[Suggestion] Two attunements and weapon swap

I was wondering what everyone thinks if Elementalists get weapon swap, but they need to choose 2 Elements for one weapon (or weapon set) and the other two for the other 2 elements.There have been radical suggestions about weapon swap for Elementalists, or using only 2 attunements, however with this proposed change, the changes to the game will be minimal AND using the new rules you can stay as you are now.

Example of how it could work:I slot a Staff and assign Fire and Air to it. While I'm attuned to Fire or Air, I use Staff skills. Then on the other slot I have Dagger/Focus on Earth and Water, when I change attunement to those, I use Dagger + Focus skills. This new system can work flawlessly with core Elementalist and Tempest. You can keep your Staff on all four attunements and stay exactly as you are now.

Now how to make it work on Weaver: make the weapon of choice the one you have on your main attunement is one choice?

Would something like this be too powerful?

why tho? or is this one of those change for the sake of change

@derd.6413 said:why tho? or is this one of those change for the sake of change

To provide Elementalists a ranged option. Every profession in the game can swap from melee to ranged with a click of a button, either ~ for a weapon swap, or using a utility skill for Engineers. Meanwhile, an Elementalist that chooses a melee/close range weapon is stack with that range without any way of changing that.

You can use ranged weapon in melee range. Lots of classes have single target ranged weapon so they have to use melee weapon in melee range for cleave. Ele doesnt have that problem. If you're playing melee build then swap weapon before entering combat if you know you'll need to keep range (or just get ooc mid fight).

2 attunements sound boring af, I'd rather play revenant or necro at that point.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@derd.6413 said:why tho? or is this one of those change for the sake of change

Engi doesn't have a swap either. One could argue our conjures fill the same role as their kits in this respect.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@derd.6413 said:why tho? or is this one of those change for the sake of change

Could one make the conjures into something like the kits too? Was there ever a discussion about this?

@steki.1478 said:You can use ranged weapon in melee range. Lots of classes have single target ranged weapon so they have to use melee weapon in melee range for cleave. Ele doesnt have that problem. If you're playing melee build then swap weapon before entering combat if you know you'll need to keep range (or just get ooc mid fight).

2 attunements sound boring af, I'd rather play revenant or necro at that point.

You can use a ranged weapon in melee but you can't use a melee weapon in range. It's not practical to swap weapons before entering combat and even less practical to try to ooc mid fight.

I never asked for 2 attunements, my suggestion is about having 4 of them, but different attunements applying to different weapon sets. To re-post my example that you somehow missed:

Example of how it could work: I slot a Staff and assign Fire and Air to it. While I'm attuned to Fire or Air, I use Staff skills. Then on the other slot I have Dagger/Focus on Earth and Water, when I change attunement to those, I use Dagger + Focus skills. This new system can work flawlessly with core Elementalist and Tempest. You can keep your Staff on all four attunements and stay exactly as you are now.

Would probably be too good to have a Staff ele with access to obsi flesh, dunno.

I'm all for this anyway because I'm garbage on ele and I take any boost I can get ;)

@Feanor.2358 said:

To provide Elementalists a ranged option. Every profession in the game can swap from melee to ranged with a click of a button, either ~ for a weapon swap, or using a utility skill for Engineers. Meanwhile, an Elementalist that chooses a melee/close range weapon is stack with that range without any way of changing that.

You missed my or using a utility skill for Engineers comment. Engineers don't have a weapon swap but they can easily change to a ranged weapon with one button press. Further, conjures are trash compared to kits, most of their skills are absolute garbage and you only spawn the conjures to use one skill then discard them. Meanwhile Grenade Kit is a great all around kit that you use for most of its skills (you can even camp it if you want). Mortar kit provides 1500 range option for Engineers for those fights you can't simply go into melee range. Meanwhile the highest range for Elementalists is the never-used Lava Axe and the near worthless for its auto attacks Frost Bow.

I don't think there is any comparison between kits and conjures, and making conjures work like kits wouldn't solve the problem of kit skills being mostly decent while conjures are used for 1-2 skills and then discarded.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

To provide Elementalists a ranged option. Every profession in the game can swap from melee to ranged with a click of a button, either ~ for a weapon swap, or using a utility skill for Engineers. Meanwhile, an Elementalist that chooses a melee/close range weapon is stack with that range without any way of changing that.

Yea, but consider we also have 20 weapon skills compared to their 5. Conjures have always been meant for fillers IMO.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@steki.1478 said:You can use ranged weapon in melee range. Lots of classes have single target ranged weapon so they have to use melee weapon in melee range for cleave. Ele doesnt have that problem. If you're playing melee build then swap weapon before entering combat if you know you'll need to keep range (or just get ooc mid fight).

2 attunements sound boring af, I'd rather play revenant or necro at that point.

Why is it not practical before entering combat if you know that you'll be useless in melee range? Assuming you enter combat with a melee weapon and you cant keep up in melee range, then you'd want to use ranged weapon whether you have weapon swap or not, for the duration of whole fight. At that point weapon swap becomes irrelevant and you should just plan your weapon usage before fight.

If you see that you're useless in melee range, you have absolutely no reason not to go ooc and swap weapons (assuming you can, so basically everywhere outside of raids and pvp, which have their own minmaxed builds for every situation) since you're already doing nothing.

That called a rev. Its more of an ele type class then ele is atm. Legends > atuments.

This has been suggested so many timez

@maddoctor.2738 said:You missed my or using a utility skill for Engineers comment. Engineers don't have a weapon swap but they can easily change to a ranged weapon with one button press. Further, conjures are trash compared to kits, most of their skills are absolute garbage and you only spawn the conjures to use one skill then discard them.Then wouldn't it be far, far, far easier to ask ANet to improve conjured weapons?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:You missed my

or using a utility skill for Engineers

comment. Engineers don't have a weapon swap but they can easily change to a ranged weapon with one button press. Further, conjures are trash compared to kits, most of their skills are absolute garbage and you only spawn the conjures to use one skill then discard them.Then wouldn't it be far, far, far easier to ask ANet to improve conjured weapons?

It would be easier to ask anet to change some of the melee only weapons "dagger" to have real ranged attks to fix this problem OR make melee ele a viable play type at the core level.

Conjured weapons are too much of a non core wepon to ever get a real rework. Look to dagger staff and scepter for real reworks for the ele class.

@Jski.6180 said:That called a rev. Its more of an ele type class then ele is atm. Legends > atuments.

Revs have 4 Legends? Read my post again I'm not talking about having 2 attunements, but 2 attunements per weapon set, for 4 attunements total. If you only use 1 weapon set you will have the exact same gameplay you have now.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Then wouldn't it be far, far, far easier to ask ANet to improve conjured weapons?

As Feanor said I don't think conjures are meant to be strong enough to replace your actual skills, they are mostly semi-useful filler. If they want to make them more powerful to allow Elementalists to change to range at will that would be great, but I really doubt that's on the table.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Then wouldn't it be far, far, far easier to ask ANet to improve conjured weapons?

Changing conjure weapons is off the table, but completely overhauling how elementalist works is on the table?

Let me rephrase things: instead of telling ANet that elementalist has to have this mechanic or that, wouldn't it be more helpful to start by identifying the actual issue? If one don't trust them to come up with an appropriate solution, then why would one trust them to implement someone else's idea?

@maddoctor.2738 said:I was wondering what everyone thinks if Elementalists get weapon swap, but they need to choose 2 Elements for one weapon (or weapon set) and the other two for the other 2 elements.There have been radical suggestions about weapon swap for Elementalists, or using only 2 attunements, however with this proposed change, the changes to the game will be minimal AND using the new rules you can stay as you are now.

Example of how it could work:I slot a Staff and assign Fire and Air to it. While I'm attuned to Fire or Air, I use Staff skills. Then on the other slot I have Dagger/Focus on Earth and Water, when I change attunement to those, I use Dagger + Focus skills. This new system can work flawlessly with core Elementalist and Tempest. You can keep your Staff on all four attunements and stay exactly as you are now.

Now how to make it work on Weaver: make the weapon of choice the one you have on your main attunement is one choice?

Would something like this be too powerful?

No

If this was a thing ele would be able to use 4 sigil like evey other class. This idea does have some merit behind it.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Changing conjure weapons is off the table, but completely overhauling how elementalist works is on the table?

Let me rephrase things: instead of telling ANet that elementalist has to have this mechanic or that, wouldn't it be more helpful to start by identifying the actual issue? If one don't trust them to come up with an appropriate solution, then why would one trust them to implement someone else's idea?

The actual issue is that Elementalists lack a way of exchanging between ranged and melee attacks like every other profession can. Why is only the Elementalist limited like this? The "solution" proposed many times is to swap your weapon before going into combat or go out of combat to swap your weapon. This isn't practical in most cases, even story bosses have multiple phases that range from "melee is viable" to "melee (as an Elementalist) is prohibited". You can't swap your weapons during a fight, so your only option is to start the fight with the highest range option (to account for all phases) which means more often than not Staff. Gets a bit stale after a while. When you go to do any of the meta events it's the same.

Further, my suggestion isn't a complete overhaul because with the system I proposed you can stay exactly as you are today. Use only one weapon set and you will get all 4 attunements of that weapon to use exactly as you do today. This means that current gameplay won't be affected, those that like the way things are won't be affected, those that are used to play in a specific way won't be affected. Which I think is the main difference compared to other "overhauls" we've read on these forums before.

I propose NO CHANGE for things as they are now, unless you CHOOSE to use the extra option. I don't want to take away anything from anyone, only add new options.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Why is only the Elementalist limited like this?

Because its a different profession. The differences between professions makes them interesting. Would you say all professions should get a pet just because the ranger has one? The elementalist gains acces to more skills at the expense of weapon swap. Handling that is part of the challenge of playing elementalist, in the same way that not having healing skills on longbow is a challenge for the ranger. If you really need range swap, you can use utilities and conjure weapons. They're less effective at it than actual weapon swaps, but that's all part of the design (and the fun). Also, keep in mind that while most other professions can equip weapons for both melee and long range, they're rarely 100% effective at both ranges (Longbow warrior for example, becomes stronger at short range).

And on an unrelated note: I've found that range is mostly irrelevant in this game due to the 'hug the boss' strategy that most groups play. On those rare occassions where you can't melee, the 400-600 range that dagger has is plenty. In fact, the only place I can think of where having range actuall matters is WvW. Even in sPvP there's rarely a situation where max range wins over gap closers.

@"ThiBash.5634" said:Because its a different profession. The differences between professions makes them interesting. Would you say all professions should get a pet just because the ranger has one? The elementalist gains acces to more skills at the expense of weapon swap. Handling that is part of the challenge of playing elementalist, in the same way that not having healing skills on longbow is a challenge for the ranger. If you really need range swap, you can use utilities and conjure weapons. They're less effective at it than actual weapon swaps, but that's all part of the design (and the fun). Also, keep in mind that while most other professions can equip weapons for both melee and long range, they're rarely 100% effective at both ranges (Longbow warrior for example, becomes stronger at short range).

The difference is 8 professions can swap with one button, 1 of them can't swap at all, meanwhile, pets are used by a single profession. How is every other profession being the same with one exception "more interesting"? I'm not asking to give Elementalists more skills, they will still have 20 skills as they do now, 10 of those will be from the first weapon set, the other 10 from the second weapon set. If you put only one weapon set you will be the same as you are now, no changes. I think I went over why conjure weapons do not work, their skills are mostly horrible, with the exception of a few filler skills that only serve to make the rotation more complicated so meta nerds "feel" good when performing it. Plus, there are only 2 conjure weapons with 900 range and zero conjure weapons with 1200 range. Further, the two conjure weapons with 900 range have the worst auto attacks among conjure weapons (Lava Axe and Frost Bow)

For your group comment, yes this is true in organized play you will hug each other a lot, although there are cases where this is impractical. You can't go to green circles on Vale Guardian as non-staff Elementalist for example. Also you can't really "hug" Joko in Episode 4 or the Legendary Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink. There are many examples of "hugging" not working, or working for specific phases, but not on others, where every other profession can swap between them at will, with the sole exception of Elementalist.

@"maddoctor.2738" said:The difference is 8 professions can swap with one button, 1 of them can't swap at all, meanwhile, pets are used by a single profession. How is every other profession being the same with one exception "more interesting"?Because otherwise, they could just have 8 professions.

There are many examples of "hugging" not working, or working for specific phases, but not on others, where every other profession can swap between them at will, with the sole exception of Elementalist.There's a difference between hugging the boss and having to fight at 1200 range. Ele has more than enough tools to handle those situations as they are right now. Sword is the only true melee weapon they have right now, even dagger's range is usually enough for the hugging situation.

The reason why I'm against weapon swapping isn't the weapon swapping itself (in fact, I think your suggestion is a cool idea for the next elite spec) but because I feel you're trying to solve an issue that, in my opinion, doesn't apply to Guild Wars 2, and especially not to the elementalist. Players don't use their second weapon slot for range. They use it to get access to more skills so they can deal more dps, move faster, and/or have more cc.

Let's take the warrior for example. Say they use longbow as their second weapon set. The longbow's auto attack has long range, true. But if the warrior fought with it at 1200 range, their dps would be terrible. Why? Because of Fan of Fire. If used at 0 range, Fan of Fire hits 3 times. At max range, it only hits once. The warrior can attack at long range, but is less effective. The best thing to do would be to get into close range again, using the longbow's range as a temporary measure.

This is an oversimplified example, but it illustrates my point: you assume that because other professions can freely swap to weapons with a 1200 range auto attack, they are somehow 100% effective. But they aren't. They can make some filler attacks of course, but so can the elementalist. The difference is that the warrior would use auto attacks to do so, whereas the elementalist would need to resort to skills like Gale, Glyph of Storms or Conjures.

However, Guild Wars 2 in general revolves more around using your weapons to augment your overall playing style, rather than solve the 'range problem'. Because most of the time, weapon range is pretty much irrelevant. And in the few cases where it is relevant, just don't bring sword and you're fine.

@ThiBash.5634 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:The difference is 8 professions can swap with one button, 1 of them can't swap at all, meanwhile, pets are used by a single profession. How is every other profession being the same with one exception "more interesting"?Because otherwise, they could just have 8 professions.

There are many examples of "hugging" not working, or working for specific phases, but not on others, where every other profession can swap between them at will, with the sole exception of Elementalist.There's a difference between hugging the boss and having to fight at 1200 range. Ele has more than enough tools to handle those situations as they are right now. Sword is the only true melee weapon they have right now, even dagger's range is usually enough for the hugging situation.

I do personally. Ecspecially on builds where the second weapon doesnt affect DPS to much. My Condi SB for example camps SB for meta content, but if im doing other things i have S/D or D/D slotted so that if need be i can get in close, ill deal a little less DPS but its not that important. Ive OFTEN wanted a weapon swap on ele for exactly the reason he has asked for. I want to be able to swap from Staff, to D/D or S/D/F in the middle of combat, and there are some places where getting OOC to do the swap isnt easy to do and makes issues, and i would have no issues being limited to two attunements per weapon if it gave me that option.

@ThiBash.5634 said:The reason why I'm against weapon swapping isn't the weapon swapping itself (in fact, I think your suggestion is a cool idea for the next elite spec) but because I feel you're trying to solve an issue that, in my opinion, doesn't apply to Guild Wars 2, and especially not to the elementalist. Players don't use their second weapon slot for range. They use it to get access to more skills so they can deal more dps, move faster, and/or have more cc.

This isn't true though. Players do slot their second weapon for range, it all depends on the kind of content they are going to do. When you fight a meta boss, having both at the same time saves much time (don't need to go OOC). Maybe you aren't experiencing this because you aren't playing an Elementalist as your main in solo story instances (fighting Caedecus for example), meta events (Legendary Wyvern Matriarch comes to mind) where actually having an on-swap ranged weapon does help. That Warrior could easily swap to his Longbow to DPS the Wyvern Matriarch when it uses the flame wall attacks, that prevent you from going in melee range. Even this simplified dps is better than zero dps. Then when the field is over, or when it tries to fly away, you jump in melee and burst/cc the boss. Fighting Joko in the latest instance is like this, you can fight him in melee just fine at many times, but there are times when he teleports and uses area of effect fields, at that point your non-ranged attacks can't reach him. With any other profession you can swap to a ranged weapon and at least do -some- damage. As an Elementalist you can't do anything.

I get it you are thinking of Raids and Fractals where your babysitter will raise you if you get downed in melee, or heal you, or protect you with aegis or whatever. In those cases swapping to ranged attacks isn't really needed, after all, even those with ranged weapons get in melee while in a Raid or Fractal so it's a moot point.

This is an oversimplified example, but it illustrates my point: you assume that because other professions can freely swap to weapons with a 1200 range auto attack, they are somehow 100% effective. But they aren't. They can make some filler attacks of course, but so can the elementalist.

I don't think I have to compare the Elementalist Lava Axe and Frost Bow (the only 900 range options for a melee Elementalist) with every other 900+ range weapon in the game, or Engineer grenade/mortar kits to see just how much more effective those are.