ALL weapons on ALL classes. Again, skills that have niche usefulness are not an Ele problem, everyone deals with them. Eles just have 20 weapon skills at a time to choose from, so even if anything less than half of them are complete duds, they’re still ahead of the other classes. If Eles get a new Main Hand weapon, then even if half the skills are complete duds that never get used for any reason, they still come away with more useful skills than ANY other class, and well more than those who aren’t getting two-handers.

Again, I’m not saying that Eles will never or should never get a new 2H or MH weapon, but respect the work it will take and the fairness to the other eight classes involved. It’s not all about you.

For other professions, it’s the 1-3 skills that make the most difference to the style. I’m not saying the 4-5 skills are insignificant, but to take your guardian example: taking shield over focus feels about as different as choosing one utility skill over another. Mace, sceptre, and sword all have very different styles, though.

Scepter makes a difference because it’s ranged, but mace/sword are far more interchangeable than Shield/Focus/Torch. If Guard had a second ranged MH then that would also be interchangeable with Scepter, presumably. Other examples would be Necro OH Dagger, which is definitive for condi-passing builds, and Mesmer Focus which was vital back before Chronomancer for getting around. Mesmer offhands typically carry their Phantasms, which are vital to some builds, whichever you choose. The only case in which MH matters more is in cases where a class only has one viable ranged MH or one viable melee mainhand, in which case that pretty much defines their options, but whenever a class is given at least two of each, you could use whichever you like.

a. Each individual skill for other professions has more impact.

No.

Having lots of skills has been part of the theme and balancing of elementalists from the start. They’ve already paid the price for it.

As I pointed out, when Eles launched, it was with LESS weapons than other classes. One underwater when other get two, two mainhands where many others had three, two offhands where many others had 3-4, one two-hand where others typically had two. That was the trade-off, that was the balance, Eles got more bang out of each weapon, therefore they got more weapons.

If your theory held, that each Ele attack somehow counts for less than a non-Ele attack, then there’s no reason why Eles would not have launched with 8-9 weapons like everyone else.

But it doesn’t hold, so the balance was that eles get less weapons. The problem then is that they added a new weapon for every class with HoT, and gave players the expectation that they would continue to add a new weapon with each new expansion, which means that now Eles would be getting a new weapon every time everyone else gets one, and that balance is broken. To maintain the balance, they would either have to skip Eles for entire expansions (maybe giving them new traitlines with new play mechanics and utilities, but using existing weapons), OR they need to introduce weapons in a way that add the fewest new moves possible to the repertoire.

They always have been, used appropriately. Do you even Ele?

The veracity of the claims is suspect, but this individual did predict the Eureka mace before it was released, so shrug

The thing is, the Eureka mace was likely available to a lot of people that would have no idea what’s happening six months or more down the pipe, so knowing a few things soon to release doesn’t mean knowing the long term plans.

Except that they don’t add as much to the profession as a mainhand or a two-handed weapon.

This is true, but they do add more to the profession than a two-hander adds to any other class, so that’s fair. I know, I know, “more, more MOOOOORE!!!” is the mantra, but sometimes “more” is not what is owed.

Necromancers getting greatsword, guardians getting longbow, engineers getting hammer, and rangers getting staff have all had much bigger impacts on how those professions play (if you choose to use them) than any of the new offhands,

That’s just because Warhorn was pretty lame. If Warhorn had been a pistol, everyone would be talking about how awesome it was.

This is because you use the 1-3 skills much more often than the 4-5 skills, and thus they have more impact on your build and playstyle.

Again, totally depends. The #5 skills on thieves tend to define their gameplay more than anything. I also consider by Guard’s Focus skills to be more important than his Scepter skills. You may not use them as often, but they tend to be a pretty big deal when you do.

So, is it really fair for other professions to keep getting new playstyles from new weapons while elementalists keep being limited to the same staff, scepter and dagger for the rest of the game’s lifespan?

Yes. I don’t think Eles will never get MH or 2H options, I just think that they will be fewer than the other classes, and there will be offsets involved.

The tradeoff for having more skills is primarily that they have to choose all their skills in one go, secondarily that the individual skills are generally less impactful than those of other professions. Most elementalist builds are saddled with half a dozen or so skills that the player just isn’t going to be able to make good use of, but they’re stuck with them because they come bundled with the skills they do want. Other professions are much better at being able to eliminate waste skills from their build.

Not really. Pretty much any weapon in the game has 1-2 abilities that rarely get used or make much difference if they are, but people still pick the weapon because of the usefulness of the remaining abilities. That’s not an “Ele problem.”

(Reducing the number of attunements available would also make some core traitlines less compatible with the weapon, and I seem to recall that you were arguing on the basis that incompatibility with core traitlines was a bad thing earlier.)

I discussed this in the other thread that was more generally about the next Ele elite spec, but basically I think that if they do add a new 2H (like the GS), then it will almost certainly come with an element limit. I’m thinking they might first release “Volcanics” that offer Fire/Earth, then in the next expansion offer “Something that isn’t Tempest, even though Tempest would be perfect, which admittedly is a very long name for a profession, but I’m not the one that put us here,” which would be Water/Air only. Yes, being a Volcanic would make Air and Water traitlines kind of weak for you, but that could be solved by either making being a Volcanic cool enough that people don’t mind the more restrictive choice, OR by having a part of the Volcanic traitline be that Fire counts as Air and Earth as Water when dealing with those traitlines, making them mostly as useful as they already are.

I just do not believe that they would dump 20 Ele skills into the game in one go, not unless they gave every other class at least a 2H and a MH, or like three MH and an OH or something.

They don’t need to. You’re relying on effects at the target in order to get unique animations.

You’re making a silly argument. Any impact in the game could come from any weapon, no weapon is absolutely necessary for any effect. They could make the pistol be the pure melee beat-down weapon you want, where every attack is just pistol whipping people. The point is that the thematic element of the pistol shots turning into cool things on impact would be fun and engaging, whereas any form of “spellsword” or “wandsword” ele would be just doing what other classes are already doing with their own swords.

Dagger is not really a melee weapon. I say this because only lightning-1 has the ability to cleave. Everything else is just a weird, close-range spell. Water-1 has a 600 range which isn’t even “close”.

So a main-hand sword as a true melee weapon with cleave abilities would switch things up a bit.

But Air does cleave, so they already have that option, which is as much as any other class gets out of a melee MH. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Water 1 is a piercing attack that can also hit multiple targets, it’s it’s basically a cleave with a longer reach, and Fire 1 shoots three blasts that can often hit multiple nearby enemies.

1.) Staff is a dedicated power weapon and has 1200 range (it’s also 2-handed). A 2-handed condition based 1200 range weapon might be needed to keep things “fair”. Disregarding the conjured weapons, we are left with Rifle and a Bow (is Frostbow a Short or a Long bow?)

There’s no need to “keep things fair,” the current situation is not unfair, and 2-handed weapons are highly unlikely due to the attunement swapping multiplier.

3.) This is where a Sword fits. Something more similar to a Thief sword with evades, together with mobility. Dagger main hand doesn’t have evades (burning speed is meh for evades)

Thief sword has evades because thieves are very evadey. Eles should not be as Evadey.

In a sense all 3 attunements can have the same 3 sword skills, but each attack would provide an extra benefit based on your attunment, in a way similar to how Glyphs work but in Weapon skills instead. So you’d chain attacks and in-between skills you will swap to provide extra benefits.

I think if they tried this they would be slammed hard for being “lazy,” even though they’d be putting out as many unique skills as any other class would be getting.

I’ve already explained how elementalists make a lot of tradeoffs for extra skills…

Yes, but you’ve also said you want to remove all those trade-offs, so. . .

The flipside, however, is that it won’t be fair to elementalists if they get a constant stream of offhands while other professions get more significant new choices.

There’s nothing wrong with new offhands, so long as they add meaningful options to the profression. Keep in mind, you can only use one elite spec at a time, so it’s not like adding Sword would allow you to go Sword/Warhorn, or that if Mesmers get mainhand Mace they could go Mace/Shield or whatever. Getting a new weapon just means adding that one weapon to what they’ve got, so Eles gaining another offhand would be five more options than Mes or Warrior got last time around, and three more than anyone else got.

Sure, engineer pistols are technological rather than magical thematically, but they still shoot little fireballs, bolts of chain lightning, and gouts of fire. The same arguments apply both for and against either choice.

No, but thanks for trying.

And if the tradeoffs are based on traits, then you could have a sword which is melee in some attunements and “wandsword” in others, and which it’s better at could be based on traits.

Again, no. Eles can’t get that same flexibility of ranges that other classes can because they get more total moves. The only way you could justify a “melee in some attunements, range in others” ele is if they were limited to only two elements. You can’t have everything other classes can do AND what eles can do that others cannot.

Well, just for a start, if the build trades having to go into melee for the defences to survive in melee, then it offers greater sustainability.

Ele already has plenty of sustainability, just not in melee range. Making an Ele that could facetank mobs would be tricky to balance on top of their other strengths.

Your examples don’t require a pistol to be used. Any of those effects could be used with basically any item, and none of them really scream ‘this is something that comes out of an enchanted pistol’ to me.

You missed the part about the bullet being fired? That wouldn’t make sense with a mace.

Maces don’t fire bullets.

All professions get the standard elite + healing + 4 utility skills, but when it comes to weapon skills and profession mechanics Anet is not afraid of giving some professions a much larger amount of skills.

Yeah, and some variation is inevitable, they can’t make an Ele weapon with less than 8 skills, for example, but 200 vs. 5 is a HUGE variation. I suspect that in the next expansion, the classes that got MH last time are more likely to get OH, those that got OH are more likely to get MH (aside from Ele who could go either way), and classes that got 2H are likely to not get 2H this time (aside from Thief). That way, between the two sets they would fall closer to balance.

Aye. You’re welcome. First one was a freebie, if you want more elaborate thoughts for your argument you’ll need to pay up.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. You do understand that this is a forum, right? A place for discussion? I mean, you don’t have to participate, but nobody cares if you choose not to.

Yes, it probably would be more effort for them overall… but if they do take the ‘no new 2H weapons for eles because they’re hard’ route, then it’s going to become increasingly obvious that they’re avoiding it out of laziness over time.

But also balance, that it wouldn’t be fair to give one class four times as many abilities as anyone else gets. Remember, Ele only launched with a total of three weapon sets, while most launched with six or more. If they keep adding one weapon per expansion evenly, then an added offhand is already more than a two-hander for another class. Again, I don’t see them ever adding a new two-hander unless a) they skip them on weapons entirely for the previous or subsequent expansion, or b) they restrict elements so that the new Elite spec can only use one or two of the elements. That’s just my assertion, sure, but I believe it’s based in a reasonable logic.

By the same reasoning, there’s no reason to make a pistol that fires elemental shots, because engineer already does that.

No, Engi pistol fires gimmicks. It’s not magical. But again it’s a combined argument. Wandsword is pointless because it is covered BOTH by Scaper/Focus already doing wand-sword things, AND by other classes already having wandswords. It’s novel in no way, and thus makes little sense for expansion.

Not really, in my experience. Yes, you can get better results by hyperspecialising… but the difference between someone who’s doubled up on melee (or ranged, for that matter) versus someone who has a bit of both is not that large.

I’m not saying that you do have to double up on melee/range, I usually don’t, but my point is that if you spec your traits into melee, you likely won’t be very good at range, and vice versa, so you can either be a ranged build with the option to do a little melee, or a melee build that is not completely useless at range, but you can’t be great at both in a single build. There are trade-offs to be made.

And a pistol would also be intended to operate in which range? 900? Then it’s stepping on sceptre. And so on.

Again, I’m looking for Offhand, so it would be in the same general range as Focus, but Focus is mostly based on defense/avoidance, pistol would be focused more on damage and gap-closing. It would be the offensive ranged offhand, which gives it a new role to fill. Do you see a melee sword as offering a non-DPS role? Something the Dagger doesn’t already do?

If they did do mainhand, then yeah, it would be mostly similar to Scepter, although ideally with at least a few 1200 range attacks, to give a one-hand standoff range option, and more aggressive than Scepter. But again, I don’t see it as the most likely or desirable option, so I’m not really defending it as an ideal choice.

A melee option could do more damage than dagger as a tradeoff for actually having to melee rather than still being able to dance just out of range of the cleavefest.

They couldn’t offer a melee Ele enough damage to make that a worthwhile trade. It would either be not enough damage to be worth using, or too much damage to be balanced with other classes.

Swords have a wide range of different animations that can be used, including various means of waving it around, pointing it, throwing it, and, yes, hitting someone with it. Guns pretty much have one basic animation. Point, shoot. You could vary it up by shooting at the ground, or at the sky, or having the gun hovor as it shoots, but ultimately it would be a lot of variations on pointing and shooting.

Sure, but the point is not in the firing animation, we’ve already seen every sword animation they’re likely to use anyway (there are only currently abut 3-4 different sword animations in use already across two dozen attacks)).

The visual novelty would be in what happens after the shot is fired. A few I’d like to see, for example, would be like a shot that summons phonenixes to harass the enemy, like the Ranger Warhorn skill’s eagles. Or another where you fire directly at the target, which causes a cloud to grow over his head (with a dodge telegraph growing at his feet), and then after a second or so a strong bolt comes down, forcing him to dodge or take significant damage. Another where you fire a shot into the dirt and it does the burrowing animation to your target before sending a giant stone spike up at them, that sort of thing. There can be a lot of fun effects to be had.

If I wanted to use sword in a traditional way, I wouldn’t be an ele. That’s the point. Why not use the sword in a crazy spell sword kind of way? They did daggers justice after all.

Dagger was just their shorthand for “Bending,” They wanted to have a melee range Ele class, and that’s what Dagger ended up being. Given Dagger, given Scepter, there just really isn’t room for Sword to bring anything particularly novel to the table. It would either be the generic sword attacks from other sets only now they trail fire or ice crystals, or they would be scepter attacks that do different stuff.

It’s a preference thing. You have yours and I have mine. You can’t argue personal taste, try as you might. lol

That’s exactly what “preference” is, arguing your personal taste.

See, the way you describe it sounds even less intuitive than I thought possible. Come on. No channeled magical elemental bullets that just manifest or something?

No, you’d be firing shots, mostly at the target, some at the ground, a few into the sky, and then things would occur when they hit because, as an ele, your bullets would be enchanted with magical properties. If there weren’t bullets involved there would be no point to it being a pistol, it would be like having a shortbow where you never actually shoot any arrows. Or ponies, as the case may be.

You’re honestly thinking the ele is reloading with actual ammunition and giving it a little magic umpf or something on the way out? lol

Magic ammunition, their own blend. Of course it wouldn’t be a hassle, just like the other pistol classes that never have to bother reloading. It might not even be physical bullets, they could just “conjure” bullets into the chamber as needed, but the point is that they point the gun where they want it hit, pull the trigger, combustion occurs, a projectile flies out, and then something happens when the bullet hits.

A Melee burst DPS weapon would be nice, something that combines Thief and Elementalist, high mobility, lots of burst DPS, close range, gap closers, escapes etc

So like. . . dagger.

Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got something to say
But nothing comes out when they move their lips
Just a bunch of gibberish
And motherkittens act like they forgot about Dagger. ^

^ intended purely for mirth and merryment

So then your actual position must therefore be ‘never add anything, because something like it has already been done’, right?

Nope, coincidentally enough, my actual position is exactly the words I’ve actually said. I’m sorry if I was somehow unclear about that, it was not my intent.

That’s also completely against what you said about following Anet’s pattern. 6 out of 9 of the first generation of elite specs all gained a skill type that another class already has.

A skill, sure, skills are shared between classes, but they behave completely differently for each class. The trick is, “what makes this thing fundamentally different for this class than for other classes?” Adding another Wandsword to Eles would add nothing. Would it add Wandswords to the game as a novel option? no, as we’ve acknowledged, other classes already do that. Would it add a “wand” ability to the Ele? No, Eles already have Scepters for the “waving a thing around and magic happens.” All a wandsword would do is be Scepter 2.0.

Melee sword would at least be a variation, but between the six classes that already have MH sword, for a grand total of 21 different abilities, I doubt they would be able to make another 12 abilities that aren’t mostly the same, just with flame or lightning effects added, whee! Hell, three of the existing ones are already Blurred Frenzy, two of them are Savage Leap, and pretty much every one of them have the same basic attack string, just with a different proc on the finish.

Could they do it? Yeah. Would it be a significant and novel change to the game? Not especially, given the options already available.

2) If a hypothetical close-range weapon was a two-handed weapon, that would allow for the close-range playstyle associated with that weapon to be offered as a whole package.

I’ll tell you right now, I think it’s brutally unlikely that ANet will ever add another two-hander to the class, not unless it comes with a restriction to only two elements. There’s just no way to balance the effort. Most classes would be getting 5, 3, even just 2 abilities out of their new weapon, and Eles would be getting 20? No way. Even just ten would be double anyone else.

Now, for that playstyle to work without forcing the player into an exclusively melee style (which I don’t think they’d do), it will require some ‘wandswording’ – but ArenaNet has already done that (literally with mesmer greatsword, and revenant hammer and necromancer axe are the same broad concept) so I don’t see what would stop them from doing it again.

Again,. that’s my argument. They have done it with other classes, which is why they have no reason to also do it with the Ele. If you want to wandsword, pick one of the wandswords.

Numbers can be adjusted – they’re already taking steps to tone down staff elementalist in raids. No reason to block out introducing a new playstyle.

So basically nerf Staff so you can have a sword? I think more people would be upset by that than pleased by it.

Generally, though, most professions can do different things well by switching weapon, or employing some other device that changes their skills significantly (such as a necromancer going to shroud

This is typically limited by Traits though. If you equip both a ranged and a melee option, you typically have to focus on making one or the other great, and the other will just be ok compared to builds that focus on it. Plus, even with weapon swapping you only get ten skills, while an ele automatically gets twenty, AND can rotate through them faster than weapon swapping. You can’t just say “I want everything they have AND what and ele gets,” there will always be tradeoffs. Because you get what eles have, you can’t have some of the things other classes can do.

Not true. See my response to #1.

And my response to your response. If you try to be a jack of all trades, you’ll be a master of none.

1) You’re knocking back sword on the theory that because elementalist already has one 0-600 range weapon, it doesn’t need another one. However, the same logic extended to 900 range (sceptre) and 1200 range (staff) would result in the conclusion that there’s no need for another ranges weapon – it already has two after all.

No. Dagger Ele is meant to operate in close, within the full 0-600 range. The other weapons are designed for longer ranges. I don’t see them making a purely melee Ele that is actually stronger in melee range than a Dagger Ele already is.

2) You’re arguing against sword on the basis that it’s not to your taste, without acknowledging that it is to the taste of some, while others might find gunwand to be just as silly as you think swordwand is. As CETheLucid said there, it’s a matter of taste and preference.

I present the “taste” argument as it is, a matter of personal preference, although I do think that “gun wands” make more sense, because with a sword-wand, you could be waving anything you want, and for some reason it just has to be a sword. Why? With a “gun wand,” it’s not that you’re waving a pistol around and magic happens, it’s that you’re employing it’s actual function, you are firing projectiles out of its barrel, and these projectiles have magical effects upon impact. It’s using the device as intended, which cannot be said for a wand-sword, as swords are meant to impact things, not be waved around.

And it certainly isn’t a melee weapon. 300 is double the range of most melee attacks. A well-played dagger elementalist doesn’t actually commit to melee, but tries to kite around landing hits from just outside of melee range. A playstyle that involves genuine melee would be a significant difference from dagger ele.

Perhaps for Ele, but it would also be very similar to many existing classes, and require a lot more tankiness out of a glassy cloth class than would currently be available. Lot of work and potential balance issues for little payoff.

So, the guardian is pretty much a spellsword inherently, mesmer can be a spellsword, necromancer can be a spellsword: why can’t we have an elementalist spellsword?

Because there are already three to choose from, and making the Ele one too would involve adding four times as many attacks as most of those?

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that it would not be the ideal use of their time and effort.

As for the Dervish, I didn’t play GW1, but from the description, they sound like Reapers.

Now you’re trying to argue based on how you think the game should work rather than on how it actually works. Dodging projectiles has been part of the game design since GW1 alpha. Projectile speed has likewise been a part of balancing since GW1 (as an example, compare flatbow and longbow for rangers: both had the same range, but flatbows balanced a lower projectile speed against a higher rate of fire compared to longbows).

Granted, it is a separate argument, but I think a fair one. I think that being able to casually dodge projectiles at long range makes a lot of them irrelevant in PvP, which is a waste of resources. They should always hit their mark when fired. The advantage that a player has defending from long range, especially against slow projectiles, should not be that they can casually stroll a few paces to the side and it misses completely, but rather that it gives them more time to react and use active defenses like evade, block, reflect, or screen.

But still, I would rather have Guardian Scepter the way it worked this time last year, warts and all, than what we have today.

It’s not designed as a long-range weapon. It’s designed as a medium range weapon that can be used as a long range weapon if the conditions allow for (or require) it.

Then why, when it was the Guardian’s ONLY long range option, did Guardians have a Trait that increased their damage based on range to target, like the Rangers did? As I said, before the nerfs, I was brutal at standoff range.

That argument also applies to the additional ranged weapon option you favour. In fact, it applies doubly, because there are already two ranged weapons, one in the 900 range as a mainhand weapon that can be combined with an offhand, the other in the 1200 range as a self-contained whole package – any other ranged weapon is naturally going to be operating in the same ranges as an existing weapon. What benefit is there to having an additional ranged weapon? Why wouldn’t an additional ranged weapon not just be sceptre or staff again, or focus/warhorn again if an offhand

If we’re talking mainhand, Scepter is a bit slow, and also purely 900 range. An option with a few 1200 range attacks would lend the Ele more options, and without locking you into all 20 abilities like Staff does. But as I’ve said, I do favor the OH option instead, and what would that provide? A strong DPS offhand. Dagger is about movement and close up attacks, and both Focus and Warhorn are focused on support, with minimal damage boost. A strong DPS-based ranged OH would open up numerous options to both Scepter and Dagger builds.

Are you just completely averse to the concept of classes being able to do multiple things, including things that other classes can do and different approaches to the same thing within a class?

I take my queues from how ANet designs. They seem to follow certain patterns.

1. If you do one thing great, then you shouldn’t be able to do anything else well at the same time. If you do nothing great, then you can do several things well, hopefully in ways that work together. The more flexible you are, the weaker you are at each of the things you could be doing.

2. All moves within a given build should be designed around a single range, either melee, skirmish, long, or standoff, with only token moves towards the other ranged for use when you’re out of position. See #1.

3. DPS, Healing, Utility, you can be great at two of these, so long as they are not in the same builds at the same time, or decent at two of them at once. You can’t be great at all three, especially not at the same time.

4. Most classes get at least one condition that they do well, no class is great with all possible conditions. Most have access to only two or less.

5. Most classes are missing significant access to at least one boon.

6. Most classes are missing access to several Combo fields, and none of them can access them all.

7. The more access a class has to combo fields, the less access they tend to have to good finishers, and vice-versa. Aside from Scrapper.

8. If one class does a particular combination of things very well, no other class is likely to have that exact same function, though they might get something similar.

And we can’t forget: an elite spec is way, wayyyyy more than just a weapon.

Of course. I’m talking about the entire class as a whole.

Which is ironic because his suggestion for pistol falls apart under his own scrutiny.

How so?

His opinion is the correct one.

Thank you.

I definitely want to see a dual-sword Thief, if only because Thief is the ONLY class that could do an actual two-sword version of Hundred Blades (because with other classes, you can only use either mainhand or offhand in a single attack, and only Thief #3 offers the ability to use both at once).

I would love to see that, but I did struggle a bit trying to figure out how to build the rest of the Elite spec to support that. What I settled on is one that turns the Steal ability from a Shadowstep to a Lunge, but in exchange it has a built in retreat, and it would be a spec based on launching yourself in and out of melee as you fight, using Mantras as the utilities (actually “tools” but with a similar mechanism of charging them up and then getting several uses of them before they CD).

You could hop into melee, beat people up a bit, hop back, refill your tools, then hop right back into it

So i see sword or GS more of pure melee weapons with less conidl then dagger and maybe more def and less healing.

So, a Warrior, basically?

What i turly want is a hammer and a pure field class with good cc ok tank ability but needs other ppl to get the max out of its effects.

Have you met Scrapper?

So having all the fields in the game some finnisher and a number of added effects to though field types and finnishing.

As for ALL the fields, that’s unlikely. ANet likes to spread things around, they don’t like giving all the fields to a single class, you basically only get more than 2-3 if you’re lucky. Engis and Rangers are your best bet though, not Ele.

steve.2945:

Ohoni.6057:

well, even if you feel ele doesn’t need a mainhand, we ARE getting a mainhand, or a 2 hand. so anet sees it differently,and I don’t think they even want to buff scepter to make it viable.

How do you know that? I haven’t heard anything that would rule out another off-hand.

There was an expansion leak, I didn’t believe it at first, but some stuff on it seems to be true so far, as the amoon oasis, and Eureka.

But wasn’t some of it not true, like they said that the Stormbow was intended as a Legendary? I don’t know, you can take some truth and wrap it in a bunch of nonsense. Besides which, there were leaks of an ele sword before HoT and it turned out to mostly be filler that they didn’t run with. We have no idea what they actually intend to launch until they do.

well, even if you feel ele doesn’t need a mainhand, we ARE getting a mainhand, or a 2 hand. so anet sees it differently,and I don’t think they even want to buff scepter to make it viable.

How do you know that? I haven’t heard anything that would rule out another off-hand.

Not really. The bolt propulsion can still be done via a string. I was referring more or less to the pulling back of the string. Granted, the physics suggests no reason for this design to be implemented since it’d require a substantial explosion to generate the fore opposite the power stroke of the bow, which would be equivocal to just shooting the projectile via an explosion per a standard gun.

So you’re talking about a device that uses a black powder explosion to rocket the string back towards your face with as much force as the string would use to fire the projectile? Yeah, that sounds safe.

We don’t need crossbows, just let Thieves use the Rifle. If they want to make them stealhier, have the Elite Bonus Weapon be a proper sniper rifle with a suppressor on it, with modified audio to go “pthut, pthut,” instead of “bang, bang.” They already have modified audio on several guns.

Ele is one of the highest DPS classes and they already do it at range with staff, there is no way that Anet would make a pure melee weapon that can do significantly higher damage. If that happened, Ele would be the only DPS profession in raids.

If the new weapon had melee at all it would be on some of the skills, and perhaps the benefit to the new weapon would be that the skills are faster so that they can actually hit players in PvP, instead of doing extra damage. Melee skills would be as strong as staff skills or maybe slightly stronger, while ranged skills would be weaker than staff skills.

Agreed, which is why I favor a ranged option.

As an observation, spellcasters using melee weapons, particularly swords, have a long history. Look at Gandalf, for instance. In Guild Wars we have the dervish as an example that uses elemental-style magic even before we consider secondary professions.

Yeas, but those are typically melee swords, like the Mesmer sword. But in GW2, that role is satisfied for the Ele with Dagger, and the “spellsword” role is covered by Mesmer and Guard, so there’s no compelling need for Ele to get it too. So that would leave us with a wandsword, which is lame, and should be something else, maybe a “scepter” of some kind. Yes, maybe Eles could get a Scepter?

In Guild Wars 2, every major spellcasting profession – guardian and mesmer on release, necromancer with reaper – has the option to pull a sword, greatsword, or other weapon and go to town in melee.

Yes, and Ele has Dagger/Dagger.

Only against targets that didn’t move much, or if you’re throwing into a pack where it’s likely to hit something. The slow projectile speed did mean that, if your target was doing much moving, its effectiveness dropped off rapidly outside of a range of 600 or so.

That was more an issue with how ANet handles projectiles. They should have made it so that it homes in on targets regardless of movement. Even so, before the league seasons started I was routinely wiping out enemies at 1200 range, even LB Rangers. The strength in Specter was never auto-attack spamming, it was the #2 and 3 skills.

I would see at least one spammable skill at range 600 or higher to be required, actually.

Then equip Dagger and be happy. If the Eles do get a melee sword, then it cannot have a spammable 600+ range attack. Maybe a 400, maybe a few CD 600 range attacks like Thief’s Dancing Daggers, but that’s it. If it’s a fully functioning melee/medium hybrid then it’s just Daggers again.

Your arguments keep circling back around to “I want to run Dagger mainhand, but I want to see a sword displayed on the model when I do so.”

So yeah, I don’t see it outperforming fire staff in straight DPS terms against a stationary target either. However, the hypothetical melee elementalist would be able to get the majority of its damage to land on a moving target (well, as much as any melee build can) and would likely have access to more active defences than the staff ele in order to help survive in melee range (at least for a time).

But to support Ganthar’s point, if Staff Ele remains dominant in ranged DPS against stationary targets, and Sword Ele becomes dominant at melee DPS against mobile targets, then Eles would just become the goto DPS source in all situations, which leaves the other classes in a bad place.

If they give us another offhand I quit this game. I’ve been using scepter for 2 years and daggers for 3 years now. No way I playing with those 2 for another 4 years.

Can I have your stuff?

In fact, we already have a precedent in this very thread. Pre-HoT, many people considered that not having a weapon that really shined at long ranged was part of how guardians were balanced against other professions. Now, dragonhunters have longbows, which break that rule.

But they already had Scepter, which was good at long range until they nerfed it. I don’t think “bad at range” was ever a Guardian balancing trait, the Guardian balance is that they are boon-reliant, and boon stripper/corruption can do a number on them.

And even putting all that aside, a max range of 600 would still allow for standoff capability while having true melee options.

Again, if they’re reasonably effective at 0-600 then we’re right back into Dagger’s wheelhouse, which would be redundant. Keep in mind, while other classes may have multiple weapons covering similar roles, these weapons only take up three moves in their kitten nal, while an Ele mainhand involves twelve, twice as many as any two-hander. The four dagger sets account for four different weapons for any other class, so even a 5th “good at 0-600, but mostly closer than that” weapon set would be redundant. As I said, I could see them adding a few, 600 range moves to a melee sword, all decent CD on them so they would be more situational than bread-and-butter, but I don’t see them adding enough that you could hang out at any distance and reasonably contribute. If you can do both decent damage at middle distance and brutal damage in close, it would be too much, even if you had to swap attunements to get there.

Up to now, the elementalist weapons – the two-handed and mainhand weapons anyway – have had roughly the same ranges. Staff can throw everything at 1200 range. Scepter throws everything at 900 range, although some people like to use fire at closer ranges for mightstacking. The only weapon that really has some variation in ranges is dagger, which allows for ranges between 240 radius point-blank area effects to 600 for Vapor Blade.

However, does the current status quo for elementalist weapons where the effective range of the weapon doesn’t change between attunements have to remain for any future elementalist weapon?

Again, Eles are a special case. They exchange the versatility of being able to swap between two sets of very different attacks, for being able to swap between four sets of less different attacks. You can’t expect Ele attacks to be as different as non-Ele ones because they get twice as many of them.

Basically, it would be possible for them to make an Ele weapon that would behave very differently in each mode, sure, but it would not be fair to the other classes, so in practical terms, they cannot.

All that said you still want pistol which would be as redundant as the concept of a long range sword per your own arguments, because dagger and scepter.

I preferred offhand, because Focus is more about defense and control, and at 900 range or less. It’s built to keep you safe and enemies away from you. Does anyone run Dagger/Focus? I haven’t heard it come up. And of course Dagger is about similar things, only more mobile and shorter range, so it’s not the best partner to Scepter.

Ideally OH Pistol would be more damage-based than the other two. It would still have some control, but rather than moving you to target, or keeping them away from you, it would offer options to stop them in place or draw them to you, along with stronger damaging ranged attacks than the other offhands. Ideally at least some of them would be 1200 range as well.

Now if it were mainhand pistol, then I agree, anything MH Pistol could do, a swordwand could potentially do as well, I just think that a swordwand would be stupid and a spellcaster would be more flavorful. I was fully clear on that several posts ago.

Guardian Scepter has always been one of the better ranged dps weapons in the game, and especially now with raids promoting sustained damage over burst and the recent symbol patch, its the best its ever been.

Not as good as it was pre-patch. They reduced the range and seem to have reduced the damage of the #2 ability against most mobs. Seemed nice on paper, in practice it’s a bit of a wet noodle. I know this, I’ve been using Scepter/Focus constantly in both PvE and PvP on one of my most common characters.

Its a featured weapon on many Metabattle builds, so the community seems to be in agreement with scepter effectiveness.

Most PvP metas have switched to Long Bow, or if they really have a purpose for an offhand, as Scepter it the only ranged MH weapon available. I enjoy Scepter, just don’t paint it out as being some awesomely balanced weapon.

Identifying specifically what the dagger lacks and filling that niche is the simple way for Sword to both be featured at 130-600 range and be stay unique to dagger. Tempest was pretty good, but other skills would be better at allowing a Sword ele to stay in melee range. Stances are the first that come to mind, but there are plenty of others if we look into other professions. The total package of an elite spec will determine the overall effectiveness of itself. It sounds redundant but its somewhat important to remember.

Right, but that’s kind of my point. You obviously could build in elite spec traits that would make an Ele more survivable in melee, the problem is, how would players abuse that? The bunker Ele is already a bit of an issue, and a pure melee Ele would need to be even better at it. Maybe it could be balanced to work well with a sword build, but then would it remain balanced if they went Staff or Scepter/Focus and just because this unkillable medium to long range monster? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it likely would take a lot of work to make a glassy class into something that could facetank and yet is also balanced.

Other classes can use a weapon that’s great at range then swap to another weapon that’s great at melee. Why shouldn’t the """""king of versatility""""" be allowed to have some actual versatility for once?

As I said above, that’s the trade-off. Eles get to have 20 total attacks to choose from in a single battle, but in exchange, those 20 attacks have more in common with each other than the maximum variation between the others classes’ 10.

Guardian Scepter has no appreciable drop off within its effective range.

Yes, but as someone who used to love Guardian Scepter, the trade-off to that is that it’s never been great at any range. It’s versatile, but melee is better in melee, ranged is better at range. Dagger already fills that role for Eles.

Sword could absolutely still play around 130-600 range.

But again, Dagger already fills that role just fine. Eles don’t need a new weapon that can “play around within 600 range.” They would need either a weapon that is brutal within melee distance OR a weapon that is competitive at 900+ ranges. It can be brutal in melee with a token medium range attack or two, but not enough that you could actually stick at those ranges.

Furthermore, if they did get a weapon that would be brutal in melee range, they would also need way more options to stay alive in melee range. However good a tank a Tempest may be, the new elite spec (which remember would not be able to use any of the Tempest kit), would need to be even tankier to be survivable.

How it ultimately plays out or if it’s even a sword is up to Anet.

Obviously, but it would be silly no matter how they do it.

At the end of the day Mesmer GS wants to keep you at range. Ele sword can set up at range and go for the kill in melee as an example. Spitballing.

Again, it can’t be great at both range and melee, because that’s too many things. It needs to either be great in melee while only a nuisance at medium range, OR great at long ranges and pretty weak in close. It can’t be allowed to do both things well for balance reasons, and it can’t be medium range focused because Dagger already covers that.

Dagger != Sword. I get you want to compare my thoughts on sword as making another dagger, but that’s not what I want. I’m not disparaging your desire for pistol.

We just want different things.

You don’t even particularly know whether you want them to hit things with the sword or just wave it in their general direction from a distance. You just insist on having a sword in at least one of the Elementalist’s hands. Forgive me for thinking that’s a bit of a trivial argument.

Scepter/Sword already exists with Mesmer, but Dagger/Sword has not been done.

And for good reason, swords should not be an offhand weapon unless the mainhand weapon is equally substantial. An OH Ele sword just gets super silly.

Dagger isn’t strictly melee. Even it’s “melee” stretches the concept. We’re not mesmers. Different attunements can work different roles into the weapon.

Dagger is medium range. We don’t need another medium range. If they make the sword a melee weapon, it should be a strictly melee weapon, with maybe a few attacks that cover 600-900 range, but not enough to have a meaningful fight at that distance. If they make Sword a ranged weapon, then making it medium range like Dagger would be redundant, it would need to be long range, mostly at least 900, maybe even 1200. But again, if they are going that long range, why not just use a pistol or rifle? There’d be no novelty to the “wandsword” since the GS Mesmer already does that, so it would just be a silly gimmick.

If the sword could manage both respectable melee damage AND respectable long range options, that would make it a bit too versatile as a weapon, there needs to be a balance of options. You can’t do everything great at once.

Either. Whatever works with the concept of an elemental sword magus.

It’s called “Dagger/Dagger.”