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How would you redesign the elementalist?


Lonami.2987

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Do you feel like the elementalist could be much more? That his mechanics don't do his theme justice? Maybe his elite specializations have a weak design? Or do you just want to post some crazy ideas? Well, then this thread is for you.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the elementalist?

Last update here: July 6, 2018

Few personal ideas to start the thread:


Elementalist - Full redesign

I love elementalist. Been my main character since release. It's wizardry done right for me, and attunements are an excellent idea. The elemental graphical effects are absolutely gorgeous too.

However, I feel like the current incarnation is killing the profession in the long term, and limiting its potential for new elite specializations. Attunements, the very thing that every elementalist player loves, are the main culprit.

The main problem with attunements is that they yield unique skills for each weapon. From a balance perspective, they're 4 times the job. That's not sustainable, and it drags us down. A possible solution?

Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design. Few examples:

  • Staff 5th skill: AoE channel, based on Meteor Shower (fire). The meteors would get different effects with the other attunements (ice meteors, charged meteors, or normal rocks that shatter on impact).
  • Dagger 2nd skill: Cone AoE, based on Drake's Breath (fire) and Cone of Cold (water). You breath electrified wind on air, and blinding sand in earth.
  • Dagger 3rd skill: Dash forward, based on Burning Speed (fire). Frost, lightning, or mud effects for the other attunements.
  • Focus 5th skill: Fire Shield, Frost Aura, Shocking Aura, and Magnetic Aura.

This would help elementalist development a lot, in my opinion. Since skills now share the same core, they can balance that accordingly, and create new skills with less effort. We would lose a bit of variety, yes, but that can be compensated with other things.

The first of them is weapon swap. One of my biggest gripes with elementalist, is being locked to either melee or ranged, and not being able to change without going out of combat. This would double the skill, leaving us with 45 skills at a time, which might sound even crazier than before. A good way to balance this a bit, is to add shared cooldowns across attunements. So, if you use the 4th skill on staff on water, the cooldown applies to the same skill in the other attunements. There could be bonus cooldown reductions for swapping attunements, but the idea is that you will now be encouraged to weapon swap instead of just attunement swap, and that spamming skills mindlessly will not be a thing anymore. Since cooldown is now shared across attunements, we can get a shorter cooldown on attunement swap too, so we can rotate back and forth faster.

Next is new weapons, for the core profession. I would go with scepter off-hand, greatsword, and shortbow. Their skills can be inspired by conjures, which would be gone, removed. We don't need them now that we have weapon swap, and we can replace them with new slot skills. Maybe something similar to party venoms, but applying elemental damage enchantments instead?

Finally, since attunement cooldowns are much shorter, and weapon skills have shared cooldowns across attunements, what if we let players switch at the middle of a cast, without cancelling the skill?

Channeled skills could swap their effect, and get some bonus cast time. For example, you're casting fire meteor rain, and then switch to water. Now frozen meteors start falling, and you get some bonus channel time. You can swap further, and double the effects of the original skill.

Same for chain and sequence skills. If you're on the second or third step and switch attunement, you wouldn't lose step progress, and instead jump to the other attunement's version.

This can lead to very awesome combos, and a new playstyle that wouldn't be possible for any other profession.

We would sacrifice the skill variety we have now, but gain weapon swap and the ability to combine our skills more efficiently. The core profession would be easier to balance, and elite specializations would be easier to develop as well.


Tempest - Turn Overload into Burst skills

There isn't a lot to do with tempest. I like overload, but I would like it even more if it would change depending on your active weapon, so it's not always the same thing. So, turn overloads into burst skills, and normalize them as well, like in the previous idea.

Tempests would have a new energy bar as well, which would increase by dealing damage in your current attunement, and reset on attunement swap. The overload skill would level up the higher your overload energy bar is, much like the warrior's adrenaline levels affect the power of the burst skills.

Attunement swap cooldowns wouldn't be affected, but the overload skill itself would keep the cooldown when you switch back.


Weaver - Reward weaving much more

Not much to do here either. Dual Attack skills wouldn't be normalized, and they would have individual cooldowns, so you're encouraged to swap as much as possible to do more damage.

Something that weaver really needs though, is a new mechanic skill, F5, letting you turn weaving on and off whenever you want for as long as you want, pretty much like Unravel, which would be removed.

As an additional bonus, Primordial Stance could be made part of the mechanic itself, much like other elite specialization mechanics, like Deadeye's Malice and Renegade's Kalla's Fervor. A weaver that rotates well nonstop would get a worthy attunement boost, improving different attributes depending on the active attunement.


Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours! =)

Profession Redesign series:Elementalist - Mesmer - Necromancer - Engineer - Ranger - Thief - Guardian - Revenant - Warrior

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@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are the best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some very serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some
very
serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

Pretty harsh words, don't ya think?

And he would definitely not be getting a job in Anet since he could actually do stuff like this in his free time whilst those currently at Anet can't even fix simple bugs such as Full Counter visual bug and Electric Discharge range bug which has been out for weeks/months. Welp, this doesn't really affect PvE so I guess they'd consider it as a minor issue since they've been pretty quiet with regards to other game modes.

Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are the best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game.

And if I can also be harsh, I'd say that this is only your opinion which doesn't really prove anything. It is among the most unique takes on the archetype, yes and that is a fact not an opinion. I've also had a lot of fun with it. But to go as far as to say it is the best is quite a long shot.

@Lonami.2987Elementalists are doing very well in PvE despite the lack in build diversity. There's no reason for Anet to exert money and resources in redesigning the class as the issues are more relevant in PvP and WvW which are arguably not the focus of Anet anymore since the fallout with ESL. If anything, at most your suggestions will be taken into account when they create a new spec for the next expansion.

I think normalizing skills is not really a good idea either. As stated by Feanor, it would make attunement mechanic meaningless to an extent. For example, normalizing Aura skills on offhand dagger is not really feasible since Auras are supposed to be specialized by Tempests.

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@Kyon.9735 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some
very
serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

Pretty harsh words, don't ya think?

And he would
definitely not
be getting a job in Anet since he could actually do stuff like this
in his free time
whilst those currently at Anet can't even fix simple bugs such as Full Counter visual bug and Electric Discharge range bug which has been out for weeks/months. Welp, this doesn't really affect PvE so I guess they'd consider it as a minor issue since they've been pretty quiet with regards to other game modes.

Not really, it's just a reality check. Game design isn't something everyone can do. It takes a lot of understanding how games in general work and is artistic to an extent. I know players like to get creative, but in the vast majority of the cases their designs end up being poor because they don't really think through their ideas. They tend to focus on what's good in their ideas and don't think of what could be bad. However, to make a decent game design, you simply have to do that, too.

By the way, the bugs you're using as examples would be something a programmer should handle, not a game designer.

@Kyon.9735 said:

Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game.

And if I can also be harsh, I'd say that this is only
your
opinion which doesn't really prove anything. It is among the most unique takes on the archetype, yes and that is a fact not an opinion. I've also had a lot of fun with it. But to go as far as to say it is the best is quite a long shot.

Subjectivity is implied. Obviously it's the best according to my own judgment. Even more so, as I only compare different implementations in games I've played. However, I'm fairly certain I can defend my statement in the context of my gaming experience as far as objective factors are involved.

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I agree the design of elementalist is best in the mmorpg genre (and possibly outside). The issue is Anets inability to balance in a timely manner. If Anet could tweak a skill by 0.1% tomorrow, and the next day and the next day and so on and so forth then overtime things would normalize. This >= monthly thing demonstrates everything that is wrong with slow deployment cycles.

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I would probably won't touch core mechanics ( and elite neither) but utilities are very weak ... especially signets and arcane ones. (conjure weapon are taboo)

@"Xibalbar.7459" said:I wants to play ele like it is, not a different pony with different issues. Its the same cycle for every class and now we are not in front of cheese, but still playable. We need some buffs and tweaks and everything will be fine. No drama needed.

What was the last time ele was more than just "playable" in a team aspect in Pvp? I can guess it was HoT released before tempest can nerfed again and again .... And before that ? D/D ele was not played at all for months since they removed celestial amulet (and several nerfs before that too)

The issue is that anet can't make power ele work in pvp (and power creep in pve cause so much AOE on the ground and static mobs) fresh air was (is kinda fine now) a thing but not enjoyable for ppl since it's an instant burst and ppl doesn't like instant things that they can't see coming (or lucky random evade)

I've enjoyeds playing Elementalist since GW1 but i'm frustrated of how it is in pvp in that second game of the franchise... utilities are almost all useless , weapons are useless in pvp or BIS in pve that u can't run anything else (or the other way around)

I felt ele was the most versatile class but i'm really dissappointed of the state for now ...

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@Nath Forge Tempete.1645 said:I would probably won't touch core mechanics ( and elite neither) but utilities are very weak ... especially signets and arcane ones. (conjure weapon are taboo)

@"Xibalbar.7459" said:I wants to play ele like it is, not a different pony with different issues. Its the same cycle for every class and now we are not in front of cheese, but still playable. We need some buffs and tweaks and everything will be fine. No drama needed.

What was the last time ele was more than just "playable" in a team aspect in Pvp? I can guess it was HoT released before tempest can nerfed again and again .... And before that ? D/D ele was not played at all for months since they removed celestial amulet (and several nerfs before that too)

The issue is that anet can't make power ele work in pvp (and power creep in pve cause so much AOE on the ground and static mobs) fresh air was (is kinda fine now) a thing but not enjoyable for ppl since it's an instant burst and ppl doesn't like instant things that they can't see coming (or lucky random evade)

I've enjoyeds playing Elementalist since GW1 but i'm frustrated of how it is in pvp in that second game of the franchise... utilities are almost all useless , weapons are useless in pvp or BIS in pve that u can't run anything else (or the other way around)

I felt ele was the most versatile class but i'm really dissappointed of the state for now ...

Beside the fact ele was meta for ages. The nerfs on tempest was mostly for pve in terms of dps, it changed not much for pvp at all. The supportspec is just outdated by firebrand. Anyways, the dna of this class are attunements, i love it! I dont see any reason to touch it, the devs just needs to tweak some things out. I did it into top250 like some other eles also, its not big deal, we need to adapt the situations. Needs it easier to play to be enjoyable? I say no, other specs just the root of current problems.

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Rather than homogenize (which I agree with others that it would be terrible), I'd would rather they take a look at the weapon skills with the attunements being that they look like they were not designed for a Condition/Power split. I feel condition damage is very limited on the elementalist because of Air and Water attunement as they are.

Ideally the elementalist as a profession looks like it is balanced using celestial gear so all skills in attunements are usable and balanced. When using other types of gear it essentially locks out certain attunements damage potential. I play PvE and haven't played elementalist at all in PvP so there is some bias in this but a lot of the time I feel half of my weapon skills are just wasted space on most weapons (with the exeption of the staff).

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I would remove the ability of Weaver to attune to a single element, and remove the trait which grants us a damage buff when attuning a single element.

The whole entire point of Weaver is to mix elements. Yet they went with this really weird design choice where Weaver gets stronger when attuning back to a single element. Why? It defeats the entire purpose.

I understand the ele community takes a lot of pride in its complicated skill rotations. But that's not good design. At the very least, remove the trait.

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@Kain Francois.4328 said:I would remove the ability of Weaver to attune to a single element, and remove the trait which grants us a damage buff when attuning a single element.

The whole entire point of Weaver is to mix elements. Yet they went with this really weird design choice where Weaver gets stronger when attuning back to a single element. Why? It defeats the entire purpose.

I understand the ele community takes a lot of pride in its complicated skill rotations. But that's not good design. At the very least, remove the trait.

Dual-attuning creates a gameplay choice. As a Weaver you have more skills at your disposal, but dual-attuning prevents you from using these. It mostly affects skill 2, but it is still a trade-off. Furthermore, if you prevent dual-attuning you lose the original skill 3 forever, which is pretty bad.

About the skill rotation - I disagree, it is very good design. It offers an intricate gameplay which is quite rare in the game. So it caters to players like me, who get bored quickly of the simplistic gameplay of most classes. It also is a very good match to the class thematically. The attunement mechanic as a whole works very well here, allowing you to use a lot of different skills, both for greater efficiency and greater versatility.

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@Feanor.2358 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some
very
serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

Aren't they meaningless already? I'm tired of playing the same weapons for five years. It would work if we got more weapons and more variety, but I'm assuming that would be hell from a development perspective, else we would have gotten them already. The other professions are growing a lot, and we're being left behind, with barely anything new to play with. Both the tempest and the weaver are really, really poor elite specializations, and one has to assume its budget went into the x4 weapon skills.

As for my idea, the skill itself wouldn't do the same, but have the same mechanic. The secondary effects, including boons, conditions, and crowd control, would all change. Imagine we have "skill A", which is about throwing a rock. Simple, isn't it? It shatters and does AoE damage on earth, pierces on air, stuns on water, and has bonus damage on fire. It's the same thing, with the same base stats, but with a second layer. Instead of attunements giving us new skills, my idea is for them to be layers upon the same foundation.

Also, the thread is for fun, so don't take it too seriously. This isn't about demanding ArenaNet to redo the game or something like that, just discussing about how professions could have been designed differently. We could get some elite specialization ideas from this, so it's an interesting conversation.

@Kyon.9735 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some
very
serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

Pretty harsh words, don't ya think?

And he would
definitely not
be getting a job in Anet since he could actually do stuff like this
in his free time
whilst those currently at Anet can't even fix simple bugs such as Full Counter visual bug and Electric Discharge range bug which has been out for weeks/months. Welp, this doesn't really affect PvE so I guess they'd consider it as a minor issue since they've been pretty quiet with regards to other game modes.

Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game.

And if I can also be harsh, I'd say that this is only
your
opinion which doesn't really prove anything. It is among the most unique takes on the archetype, yes and that is a fact not an opinion. I've also had a lot of fun with it. But to go as far as to say it is the best is quite a long shot.

@Lonami.2987Elementalists are doing very well in PvE despite the lack in build diversity. There's no reason for Anet to exert money and resources in redesigning the class as the issues are more relevant in PvP and WvW which are arguably not the focus of Anet anymore since the fallout with ESL. If anything, at most your suggestions will be taken into account when they create a new spec for the next expansion.

I think normalizing skills is not really a good idea either. As stated by Feanor, it would make attunement mechanic meaningless to an extent. For example, normalizing Aura skills on offhand dagger is not really feasible since Auras are supposed to be specialized by Tempests.

Put auras in main-hand dagger then, it's just an example of how normalization would work. Also, remember that we would have weapon swap, so you could have both off-hand dagger and warhorn at the same time anyway.

@Nath Forge Tempete.1645 said:I would probably won't touch core mechanics ( and elite neither) but utilities are very weak ... especially signets and arcane ones. (conjure weapon are taboo)

@Xibalbar.7459 said:I wants to play ele like it is, not a different pony with different issues. Its the same cycle for every class and now we are not in front of cheese, but still playable. We need some buffs and tweaks and everything will be fine. No drama needed.

What was the last time ele was more than just "playable" in a team aspect in Pvp? I can guess it was HoT released before tempest can nerfed again and again .... And before that ? D/D ele was not played at all for months since they removed celestial amulet (and several nerfs before that too)

The issue is that anet can't make power ele work in pvp (and power creep in pve cause so much AOE on the ground and static mobs) fresh air was (is kinda fine now) a thing but not enjoyable for ppl since it's an instant burst and ppl doesn't like instant things that they can't see coming (or lucky random evade)

I've enjoyeds playing Elementalist since GW1 but i'm frustrated of how it is in pvp in that second game of the franchise... utilities are almost all useless , weapons are useless in pvp or BIS in pve that u can't run anything else (or the other way around)

I felt ele was the most versatile class but i'm really dissappointed of the state for now ...

Yeah, slot skills are really terrible, specially elite skills. When you look at other professions, slot skills are really useful, and really change the way you play and move. Again, I would blame attunements. They're eating way too many resources, and the whole profession suffers.

@Xibalbar.7459 said:How about the third weapon skill is avaidable after using dualskill? Whould not hurt, i dont see any issues. The whole idea about the weaver is great, it just need some tweaks and more love to dualskills. I guess we will be fine with it after some patches. Its up to anet.

Maybe, instead of having the third skill change, give us a mechanic skill, F5, with the special attack there. Only problem is that it would be too similar to the tempest overloads. Still, I feel like the Dual Attacks should be much more meaningful and powerful.

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@Lonami.2987 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Weapon skill normalization.

This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design.

What this would do is make attunement mechanic meaningless. Why bother swapping when the skill does the same? Furthermore, it would also severely limit the versatility of the class, which is a direct result of the high number of skills we have at our disposal. Then you proceed to ask for weapon swap, which would combat that same effect, but will still leave you with about half the skills we have currently.

Let me say this very clearly:Elementalist class, and its elite specializations, are
the
best take on this archetype I've ever seen in a game. It will take some
very
serious game design skills to improve it or redesign it into something better. And if your skill is on that level, you'd be doing game design as your daily job and consequently you wouldn't be so keen to do the same again in your free time.

Aren't they meaningless already? I'm tired of playing the same weapons for five years. It would work if we got more weapons and more variety, but I'm assuming that would be hell from a development perspective, else we would have gotten them already. The other professions are growing a lot, and we're being left behind, with barely anything new to play with. Both the tempest and the weaver are really, really poor elite specializations, and one has to assume its budget went into the x4 weapon skills.

As for my idea, the skill itself wouldn't do the same, but have the same mechanic. The secondary effects, including boons, conditions, and crowd control, would all change. Imagine we have "skill A", which is about throwing a rock. Simple, isn't it? It shatters and does AoE damage on earth, pierces on air, stuns on water, and has bonus damage on fire. It's the same thing, with the same base stats, but with a second layer. Instead of attunements giving us new skills, my idea is for them to be layers upon the same foundation.

Also, the thread is for fun, so don't take it too seriously. This isn't about demanding ArenaNet to redo the game or something like that, just discussing about how professions could have been designed differently. We could get some elite specialization ideas from this, so it's an interesting conversation.

No, they aren't meaningless already. The attunements are themed and their mechanical implementation more or less follows that theme. You want damage? You'll always find it primarily in Fire and Air. You need healing? Then go Water. You want conditions? Fire and Earth.

The weapons are somewhat limited, but this has to be expected, as every weapon has 4 times the skills a weapon in another profession does. Also I was pretty happy with Warhorn. It was very different than our other offhands, could be used very well both offensively and defensively. Sword isn't really my cup of tea, but it does have its own feel, if only for the added mobility and auto-attack chains.

Now, about your idea. The problem with it is the difference becomes negligible. It only has some relevance in solo play, however this is a multiplayer game. In a party, the differences in boons/conditions/secondary effects in general becomes irrelevant. The target already has every relevant condition on it and you already have every relevant boon. What matters would depend on your role, but ele's role in a party will most likely always be damage, at least in PvE. So under your idea the gameplay would be as follows :

  1. Grab your staff.
  2. Meteor Shower.
  3. Switch attunement.
  4. Go to step 2.... with the occasional cast of Glyph of Storms.

Not exactly very exciting. Now also consider the dramatically reduced skill variety. You either get the short-cooldown AOE from Lava Font or the blast from Ice Spike. You only get one of Meteor Shower, Healing Rain, Static Field... You either get Windborne Speed, Burning Retreat, Frozen Ground... And that's just Staff...

These are all very different skills mechanically, and they are all very useful skills. Take that away, and ele will become bland, generic profession.

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@Kain Francois.4328 said:I would remove the ability of Weaver to attune to a single element, and remove the trait which grants us a damage buff when attuning a single element.

The whole entire point of Weaver is to mix elements. Yet they went with this really weird design choice where Weaver gets stronger when attuning back to a single element. Why? It defeats the entire purpose.

I understand the ele community takes a lot of pride in its complicated skill rotations. But that's not good design. At the very least, remove the trait.

OR. Leaving the attuning the way it is and just change the trait. I like the dual attuning and quite a few times i will go from Air/Air to Water/air to Air/Water and then Air/Air. Removing being able to go to a single attunement would make having dual attunements kinda forced and would make getting to certain skills even more difficult.

Just remove the trait and replace it with something else and leave attuning alone.

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Redesign the Elementalist, lets see, this one is a huge workload, due to the unique design of this class that covers at any given time always all four elements of nature (which is in fact the reason why GW2 has the best Elementalist of all times in the MMO scene, but at the same time also the hardest to balance, if you have to keep in mind allways all elements beign there and part of the combat system at any given time, but theres still alot of unused potential in this class to make it much better and more fun to play in regard of its versatality)My redesign steps in list form.

1) Erase the first two Elite Specs, Weaver and Tempest and replace them instead with the two new Specs Summoner (Warhorn) and Mystic (Sword) (or name it Dervish if you want as GW1 nostalgic term, but I find Mystic better, Dervish can be called our enemies that use this specc basically in PoF)

2) Change the old Overload Mechanic from Attunements into Transform, with that you will turn yoursself into Elemental Djinn Form based on your Attunement, while for Mystic it becomes Mysticism, which is based on the elemental attunement the usage of Elemental Weapon or Armor Spells in regard of if you were at the moment of usage of Mysticism in an offensive or a defensive Esoterics. If used while no Esoteric Scroll was used, then you will create an attunement based unique Mystic Item which is an environmental weapon of different types which aren't seen yet, as Core Elementalist covers only Shield, Shortbow, Axe, Hammer and Greastsword. These Mystic environmental Weapons would add 4 new elemental conjures to that list - Sword (Water), Mace (Earth), Warhorn (Wind) and Torch (Fire)

3) Core Elemementalist will have now following Weapons baseline: Daggers, Scepter, Staff, Focus, Shortbow, Greatsword, Shield, Hammer, the conjured Weapons of the Core Elementalist shopuld also be baselined Weapons of the Emenetalist, who knows how to conjure and wield such weapons, must be also able to wield them in general.Conjured Weapon Skilsl wil lget replaced with new Skills as the ones for the Elements we know already, will become part of the new baselined weapon skills, with fiery greatsword being nerfed, so that it functions not anymoe with the power level of an Elite Skill. Fiery Greatsword will get replaced as Elite Skil with a new one, that reflects also the elemental attunement at the moment of activation instead of being only focused on the fire element!! Same treatment will come from Conured Weapons in general, they won't be only focused on 1 Element anymore, they will all adapt now to different skilsl based on the attunement, when being conjured, but the weapon type stays for each element the same. This will count also later for the conjured weapons from the Mystic. Weapon types stay the same, even if the element got changed to an other attunement, but skills iwll now also change, even if you still use the conjured weapon, when you change the attunement meanwhile, so that you don't have to wait for it anymore, that you have to conjure first a new item, before you can use the different elemental skills (QoL improvement that is at the same time a play tactical buff that gives Eles in combat more strategetical freedom and reactive speed based on changing situations when playing with conjured weapons)

4) Remove as Utility Skill and Elite Skill both Glyphs that summon Elementals, and replace them with two complete new Glyph Skills that aren't based on summons, as that will become now complete onwn territory of the Summoner Elite Specialization which completely changes the gameplay style of the Elementalist to somethign similar of the PoF mission where you control undeads like a Minion Master, just only ful lwith a big load of elemental beasts of all sorts.5) Try to merge as good as possible the old Utility Skills from the erased E Specs into the new Specs and the Core Elementalist, especially the core Elementalist so that the new specs can partially profit from the merges as well, when builded for them.

my personal 5 step plan here for the Elementalist, skipped the skill examples due to the nature of the Elementalist's 4 elements, that would have been ending up otherwise in a way too long posting xD

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@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

@Kain Francois.4328 said:I would remove the ability of Weaver to attune to a single element, and remove the trait which grants us a damage buff when attuning a single element.

The
whole entire point
of Weaver is to mix elements. Yet they went with this really weird design choice where Weaver gets stronger when attuning back to a single element. Why? It defeats the entire purpose.

I understand the ele community takes a lot of pride in its complicated skill rotations. But that's not good design. At the very least, remove the trait.

OR. Leaving the attuning the way it is and just change the trait. I like the dual attuning and quite a few times i will go from Air/Air to Water/air to Air/Water and then Air/Air. Removing being able to go to a single attunement would make having dual attunements kinda forced and would make getting to certain skills even more difficult.

Just remove the trait and replace it with something else and leave attuning alone.

There's nothing wrong with the trait. Weaver has nothing usable in PvE beside it and it kinda needs the dps buff to compensate for the complete lack of any utility in its dps build.

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@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

@Kain Francois.4328 said:I would remove the ability of Weaver to attune to a single element, and remove the trait which grants us a damage buff when attuning a single element.

The
whole entire point
of Weaver is to mix elements. Yet they went with this really weird design choice where Weaver gets stronger when attuning back to a single element. Why? It defeats the entire purpose.

I understand the ele community takes a lot of pride in its complicated skill rotations. But that's not good design. At the very least, remove the trait.

OR. Leaving the attuning the way it is and just change the trait. I like the dual attuning and quite a few times i will go from Air/Air to Water/air to Air/Water and then Air/Air. Removing being able to go to a single attunement would make having dual attunements kinda forced and would make getting to certain skills even more difficult.

Just remove the trait and replace it with something else and leave attuning alone.

I'm good with this compromise.

Yeah, just replace the trait.

Weaver DPS needs a slight nerf anyway.

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I would not.

Elementalist is the supreme profession and it is fine as it is for the most part.

If I were to do something for them, i'd be a crazy PvE-only elite specialization just for fun inspired in the Magicka wizards, in which they can only equip main hand sword/dagger and offhand staff, and their 2-5 weapon skills get replaced by 4 more elements: Darkness, Light, Arcane and Chaos. And then instead switching attunements, they would charge up the elements, and then use the charged elements by triggering them with either skill 1, or skill F5. Skill 1 would be a mere melee autoattack with the sword or dagger equipped, but triggers a large melee attack based on the the elements charged. While F5 would trigger generic spells when the combination of elements charged does not correspond to an existing spell, and if the order of the elements represent a spell, trigger that spell. For example: Fire, fire, earth, fire, fire would trigger a meteor shower, and water, water, air, water, water would trigger a healing rain.

Maybe have this as a seasonal activity or during a mission, if having it anywhere in PvE would be too crazy, which would probably will.

But I see no need for drastic changes to the current elementalist, other than filling up the 'missing' healing and elite skills: 1 healing conjure (e.g.: Water Mace with an autoattack that throws healing maces like hand grenades), and elite arcane (e.g.: One that creates an area for a few seconds that, once per second, makes attacks by you are your allies critical against any enemy inside the area) and an elite signet (e.g.: One with a long recharge that has small attunement recharge reduction as passive, and when used recharges all attunements and all skills)

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@"MithranArkanere.8957" said:I would not.

Elementalist is the supreme profession and it is fine as it is for the most part.

If I were to do something for them, i'd be a crazy PvE-only elite specialization just for fun inspired in the Magicka wizards, in which they can only equip main hand sword/dagger and offhand staff, and their 2-5 weapon skills get replaced by 4 more elements: Darkness, Light, Arcane and Chaos.

More like Dark, Light, Lightning and Ice... Arcane and Chaos are no Elements of Nature.

Arcane is just non elemental, practically "Energy", or what we would call in GW terms as ETHER, while Chaos is just thought out non sense and would belong if at all taken serious in regard of GW lore to the MESMER, not the Elementalist, when we think back, that Anet used back in GW1 Chaos as an own mesmer related damage type, because back in this old game there were all magical classes used to have their very own different damage type out of balancing reasons.. but all of this exists not anymore within GW2.. we have Chaos Magic as part of the mesmer, but its not an Element.

Lightnign and Ice, same as Dark and Light are Elements of Nature. They are the Sub Elements of Nature, which oftenly get forgotten by game designers, or simply merged out of laziness in regard of Lightnign and ice together with Air and Water, but oftenly people forget, that water and Ice are not the same, same as much as like Wind resulting from moving Air and Lightnings are absolutely not one and the same thing...However, the inmportant question here is ..

Can you really imagine yourself an Elementalist Class that should be balanceable, which can attune itself between all true 8 Elements of Nature??? When ANet has kind of already huge problems to handle for this Class the 4 classic main elements of nature???

I know, it would be awesome to have this huge massive gameplay under a hat for the Elementalist, if we could seriously attune between 8 elemements, playing out basicalyl every single elemancy type that can exist and for that latin names are known for also too:

Main Elements:Pyromancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, Geomancy (any GW1 veteran should be knowing these terms already)

Sub Elements:Cryomancy (Ice), Fulmomancy (Lightning), Caligomancy (Dark) and lastly Lumomancy (Light)

But it would be just impossible to balance somethign like this. the class is already with its 4 main elements a true monster to handle compared to all other classes, which have much lesser skills to look after for their gameplay style.

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@Orpheal.8263 said:

@"MithranArkanere.8957" said:I would not.

Elementalist is the supreme profession and it is fine as it is for the most part.

If I were to do something for them, i'd be a crazy PvE-only elite specialization just for fun inspired in the Magicka wizards, in which they can only equip main hand sword/dagger and offhand staff, and their 2-5 weapon skills get replaced by 4 more elements: Darkness, Light, Arcane and Chaos.

More like Dark, Light, Lightning and Ice... Arcane and Chaos are no Elements of Nature.

Arcane is just non elemental, practically "Energy", or what we would call in GW terms as ETHER, while Chaos is just thought out non sense and would belong if at all taken serious in regard of GW lore to the MESMER, not the Elementalist, when we think back, that Anet used back in GW1 Chaos as an own mesmer related damage type, because back in this old game there were all magical classes used to have their very own different damage type out of balancing reasons.. but all of this exists not anymore within GW2.. we have Chaos Magic as part of the mesmer, but its not an Element.

Lightnign and Ice, same as Dark and Light are Elements of Nature. They are the Sub Elements of Nature, which oftenly get forgotten by game designers, or simply merged out of laziness in regard of Lightnign and ice together with Air and Water, but oftenly people forget, that water and Ice are not the same, same as much as like Wind resulting from moving Air and Lightnings are absolutely not one and the same thing...However, the inmportant question here is ..

Can you really imagine yourself an Elementalist Class that should be balanceable, which can attune itself between all true 8 Elements of Nature??? When ANet has kind of already huge problems to handle for this Class the 4 classic main elements of nature???

I know, it would be awesome to have this huge massive gameplay under a hat for the Elementalist, if we could seriously attune between 8 elemements, playing out basicalyl every single elemancy type that can exist and for that latin names are known for also too:

Main Elements:
Pyromancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, Geomancy (any GW1 veteran should be knowing these terms already)

Sub Elements:
Cryomancy (Ice), Fulmomancy (Lightning), Caligomancy (Dark) and lastly Lumomancy (Light)

But it would be just impossible to balance somethign like this. the class is already with its 4 main elements a true monster to handle compared to all other classes, which have much lesser skills to look after for their gameplay style.

That's when composite elements come in. As Spencer has taught us. Magics are like light. And you get different ones by combining others. Also, a "Master or Magicks" or "Wizzard" as I would call such elite specialization, would not be limited by the basic earthly nature elements. They would tap into more forms of magical energy. Reaching the space and the stars to tap into darkness and light, and reaching the mists to get the chaos and order that swirl in it, thus chaos and arcane.

  • Fire + Air = Plasma
  • Fire + Earth = Lava
  • Fire + Water = Steam
  • Water + Dark = Ice. Darkness is also associated with cold.
  • Air + Fire = Plasma, or Lightning.
  • Earth + Air = Sand

And so on.

As for balance, I already said it's just for fun. Not meant to be balanced. It'd be hell to balance such a thing. So why even try? Make it a minigame or something available only in some part of the game, and it stays fun and there's no need to balance it.

It could be some sort of "Elementalist arena" found in the Wizard's Tower or something like that.

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