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How would you redesign the elementalist?


Lonami.2987

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I'd revert literally every single cantrip nerf, the recent staff nerf, and ALL vanilla GW2 elementalist nerfs while also globally buffing every mainhand dagger attack by 20% in PvE then call it a day.

This is actually all ele needs to be enjoyable in 100% of the games content.

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I would balance a bit more sustain and support in utility skills, instead of some in water skills with water spec, then in earth skills and air skills with arcane, etc; and make spec utility skills focused; and not "when in fire attunement you ..." or one lesser cantrip in fire, an other in earth, the buff trait in water ....Not that much, to not break class design, attunements swap, combos etc, but at least something decent.Half utility skills are useless, or just bad compared to every others classes.

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@Shiyo.3578 said:I'd revert literally every single cantrip nerf, the recent staff nerf, and ALL vanilla GW2 elementalist nerfs while also globally buffing every mainhand dagger attack by 20% in PvE then call it a day.

This is actually all ele needs to be enjoyable in 100% of the games content.

This ^ Staff and cantrips should be a better mage like experience. At the moment, there's too much compensating/nerfs to be relevant in game modes.

I may be the only ele who doesn't want a weapon swap. Conjures need to be upgraded--the mechanics, the damage, the purpose of each weapon. A staff ele with rock shield, or dagger ele with frost bow is way more interesting than weapon swap

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@Stallic.2397 said:

@"Shiyo.3578" said:I'd revert literally every single cantrip nerf, the recent staff nerf, and ALL vanilla GW2 elementalist nerfs while also globally buffing every mainhand dagger attack by 20% in PvE then call it a day.

This is actually all ele needs to be enjoyable in 100% of the games content.

This ^ Staff and cantrips should be a better mage like experience. At the moment, there's too much compensating/nerfs to be relevant in game modes.

I may be the only ele who doesn't want a weapon swap. Conjures need to be upgraded--the mechanics, the damage, the purpose of each weapon. A staff ele with rock shield, or dagger ele with frost bow is way more interesting than weapon swap

I used to use the axe as d/d back in vanilla for a "ranged option" on bosses I couldn't melee or had phases where you'd need to get out of range for a bit, or simply to heal up while still doing some DPS standing a bit away open world. I agree 100% with conjures being changed to be much stronger off weapons.

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I love the concept of elementalist and the attunement swapping mechanic is really cool, but there are a few issues I have with the design.

Base health is too low.Base healing/damage is too low, but damage/healing modifiers/coefficients are too high such that you are ineffectual using the base ability, but extremely powerful if you focus.Melee range is too restrictive with no weapon swap. Needs better access to mid-range attacks.Weapon skill cast times are too long. If anyone should have more instant casts, it's ele!Too many traits produce effects only in their respective attunements, while the class is not intended to be played by camping one attunement.

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Attunements need to be drastically different even on the same weapon, with better single attunement specialization (or 3 if you run triple elemental traitlines).

Two attunements should be melee focused, two should be ranged, while retaining the weapon's overall theme.

Example:Earth Staff, originally a ranged disruption kit (immob projectile, lame wall). Now a heavy melee disruption kitStaff 1 is now a Melee Auto Chain similar to the Warrior Sword auto chain, bleeding, crippling, then both on the final.Staff 2 is still eruption, but it pulls enemies to the center. If needed, rename to Epicenter. Lower bleeding dealt. Still ranged.Staff 3 is now Magnetic Shockwave, combining Magnetic Aura and Shockwave. Projectile speed greatly increased. Enemies that are already immobilized take extra damage and are pulled towards the caster as well.Staff 4 is now Sand Shield. The ele summons armor made of sand to protect them, gaining stability and blocking attacks for 2 seconds. If you block an attack, flips to Sandstorm, canceling the remaining block duration and summoning a sandstorm that follows the ele's position and bleeds and blinds foes within a radius similar to wells for a short time.Staff 5 is now Unsteady Ground, but reworked to be a line attack similar to CoR, but you cannot move during the channel windup. Does heavy bleeding and cripples foes. Enemies that are in the area too long are immobolized. Enemies that are immobolized are knocked down. Damage is increased against enemies that are Hard CC'd. Long cooldown (think Guardian Hammer 5). Can immobolize multiple times similar to the Ranger Roots if enemies remain crippled too long, or not at all if they are immune.

Ever wanted to call a meteor or glyph of storms on your own position and prevent them from running away using the power of earth? This earth staff has you covered. Or maybe you just want to punch people with rocks, I'm not one to judge. Feel free to swap after starting any of these skills so you can quickly use another attunement as needed since some of the cast times might be longer, or just protect yourself with staff 4 and go for raw meteor.

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@Kiroshima.8497 said:Attunements need to be drastically different even on the same weapon, with better single attunement specialization (or 3 if you run triple elemental traitlines).

Two attunements should be melee focused, two should be ranged, while retaining the weapon's overall theme.

Example:Earth Staff, originally a ranged disruption kit (immob projectile, lame wall). Now a heavy melee disruption kitStaff 1 is now a Melee Auto Chain similar to the Warrior Sword auto chain, bleeding, crippling, then both on the final.Staff 2 is still eruption, but it pulls enemies to the center. If needed, rename to Epicenter. Lower bleeding dealt. Still ranged.Staff 3 is now Magnetic Shockwave, combining Magnetic Aura and Shockwave. Projectile speed greatly increased. Enemies that are already immobilized take extra damage and are pulled towards the caster as well.Staff 4 is now Sand Shield. The ele summons armor made of sand to protect them, gaining stability and blocking attacks for 2 seconds. If you block an attack, flips to Sandstorm, canceling the remaining block duration and summoning a sandstorm that follows the ele's position and bleeds and blinds foes within a radius similar to wells for a short time.Staff 5 is now Unsteady Ground, but reworked to be a line attack similar to CoR, but you cannot move during the channel windup. Does heavy bleeding and cripples foes. Enemies that are in the area too long are immobolized. Enemies that are immobolized are knocked down. Damage is increased against enemies that are Hard CC'd. Long cooldown (think Guardian Hammer 5). Can immobolize multiple times similar to the Ranger Roots if enemies remain crippled too long, or not at all if they are immune.

Ever wanted to call a meteor or glyph of storms on your own position and prevent them from running away using the power of earth? This earth staff has you covered. Or maybe you just want to punch people with rocks, I'm not one to judge. Feel free to swap after starting any of these skills so you can quickly use another attunement as needed since some of the cast times might be longer, or just protect yourself with staff 4 and go for raw meteor.

Some real good ideas here, especially #2. We definitely need a pull skill, and one that isn't on a conjure weapon. It could work like quick sand, or something related to the earth on the ground crumbling, pulling the enemies together towards the core. Even #1 is a cool concept, because the thing we have now is literally (insert your choice of wording here). It's slow and will never hit a target. Tell me if I'm wrong lol.

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@Kiroshima.8497 said:Attunements need to be drastically different even on the same weapon, with better single attunement specialization (or 3 if you run triple elemental traitlines).

Two attunements should be melee focused, two should be ranged, while retaining the weapon's overall theme.

Example:Earth Staff, originally a ranged disruption kit (immob projectile, lame wall). Now a heavy melee disruption kitStaff 1 is now a Melee Auto Chain similar to the Warrior Sword auto chain, bleeding, crippling, then both on the final.Staff 2 is still eruption, but it pulls enemies to the center. If needed, rename to Epicenter. Lower bleeding dealt. Still ranged.Staff 3 is now Magnetic Shockwave, combining Magnetic Aura and Shockwave. Projectile speed greatly increased. Enemies that are already immobilized take extra damage and are pulled towards the caster as well.Staff 4 is now Sand Shield. The ele summons armor made of sand to protect them, gaining stability and blocking attacks for 2 seconds. If you block an attack, flips to Sandstorm, canceling the remaining block duration and summoning a sandstorm that follows the ele's position and bleeds and blinds foes within a radius similar to wells for a short time.Staff 5 is now Unsteady Ground, but reworked to be a line attack similar to CoR, but you cannot move during the channel windup. Does heavy bleeding and cripples foes. Enemies that are in the area too long are immobolized. Enemies that are immobolized are knocked down. Damage is increased against enemies that are Hard CC'd. Long cooldown (think Guardian Hammer 5). Can immobolize multiple times similar to the Ranger Roots if enemies remain crippled too long, or not at all if they are immune.

Ever wanted to call a meteor or glyph of storms on your own position and prevent them from running away using the power of earth? This earth staff has you covered. Or maybe you just want to punch people with rocks, I'm not one to judge. Feel free to swap after starting any of these skills so you can quickly use another attunement as needed since some of the cast times might be longer, or just protect yourself with staff 4 and go for raw meteor.

I like the idea of mixing melee and range, and I love the hard CC as well, though some stuff might need to have less wording in them, but overall, I would prefer this melee-range to cover all attunements if possible, this would allow having some built-in defense, built-in kiting, built-in CC, etc. all without relying on an external source such as trait and/or utilities.

I would love to see more skills of this type implemented, some things need to change like Staff Air#3, Fire#3, and melee weapons that can be out-kited pretty easily.

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@Kiroshima.8497 said:Attunements need to be drastically different even on the same weapon, with better single attunement specialization (or 3 if you run triple elemental traitlines).

Two attunements should be melee focused, two should be ranged, while retaining the weapon's overall theme.

Example:Earth Staff, originally a ranged disruption kit (immob projectile, lame wall). Now a heavy melee disruption kitStaff 1 is now a Melee Auto Chain similar to the Warrior Sword auto chain, bleeding, crippling, then both on the final.Staff 2 is still eruption, but it pulls enemies to the center. If needed, rename to Epicenter. Lower bleeding dealt. Still ranged.Staff 3 is now Magnetic Shockwave, combining Magnetic Aura and Shockwave. Projectile speed greatly increased. Enemies that are already immobilized take extra damage and are pulled towards the caster as well.Staff 4 is now Sand Shield. The ele summons armor made of sand to protect them, gaining stability and blocking attacks for 2 seconds. If you block an attack, flips to Sandstorm, canceling the remaining block duration and summoning a sandstorm that follows the ele's position and bleeds and blinds foes within a radius similar to wells for a short time.Staff 5 is now Unsteady Ground, but reworked to be a line attack similar to CoR, but you cannot move during the channel windup. Does heavy bleeding and cripples foes. Enemies that are in the area too long are immobolized. Enemies that are immobolized are knocked down. Damage is increased against enemies that are Hard CC'd. Long cooldown (think Guardian Hammer 5). Can immobolize multiple times similar to the Ranger Roots if enemies remain crippled too long, or not at all if they are immune.

Ever wanted to call a meteor or glyph of storms on your own position and prevent them from running away using the power of earth? This earth staff has you covered. Or maybe you just want to punch people with rocks, I'm not one to judge. Feel free to swap after starting any of these skills so you can quickly use another attunement as needed since some of the cast times might be longer, or just protect yourself with staff 4 and go for raw meteor.

I love the ideal how having earth being the melee atument but how would you say give dagger a real ranged atument?

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Personally I'd like to see a water dps attunement instead of basically all of them being about soft cc (chill) or healing. No, water scepter is not for damage, no matter how many times you buff shatterstone.

Vapor Blade reworked to another chain, but it works like the mesmer scepter chain but doesnt use a projectile.Fires a high pressure water laser to slice even steel, causing power damage and vulnerability. Each one inflicts more vulnerability than the last. Works like Chop, Double Chop, Triple Chop on warrior axe so the earlier hits do less damage.

2nd skill is changed, now Bubble Trouble. Target an area and randomly summon bubbles around it. Bubbles act like engineer mines when walked on. Flips to Pop when finished. Pop detonates all bubbles in the targeted area (you don't have to pop all of them if you don't want to) using an ice dagger. Manually popped bubbles have a larger blast radius and do slightly more damage. Enemies can be hit by multiple bubbles.

3rd skill replaced with Aqua Mirror, which negates the next ONE attack (unblockable doesnt work). If it was a ranged attack or utility, this skill becomes that skill for a short time. If it blocks a melee attack or utility, you counter with the old Frozen Burst, but add a Launch to it. Cooldown increased from current.

4th skill is now Whirlpool Trap, which puts a whirlpool that will function like a weaker version of the DH Elite trap. Use it to defend your position.

5th skill is now Hailstrom, causing power damage and chill rocks to randomly fall like Ice Bow 5. This aoe works like the guardian scepter 2 so it has a pulsing aoe and a few rng rocks.

Lots of ranged slashing/piercing themed water attacks using a dagger basically, with 1 unique defensive option and a point defense mark/trap.

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tbh i only read the title.

My problems with ele:a) Most of the ele mechanics scale heavily with stats. Or if you look at it the other way around, they rely on stats to be useful.For example ele having access to lots of healing skills that do nothing in a offensive gear setup, as opposed to say aegis/evades/etc. And at the same time I feel like ele is balanced around the idea of theoretically having access to those skills - and I don't even disagree with that notion. I disagree with that design choice.On the other hand they can't up any of the base stats, without making single purpose builds completely broken in what they do.b) The trait lines are too single purpose.An issue connected to the first one. You can build a really tanky bunker with strong healing and protection uptime etc. Or you can build a super glassy DPS character that has to be fed boons and be babysat by a full group. But it is almost impossible to build a well-rounded ele character rn.My problem with it is the fact that if you stack offensive trait lines and gear, that build kinda dictates the cap of how good an ele can perform offensively - it is the obvious build that Anet has to balance around. If you build a tanky healer with traits+gear, then that build kinda dictates how strong a defensive ele build can be allowed to be without breaking the game.

If you combine those two issues you end up in a situation where you can't build a well-rounded character that is not starved for both stat points and trait lines.

And from a designer perspective it's the same predicament. A broken and meta defining ele is just a number's change away. Plus ele has historical baggage in GW2, zerker staff being pve meta defining for years, cele ele dagger/dagger pvp, ... I don't trust anet to untangle this mess tbh.

That's what made me quit ele; as soon as they don't get carried by super broken damage and mechanics (wall FGS, line-casting Meteor Shower,...), there is little incentive to play a hard-to-play, squishy, group-reliant character that does only _good _DPS. But maybe I'm just shit at ele :3

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@Kiroshima.8497 said:Personally I'd like to see a water dps attunement instead of basically all of them being about soft cc (chill) or healing. No, water scepter is not for damage, no matter how many times you buff shatterstone.

Vapor Blade reworked to another chain, but it works like the mesmer scepter chain but doesnt use a projectile.Fires a high pressure water laser to slice even steel, causing power damage and vulnerability. Each one inflicts more vulnerability than the last. Works like Chop, Double Chop, Triple Chop on warrior axe so the earlier hits do less damage.

2nd skill is changed, now Bubble Trouble. Target an area and randomly summon bubbles around it. Bubbles act like engineer mines when walked on. Flips to Pop when finished. Pop detonates all bubbles in the targeted area (you don't have to pop all of them if you don't want to) using an ice dagger. Manually popped bubbles have a larger blast radius and do slightly more damage. Enemies can be hit by multiple bubbles.

3rd skill replaced with Aqua Mirror, which negates the next ONE attack (unblockable doesnt work). If it was a ranged attack or utility, this skill becomes that skill for a short time. If it blocks a melee attack or utility, you counter with the old Frozen Burst, but add a Launch to it. Cooldown increased from current.

4th skill is now Whirlpool Trap, which puts a whirlpool that will function like a weaker version of the DH Elite trap. Use it to defend your position.

5th skill is now Hailstrom, causing power damage and chill rocks to randomly fall like Ice Bow 5. This aoe works like the guardian scepter 2 so it has a pulsing aoe and a few rng rocks.

Lots of ranged slashing/piercing themed water attacks using a dagger basically, with 1 unique defensive option and a point defense mark/trap.

I love to see vapor blade rework i have a feeling they wanted the ground only attks to hit there max ranged all the time or a ranged attk that dose not fall sadly due to all of the inviable walls it would often get eaten up. I am not sure a chain attk is the best way to go. What i want would be a 2 attk where you thow ice dagger that stick to what ever they hit and blow up after a 1/2 delay in an aoe vulnerability.

The 2ed ability realy needs to be a healing effect for dagger that is on a much lower cd then cone of cold unless you want to make scpter the healing wepon. Its a cool ideal just hard to control it maybe a bit too random.

3ed losing a blast on demand would be too much its ok to add a block to it but to make it need an attk is asking for too much.

4th i think frost aura is a must to keep maybe making the frost aura transmutation work like a Whirlpool would be nice.

5th a nice ground target dmg skill would be nice maybe add a means of cleaning on the other 4 skills (2-5) just to make sure that dagger water gives you a clear on some level.

It would be cool to see water atument for scepter becoming the melee / support 1h wepon that ele needs. Dagger is close to this but its far from enofe when you look at what staff can do.

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For me, I think Elementalist suffers more than the other professions from having skills tied to weapons. This is partly because there are more skills tied to each weapon: for Ele weapons come with 20, 12, or 8 skills, as opposed to 5, 3, or 2 for other professions. It's also because the weapon skills - especially those for staff, sceptre, and focus - seem to have been assigned to weapons arbitrarily. The result is this frustrating situation, where you have access to 20 skills, but you don't actually want most of them because many of them require different stat combinations in order to be useful.

Also, with most other professions, there's at least some thematic link between the weapon skills and the weapons they're associated with - but that doesn't seem to be the case for Ele. It doesn't make sense that I can't cast, say, Phoenix or Shatterstone while I'm wielding a staff, or cast Lava Font or Meteor Shower while wielding a sceptre and focus - especially since those things were possible in GW1.

The obvious "easy" solution would be to give those weapons more identity, e.g. make staff skills focus on power damage and healing, sceptre skills focus on condition damage, and focus skills focus on defense (or something). But since this is a thread of suggesting massive changes, I propose allowing Eles to select their weapon skills freely for staff, sceptre, and focus. That way Ele players would be able to pick combinations of skills that actually make sense together, rather than using these arbitrary combinations of skills ANet have chosen for us that don't really work together. (Of course, I haven't thought this through very far, so I'm fully expecting this idea to get trashed if anyone replies...)

@Babooshka.7826 said:2) Instead of weapon swapping I would change how Conjuring works.When you conjure a weapon, it goes in the 2nd weapon slot (for the ele only)For example: Conjure Ice bow: Get an ice bow as 2nd weapon set for 30(ish) sec. So an s/d weaver would be able to weapon swap every 9 sec to a ranged weapon.This would make conjure weapon still unique compared with kits or spirit weapons. And would make conjure weapons way more usefull.

I think this is my favourite suggestion for Conjures - although to be honest, pretty much every suggestion I've read is better than the current implementation.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:Base healing/damage is too low, but damage/healing modifiers/coefficients are too high such that you are ineffectual using the base ability, but extremely powerful if you focus.

I agree with your whole post, but especially this bit. In fact, I think this is affects every profession, and it's really a problem with the stat system rather than with profession design - but it's especially a problem for Ele because it works against the attunement mechanic. Attunements are supposed to allow an Ele to be versatile, but it's never possible to use that versatility because of the way the stat system works.

Somehow it isn't as much of a problem for Firebrand, though - and in some ways Firebrand feels (to me, at least) more like an Ele than Ele does, with the three tomes corresponding to Fire, Water, and Earth.

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The easy thing anet could do that would update ele the most and "fix" the problems with the class would be to make conjures weapons into kits. That update alone would add so much to the ele class at all points of the game. It would be like making a 10th class for the game.

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remove weaver because its BAD! its a brain killer - after 4000 hours of ele rotations ... i still get headache from it.

  1. increase health to medium health pool
  2. reduce maximum health pool to medium health pool.
  3. reduce mesmer health pool to the lower health pool.
  4. remove necros barrier because they already have 2 health bars.
  5. remove scrappers and holos barrier because they are good without it.
  6. reduce speed from reaper / holo / all ranger + his elite specs
  7. increase damage from stuff skills / reduce their cooldowns
  8. increase range from all main dagger skills to 360 - 900. especially dagger air 1 and dagger air 2 ( increase their damage by 10-15 % )
  9. decrease cooldowns of ALL utility skills by 25-50%
  10. give ele finally a good elite skill for example ( 8000 damage , knockdown, unblockable, 1200 range, autolock, pulses damage over x seconds.)
  11. give ele the range and melee option at the same time. for example enable weapon switch in combat ( maybe set the cooldown to 15 seconds)
  12. give ele more base boon uptime and increase the gain of barriers so we dont need ALWAYS arcane and water to " stay alive "

ill stop here... because its not good for my brain ...because headache you know...

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@"Lonami.2987" said:Another round, taking the best pieces of each previous version.

My main goal is to give elementalist a meaningful core mechanic, where attunements have an actual impact, and aren't just another form of weapon swap, where you just rotate and spam whatever is available. I believe the profession is a clear case of "more is less", so I'm simplifying multiple things for the sake of balance and impact too. I've also given tempest and weaver much more clear roles and playstyles.


Elementalist

  • You no longer have four attunements available at once. Instead, you choose and equip two, in mechanic slots F1 and F2. Cooldown for attunement swapping has been greatly reduced.
  • Weapon skills in different attunements now have the same base skill mechanic, each attunement adding an extra layer of effects over them. For example, now the second dagger skill is always a cone, the third dagger skill is always a dash, and the fifth staff skill is always a channeled ranged area of effect. Every weapon will play and feel the same no matter the attunement, but you'll still have to pay attention to the extra effects in each one to maximize your efficiency.
  • Individual cooldowns for each weapon skill have been increased, but can be greatly reduced by swapping attunements back and forth, rewarding players who rotate constantly.
  • Weapon swap has been enabled. Greatsword and short bow have been unlocked for the core profession.
  • Each weapon has a dedicated role now. Direct damage is covered by greatsword and short bow, condition damage by daggers and staff, and support by scepter and focus. Attunements no longer define the roles.
  • Auras are no longer available as individual weapon skills.
  • Conjures have been removed, replaced by totems, with a functionality similar to banners and spirits.
  • Glyphs have been repurposed with various support options. Elemental minions are no longer available.
  • Arcane skills have been repurposed into enchantments, with a functionality similar to venoms.
  • Cantrips and signets keep most of their functions intact.
  • Base health gained per level has been increased, from a total of 1,645 to 5,922, leaving elementalist in the medium health tier.

Tempest

  • Auras have been repurposed as a new type of effect, and renamed as Wards. Like other effects, wards have a limited duration and a number of stacks. The active effect of a ward only triggers when you receive direct damage, consuming one stack every time until you run out of them, in which case the ward effect is removed. Hard crowd control effects can be used to remove multiple ward stacks at once without triggering the active effects.
  • Facets have been renamed as Auras. New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 contain auras now. Use once to activate the passive effect (Aura), and again to consume it and trigger an active skill (Overload). Each aura has a different effect depending on the active attunement.
  • F3 applies an offensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo finisher on active.
  • F4 applies a defensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo field on active.
  • F5 applies a ward on passive, and triggers a pulsating area of effect attack on active.
  • Triggering the active skill of the three auras at once combines and boosts their effects.
  • Swapping attunements while any auras are active will deactivate them automatically, with no cooldown costs. Much like weapon skills, swapping attunements back and forth reduces consumed aura cooldowns.
  • Warhorn now has a dedicated support role.
  • All shouts apply wards now.

Weaver

  • The four attunements are now available at once, in mechanic slots F1, F2, F3, and F4.
  • Chain skills now hold their chain step after an attunement swap. For example, the first sword skill has a chain attack. You can use it on fire, advancing to step two of the chain, and then swap to water, staying in step two. Successfully rotating between the four attunements with every step unlocks a special fourth step chain skill.
  • Channel skills are no longer canceled by an attunement swap. Instead, the channel effects merge and stack. For example, the fifth staff skill is a channeled area of effect. In fire, the effect is a burning meteor shower, and in water, a frost meteor shower. If you start casting on fire, and swap to water before the channel is over, the channel duration will stack, and both effects will be applied at once. If you successfully channel the four attunements together, you will unlock a new powerful special effect, lasting longer the longer you waited to swap between each attunement during the channeling. If you're interrupted, the whole process will be cancelled, and you'll need to start over again.
  • Sword off-hand has been enabled. Swords now have a dedicated direct damage role.
  • Stances have been repurposed to reward specific attunement swap combinations.

If you've checked the other profession redesign threads, you'll know my primary goal is to normalize core mechanics, and build elite specializations from a dual profession viewpoint, mechanic-wise. Tempest uses auras, the new guardian core mechanic inspired by herald facets, and weaver is a double elementalist.

Some new elite specialization ideas to see how the changes could affect them, based on the new core mechanics of revenant, necromancer, and warrior:


Dervish

  • New mechanic skill F3 lets you phase into a djinn form, gaining new slot skills and an attribute boost. Both the transformation and the new slot skills require a new energy bar resource to be activated, much like the necromancer's Death Shroud. There's one transformation per attunement, each having its own slot skills and boosted attributes. Weapon skills remain unaffected by the transformation.
  • Polearm is the new weapon, with a dedicated direct damage role.
  • Wells are the new slot skills, specially designed for close-combat situations.

Shaman

  • New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 let you summon and control a swarm of elemental minions.
  • Longbow is the new weapon, with a dedicated condition damage role.
  • Minions are the new slot skills, designed to boost the summoner mechanic.

Chaplain

  • New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 contain burst skills, based on the active attunement and weapon. Successfully performed burst attacks provide an attribute boost and increase the strenght of following burst attacks.
  • Maces are the new weapon, with a dedicated healing role.
  • Mantras are the new slot skills, with additional healing options.

This is my favorite so far, hope you liked it!

And remember, this thread is just for fun, so feel free to post any ideas you have, even if you believe there's no way they could be happening.

Following this idea, core elementalist would be locked into two attunements, getting weapon swap in exchange.

However, what if said attunement selection was different depending on the active weapon set? This would mean you would no longer be forced to have the same two attunements for both weapon sets.

For example:

  • Set 1 Dagger/Dagger + Fire/Air
  • Set 2: Staff + Fire/Water

If you wanted to play the classic way, it would be somewhat possible as well, by equipping the same weapon twice:

  • Set 1 Staff + Fire/Air
  • Set 2: Staff + Water/Earth

Selected attunements would remain at F1 and F2, the active attunement slot being preserved after the swap. If you're using the second attunement and swap, you'd move to use the second attunement from the set you're swapping into.

Opinions? Lot of people liked the idea above, I think this would improve it even further.

@"Zhaid Zhem.6508" said:I would balance a bit more sustain and support in utility skills, instead of some in water skills with water spec, then in earth skills and air skills with arcane, etc; and make spec utility skills focused; and not "when in fire attunement you ..." or one lesser cantrip in fire, an other in earth, the buff trait in water ....Not that much, to not break class design, attunements swap, combos etc, but at least something decent.Half utility skills are useless, or just bad compared to every others classes.

I would go even further, and say 9/10 slot skills are terrible. Not a single decent elite skill either.

@Stallic.2397 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:I'd revert literally every single cantrip nerf, the recent staff nerf, and ALL vanilla GW2 elementalist nerfs while also globally buffing every mainhand dagger attack by 20% in PvE then call it a day.

This is actually all ele needs to be enjoyable in 100% of the games content.

This ^ Staff and cantrips should be a better mage like experience. At the moment, there's too much compensating/nerfs to be relevant in game modes.

I may be the only ele who doesn't want a weapon swap. Conjures need to be upgraded--the mechanics, the damage, the purpose of each weapon. A staff ele with rock shield, or dagger ele with frost bow is way more interesting than weapon swap

Why? It's literally the same thing, except with weapon swap, you get to choose the stats and the skin.

@Bawi.9541 said:tbh i only read the title.

My problems with ele:a) Most of the ele mechanics scale heavily with stats. Or if you look at it the other way around, they rely on stats to be useful.For example ele having access to lots of healing skills that do nothing in a offensive gear setup, as opposed to say aegis/evades/etc. And at the same time I feel like ele is balanced around the idea of theoretically having access to those skills - and I don't even disagree with that notion. I disagree with that design choice.On the other hand they can't up any of the base stats, without making single purpose builds completely broken in what they do.b) The trait lines are too single purpose.An issue connected to the first one. You can build a really tanky bunker with strong healing and protection uptime etc. Or you can build a super glassy DPS character that has to be fed boons and be babysat by a full group. But it is almost impossible to build a well-rounded ele character rn.My problem with it is the fact that if you stack offensive trait lines and gear, that build kinda dictates the cap of how good an ele can perform offensively - it is the obvious build that Anet has to balance around. If you build a tanky healer with traits+gear, then that build kinda dictates how strong a defensive ele build can be allowed to be without breaking the game.

If you combine those two issues you end up in a situation where you can't build a well-rounded character that is not starved for both stat points and trait lines.

And from a designer perspective it's the same predicament. A broken and meta defining ele is just a number's change away. Plus ele has historical baggage in GW2, zerker staff being pve meta defining for years, cele ele dagger/dagger pvp, ... I don't trust anet to untangle this mess tbh.

A good trait system would solve this problem, by giving you options to convert various attributes into new ones depending on your active attunement.

For example, a trait that converts power into healing power when you're attuned to water, or another trait that converts healing power to power when you're attuned to air. This would let you fill a healer role without ruining your overall DPS.

@Bawi.9541 said:That's what made me quit ele; as soon as they don't get carried by super broken damage and mechanics (wall FGS, line-casting Meteor Shower,...), there is little incentive to play a hard-to-play, squishy, group-reliant character that does only _good _DPS. But maybe I'm just kitten at ele :3

Been my main for years, barely use it anymore. Every other profession does a better job, with less effort and better results.

@"Tommo Chocolate.5870" said:For me, I think Elementalist suffers more than the other professions from having skills tied to weapons. This is partly because there are more skills tied to each weapon: for Ele weapons come with 20, 12, or 8 skills, as opposed to 5, 3, or 2 for other professions. It's also because the weapon skills - especially those for staff, sceptre, and focus - seem to have been assigned to weapons arbitrarily. The result is this frustrating situation, where you have access to 20 skills, but you don't actually want most of them because many of them require different stat combinations in order to be useful.

Also, with most other professions, there's at least some thematic link between the weapon skills and the weapons they're associated with - but that doesn't seem to be the case for Ele. It doesn't make sense that I can't cast, say, Phoenix or Shatterstone while I'm wielding a staff, or cast Lava Font or Meteor Shower while wielding a sceptre and focus - especially since those things were possible in GW1.

The obvious "easy" solution would be to give those weapons more identity, e.g. make staff skills focus on power damage and healing, sceptre skills focus on condition damage, and focus skills focus on defense (or something). But since this is a thread of suggesting massive changes, I propose allowing Eles to select their weapon skills freely for staff, sceptre, and focus. That way Ele players would be able to pick combinations of skills that actually make sense together, rather than using these arbitrary combinations of skills ANet have chosen for us that don't really work together. (Of course, I haven't thought this through very far, so I'm fully expecting this idea to get trashed if anyone replies...)

I think weapon skills are one of this game's greatest strengths, giving each weapon type some personality you can't find elsewhere, so I wouldn't implement weapon skill customization. You want different skills, use a different weapon. That's the way to go, in my opinion.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree that elementalist weapon skills make no damn sense. Each weapon should have a fixed role, no matter the attunement. For example, make dagger a condition damage weapon, each attunement focusing on a different condition. Make focus a support weapon, each attunement focusing on a different boon. No matter what, avoid a single weapon type being able to cover multiple roles at once, because that completely ruins the point of stats and sigils.

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I would make conjure weapon skills as kits, revert cantrip, staff and arcane nerfs, put more stability to overloads and make them grant the aura at the beginning of the overload, completely redesign weaver as a proper duelist/dps melee class, not a more complex and improvedcopy of dagger dagger build and so on...

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ArcaneI'd revert aracane fury Minor Adept trait and merge it with Arcane Prowess the current Minor Adept trait.Gain fury when you switch attunements (Fury (2s): 20% Critical Chance) + Gain might when you switch attunements (Might (8s): 30 Power, 30 Condition Damage).

An easy boost to sustain Core, Tempest and Weaver game play.

Fire TreeMajor Grandmaster Blinding Ashes reduce cool down from 8 seconds to 5, Inflict blindness on foes you burn.

Lightning Flash cantrip needs to include break Stun (revert back nerf)

Mist Form cantrip needs to apply chill for 2 second for every second of its 3 second duration. Effecting up to 3 targets within 100 range radius of caster.

Tempest Elite skill needs to also Launch: 450 range, Number of Targets: 5, radius 240 and break stun for caster only.

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Bump up base health to medium.Rework auras:

  • Fire aura: remove burn and might gain and instead flips boons on enemies to conditions when hit, flips 1 condition on yourself to a boon per second fire aura active
  • Shocking aura: Add effect that strips/steals stability (aoe?) when applied
  • Frost aura: Add breaks target every second of frost aura active
  • Magnetic aura: add weapons that are crafted by weaponsmith crafting profession will get 50% or 100% of their dmg reflected, wearers of heavy armor get repelled and cant get closer than 600 range.

Now i haven't really thought this trough so some might sound silly or OP but the idea behind it is to give fire some defense against condis while punishing attackers more than it does atm. Shocking aura will not be made useless by stability spams while it could also be used offensively to set up a CC into a burst. Frost aura i felt needed something to either reduce more damage or do more than it does atm so i came up wit this. Magnetic aura i just felt that besides reflecting projectiles it would make sense that no metal would be able to come near you while its active. it would be funny to see heavies get repelled after a staff ele uses magnetic aura.

With these i feel that it would be more of a defense than they offer now. Ofc there are a lot of other things that could change but i wont go into that as others will probably have better ideas.

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I suppose I will pitch in as well. I'll be brief, as many of these suggestions have been given before:

  1. Stop making weapon skill sets be hybrid in nature. Eg: rework dagger skills to become power based; sceptre+focus, condition; staff can remain the hybrid utility weapon.
  2. Have at least two attunements deal comparable damage. Currently, optical dps is camping fire, but if you need a skill from another element, then you are locked out from the previous one for 10 seconds and dps greatly suffers.
  3. Rework traits that only take effect while attuned to a specific element. For instance, make stone heart work while either attuned to earth, or while under the effect of protection. Another example: have healing ripple trigger on every element swap (but tuning to water is stronger than the other elements).
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  • 1 year later...

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Another round, taking the best pieces of each previous version.

My main goal is to give elementalist a meaningful core mechanic, where attunements have an actual impact, and aren't just another form of weapon swap, where you just rotate and spam whatever is available. I believe the profession is a clear case of "more is less", so I'm simplifying multiple things for the sake of balance and impact too. I've also given tempest and weaver much more clear roles and playstyles.

Elementalist
  • You no longer have four attunements available at once. Instead, you choose and equip two, in mechanic slots F1 and F2. Cooldown for attunement swapping has been greatly reduced.
  • Weapon skills in different attunements now have the same base skill mechanic, each attunement adding an extra layer of effects over them. For example, now the second dagger skill is always a cone, the third dagger skill is always a dash, and the fifth staff skill is always a channeled ranged area of effect. Every weapon will play and feel the same no matter the attunement, but you'll still have to pay attention to the extra effects in each one to maximize your efficiency.
  • Individual cooldowns for each weapon skill have been increased, but can be greatly reduced by swapping attunements back and forth, rewarding players who rotate constantly.
  • Weapon swap has been enabled. Greatsword and short bow have been unlocked for the core profession.
  • Each weapon has a dedicated role now. Direct damage is covered by greatsword and short bow, condition damage by daggers and staff, and support by scepter and focus. Attunements no longer define the roles.
  • Auras are no longer available as individual weapon skills.
  • Conjures have been removed, replaced by totems, with a functionality similar to banners and spirits.
  • Glyphs have been repurposed with various support options. Elemental minions are no longer available.
  • Arcane skills have been repurposed into enchantments, with a functionality similar to venoms.
  • Cantrips and signets keep most of their functions intact.
  • Base health gained per level has been increased, from a total of 1,645 to 5,922, leaving elementalist in the medium health tier.

Tempest
  • Auras have been repurposed as a new type of effect, and renamed as Wards. Like other effects, wards have a limited duration and a number of stacks. The active effect of a ward only triggers when you receive direct damage, consuming one stack every time until you run out of them, in which case the ward effect is removed. Hard crowd control effects can be used to remove multiple ward stacks at once without triggering the active effects.
  • Facets have been renamed as Auras. New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 contain auras now. Use once to activate the passive effect (Aura), and again to consume it and trigger an active skill (Overload). Each aura has a different effect depending on the active attunement.
  • F3 applies an offensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo finisher on active.
  • F4 applies a defensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo field on active.
  • F5 applies a ward on passive, and triggers a pulsating area of effect attack on active.
  • Triggering the active skill of the three auras at once combines and boosts their effects.
  • Swapping attunements while any auras are active will deactivate them automatically, with no cooldown costs. Much like weapon skills, swapping attunements back and forth reduces consumed aura cooldowns.
  • Warhorn now has a dedicated support role.
  • All shouts apply wards now.

Weaver
  • The four attunements are now available at once, in mechanic slots F1, F2, F3, and F4.
  • Chain skills now hold their chain step after an attunement swap. For example, the first sword skill has a chain attack. You can use it on fire, advancing to step two of the chain, and then swap to water, staying in step two. Successfully rotating between the four attunements with every step unlocks a special fourth step chain skill.
  • Channel skills are no longer canceled by an attunement swap. Instead, the channel effects merge and stack. For example, the fifth staff skill is a channeled area of effect. In fire, the effect is a burning meteor shower, and in water, a frost meteor shower. If you start casting on fire, and swap to water before the channel is over, the channel duration will stack, and both effects will be applied at once. If you successfully channel the four attunements together, you will unlock a new powerful special effect, lasting longer the longer you waited to swap between each attunement during the channeling. If you're interrupted, the whole process will be cancelled, and you'll need to start over again.
  • Sword off-hand has been enabled. Swords now have a dedicated direct damage role.
  • Stances have been repurposed to reward specific attunement swap combinations.

If you've checked the other profession redesign threads, you'll know my primary goal is to normalize core mechanics, and build elite specializations from a dual profession viewpoint, mechanic-wise. Tempest uses auras, the new guardian core mechanic inspired by herald facets, and weaver is a double elementalist.

Some new elite specialization ideas to see how the changes could affect them, based on the new core mechanics of revenant, necromancer, and warrior:

Dervish
  • New mechanic skill F3 lets you phase into a djinn form, gaining new slot skills and an attribute boost. Both the transformation and the new slot skills require a new energy bar resource to be activated, much like the necromancer's Death Shroud. There's one transformation per attunement, each having its own slot skills and boosted attributes. Weapon skills remain unaffected by the transformation.
  • Polearm is the new weapon, with a dedicated direct damage role.
  • Wells are the new slot skills, specially designed for close-combat situations.

Shaman
  • New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 let you summon and control a swarm of elemental minions.
  • Longbow is the new weapon, with a dedicated condition damage role.
  • Minions are the new slot skills, designed to boost the summoner mechanic.

Chaplain
  • New mechanic skills F3, F4, and F5 contain burst skills, based on the active attunement and weapon. Successfully performed burst attacks provide an attribute boost and increase the strenght of following burst attacks.
  • Maces are the new weapon, with a dedicated healing role.
  • Mantras are the new slot skills, with additional healing options.

This is my favorite so far, hope you liked it!

And remember, this thread is just for fun, so feel free to post any ideas you have, even if you believe there's no way they could be happening.

Following this idea, core elementalist would be locked into two attunements, getting weapon swap in exchange.

However, what if said attunement selection was different depending on the active weapon set? This would mean you would no longer be forced to have the same two attunements for both weapon sets.

For example:
  • Set 1
    Dagger/Dagger + Fire/Air
  • Set 2:
    Staff + Fire/Water

If you wanted to play the classic way, it would be somewhat possible as well, by equipping the same weapon twice:
  • Set 1
    Staff + Fire/Air
  • Set 2:
    Staff + Water/Earth

Selected attunements would remain at F1 and F2, the active attunement slot being preserved after the swap. If you're using the second attunement and swap, you'd move to use the second attunement from the set you're swapping into.

Opinions? Lot of people liked the idea above, I think this would improve it even further.

Been quite a while, here's another take, combining the best of all previous ideas:


Changes to the core profession

  • Weapon skills have been normalized, and attunements will no longer provide four different weapon skills per weapon slot. Instead, attunements will now provide special effects to said normalized skills. More information on this redesigned mechanic below.
  • Auras are no longer available as individual weapon skills.
  • Weapon swap has been enabled. The following weapons have been implemented: Main-hand Mace, off-hand Mace, Greatsword, Shortbow, and Harpoon (underwater).
  • Conjures have been removed, replaced by totems, with a functionality similar to banners and spirits.
  • Glyphs have been repurposed with various support options. Elemental minions are no longer available.
  • Arcane skills have been repurposed into enchantments, with a functionality similar to venoms.
  • Cantrips and signets keep most of their functions intact.
  • Base health gained per level has been increased, from a total of 1,645 to 5,922, leaving elementalist in the medium health tier.

Redesigned mechanic: Attunements

Weapon skills in different attunements now have the same base stats and skill mechanic, each attunement adding an extra layer of effects over them. Every weapon will play and feel the same no matter the attunement, but you'll still have to pay attention to the extra effects in each one to maximize your efficiency. Few examples:

Staff slot #1

  • Base: Projectile, can be reflected.
  • Fire: Fireball, burns and deals small AoE damage on hit.
  • Water: Water Splash, deals small AoE heal on hit.
  • Air: Chain Lightning, bounces up to three nearby foes on hit.
  • Earth: Stoning, knocks down on hit.

Dagger slot #3

  • Base: Dash.
  • Fire: Burning Speed, leaves a burning trail.
  • Water: Frost Skating, leaves a freezing trail.
  • Air: Ride the Lightning, AoE stun on hit.
  • Earth: Earthen Rush, AoE damage on hit.

Dagger slot #4

  • Base: Lingering AoE ring.
  • Fire: Ring of Fire, burns on contact.
  • Water: Frost Ring, freezes and knocks down on contact.
  • Air: Lightning Ring, stuns on contact.
  • Earth: Ring of Earth, bleeds and cripples on contact.

Other changes:

  • Chain and Sequence skills no longer lose their step progress on attunement swap. Instead, they swap the effects of the current steps to those of the attunement they swapped into.
  • Channeled skills are no longer interrupted on attunement swap. Instead, their effects stack and its channel duration is extended.
  • Individual cooldowns for each weapon skill have been increased, but can be greatly reduced by swapping attunements back and forth, rewarding players who rotate constantly.

Changes to Tempest

  • The original auras have been repurposed as a new type of effect, and renamed as Wards. Like other effects, wards have a limited duration and a number of stacks. The active effect of a ward only triggers when you receive direct damage, consuming one stack every time until you run out of them, in which case the ward effect is removed. Hard crowd control effects can be used to remove multiple ward stacks at once without triggering the active effects.
  • The original Overload mechanic skills have been replaced with Auras, a new mechanic inspired by the original Herald Facets. Activate aura mode using mechanic skill F5. This will replace your mechanic bar with new aura skills based on your active attunement. Use once to activate the passive effect (Aura), and again to consume it and trigger an active skill (Overload). Attunement swap will be disabled while aura mode is active.
  • F1 lets you activate and consume all auras at once.
  • F2 applies an offensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo finisher on active.
  • F3 applies a defensive boon on passive, and triggers a pulsating combo field on active.
  • F4 applies a ward on passive, and triggers a pulsating area of effect attack on active.
  • F5 disables aura mode, and lets you swap attunements once again.
  • Triggering the active skill of the three auras at once combines and boosts their effects.
  • Weapon skill cooldowns will be reduced while aura mode is active, since attunement swapping is disabled and can't be used to reduce them naturally.
  • New weapon: Warhorn.
  • New slot skills: Shouts, all of them apply wards now.

Changes to Weaver

  • Dual Attack weapon skills have been removed. Instead, attunement effects will now linger for a few seconds on swap, letting you stay on multiple attunements at once, stacking multiple attunement effects across your weapon skills. Various combos and support skills let you extend the duration of the lingering effects.
  • New weapons: Main-hand sword and off-hand sword.
  • New slot skills: Stances, repurposed to reward specific attunement swap combinations.

New elite specialization idea: Dervish

  • New mechanic skill F5 lets you phase into a djinn form, gaining alternate weapon skills and an attribute boost. Both the transformation and the new weapon skills require a new energy bar resource to be activated, much like the necromancer's Death Shroud. There's one transformation per attunement, each having its own weapon skills and boosted attributes. Attunement swapping will be disabled during the transformation.
  • New weapon: Polearm.
  • New slot skills: Mantras.

New elite specialization idea: Skyfire

  • Activate your current attunement for a second time to trigger a Mark upon an enemy target. Marked enemies will receive increased damage from weapon skills and conditions connected to the attunement they were marked with.
  • New weapon: Longbow.
  • New slot skills: Wells, good synergy with marks.

New elite specialization idea: Summoner

  • New mechanic skill F5 lets you activate beast mode, summoning an elemental effigy by your side, with controls similar to those of ranger pets. Attunement swap will be disabled while beast mode is active. Death of the pet will disable beast mode automatically.
  • Weapon skill cooldowns will be reduced while beast mode is active, since attunement swapping is disabled and can't be used to reduce them naturally.
  • New weapon: Battlegloves.
  • New slot skills: Minions.

That should be it! I feel like this one is my best one so far, so hope you like it.

@Ptolomy.6984 said:Bump up base health to medium.Rework auras:

  • Fire aura: remove burn and might gain and instead flips boons on enemies to conditions when hit, flips 1 condition on yourself to a boon per second fire aura active
  • Shocking aura: Add effect that strips/steals stability (aoe?) when applied
  • Frost aura: Add breaks target every second of frost aura active
  • Magnetic aura: add weapons that are crafted by weaponsmith crafting profession will get 50% or 100% of their dmg reflected, wearers of heavy armor get repelled and cant get closer than 600 range.

Now i haven't really thought this trough so some might sound silly or OP but the idea behind it is to give fire some defense against condis while punishing attackers more than it does atm. Shocking aura will not be made useless by stability spams while it could also be used offensively to set up a CC into a burst. Frost aura i felt needed something to either reduce more damage or do more than it does atm so i came up wit this. Magnetic aura i just felt that besides reflecting projectiles it would make sense that no metal would be able to come near you while its active. it would be funny to see heavies get repelled after a staff ele uses magnetic aura.

With these i feel that it would be more of a defense than they offer now. Ofc there are a lot of other things that could change but i wont go into that as others will probably have better ideas.

Auras are useless as of now, so anything would help, really. Thanks for the suggestions!

@Skotlex.7580 said:I suppose I will pitch in as well. I'll be brief, as many of these suggestions have been given before:

  1. Stop making weapon skill sets be hybrid in nature. Eg: rework dagger skills to become power based; sceptre+focus, condition; staff can remain the hybrid utility weapon.
  2. Have at least two attunements deal comparable damage. Currently, optical dps is camping fire, but if you need a skill from another element, then you are locked out from the previous one for 10 seconds and dps greatly suffers.
  3. Rework traits that only take effect while attuned to a specific element. For instance, make stone heart work while either attuned to earth, or while under the effect of protection. Another example: have healing ripple trigger on every element swap (but tuning to water is stronger than the other elements).

100% agree, each weapon should have one single role, period. Direct damage, Condition damage, defense, or healing+support. No hybrids, if a weapon has a healing+support role, all attunements should follow that role, period. Other roles should be accessed through a different weapon upon weapon swap.

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