Khaldris.9026

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/studio-update-september-2023/ They told us they didn't want to lock the benefits of the world restructuring behind a UI update, my dude. If you're gonna wag fingers, at least have your facts straight first.

I'm primarily a PvE player, though I've dabbled in WvW and PvP with Guardian. Generally speaking, I can see the idea here, but the execution is off. Mainhand S1: No real notes here, bleeding and piercing shots are cool. Maybe consider having this be a 'double-tap' skill (i.e. two shots closer together, then a break) to differentiate it from other pistol autos (the pistol seems to be more of a 'focus' for magic than an actual tool firing bullets, what with the lasers and fire, so we don't have to pretend we're reloading here). S2: A good skill, multi-hit is always great for Guardian. However, its lack of interaction with the S3 means it should swap places with the offhand S4 (or just make it work with the Symbol). S3: Cool idea, bad execution. No boons, so it breaks tradition with symbols as a whole. It casts at my feet, but does damage (so it wants me in melee, negating the benefit of 900 range). It empowers shots that go through it, so I'm supposed to play around its location, but it doesn't last long enough to really make use of that (33% uptime baseline). Either make this a ground-target skill (to be in line with all other ranged weapon symbols for Guardian), have it be an attack that drops the symbol underneath your target (so it'll work fine for most PvE and encourages movement versus Pistol Guardians in competitive modes), or something new... tether the symbol to the player like Scrapper Gyros function (for this option, remove strike damage from the symbol entirely, but definitely still give it a boon). Offhand S4: Solid skill, needs its base damage increased to be useful outside of Symbol of Ignition. The fact that it has charges is very 'meh' to me, I'd honestly prefer it to have a 6-8 second cooldown with maybe another shot or two thrown in. S5: Really cool animation, but entirely too complicated to use. Damage is weighted on charge level 3, but has the old Flamethrower S2 mechanical issue (you want the projectile to pass through your target before detonating in order to get more damage). You removed it from Flamethrower because it sucked to micromanage, please don't add it back here. The projectile should simply detonate when hitting a target regardless of charge level. Definitely increase the damage in competitive modes, a charge as long as this should feel rewarding to pull off. Perhaps consider trading the knockback for knockdown/stun, considering issues with AoE fields (or wait for the community at large to understand that they don't need to use skills that knock things out of AoE fields for DPS).

So for perspective, I've been playing Elementalist since release. Primarily in PvE, though I've done a bunch in WvW and PvP. Trying to play Weaver slides off the smoothness of my brain, so I won't be commenting on the Weaver-specific skills. Overall, it's nice to see another 'mid' range weapon for Elementalist. But the weapon feels really slow to use. The design of Elementalist has evolved to be constantly rotating between your attunements, so the sluggish cast times and animations (I know they're currently WIP animations) makes me just want to avoid the pistol entirely. The elemental 'bullets' stocked by skills are an interesting concept, but in execution you're going to have a 'preferred order'. I feel like this design suffers the same issue that Catalyst Augments do (designed to be 'on the fly' decisions on what you need, but requiring too many buttons pressed for the speed of combat in GW2). The Elemental Unload skill is unnecessary, and detracts from the overall power budget of the weapon. Either the bullets are good enough to spend now, or they're not really worth being part of the kit. As it stands, I'd rather see the elemental bullets concept scrapped entirely, and the skills balanced around their usage as-is with no setup. Fire S1: Fine, for the most part? I feel like it needs to do something more than just 'hit the target'. Perhaps a small AoE explosion like the staff Fire S1. S2: The bullet buff is very uninspiring, and I highly dislike the idea of maintaining yet another unique buff (Catalyst design creep is awful for this). S3: The projectile is incredibly slow, and the bullet buff is uninspiring (Fire Aura is nice, but this is a condi damage weapon, support Elementalists should probably look elsewhere). Water S1: Perfectly fine, addition of selfish healing based on conditions stacked on the target is interesting. S2: Multi-hit is cool, the bullet bonus continuing the selfish healing is a good trend for this attunement S3: Good sized field, has a good duration, bullet bonus is an interesting mechanic. Air S1: Drop the vuln stacking, give it a ricochet to 1-2 additional targets (chain lightning stuff) S2: Relatively okay CC, bullet bonus feels... weird to make use of properly. This works well with Ranger (Quick Draw), but it continues the trend of adding extra button presses to situations where you'd want to respond right now with a good skill. S3: Having this be a chain of 3 skills is not good. The attack needs to be part of the dash, so there's only two potential button presses. Earth S1: This should actually pierce. S2: This should just be a large AoE from the target on-hit, not a weird firing of additional projectiles from the target you shoot. The bullet buff is an interesting start, but only three hits with a single stack of bleeding isn't enough to make this feel like an actual condi weapon. S3: A solid immobilize, the bullet bonus continues the selfish defense from water. As it stands, I don't really see why I'd use MH Pistol over a Scepter or Dagger at this point. Scrap the elemental bullets and balance the skills around being worth the button press as soon as you hit a given attunement. P.S.: Glacial Shot's the coolest ability here (pun very much intended).

Because pressing that button isn't reliable. Just did it, was channeling, still got no progress.

I'd actually be rather okay with them being a ground-target dash. Would make them even more skill oriented and remove the sometimes-awkward situations when you're dashing at a target. But yes, please, get rid of this current "stop at the target" implementation, it feels awful.

See, I almost agree with this on any class other than Elementalist. A single weapon skill (or two, in this case) is less of our total 'power budget' for any given weapon combination if only because we have 4 sets of weapon skills to work with. I daresay that it's not out of the imagination to make players ask themselves "If I use this skill, will it put me in a bad situation?" Sure, you might be giving up some DPS, but 90% DPS is better than 0% while you're lying on the floor (insert down-state Elementalist joke here). TL;DR - If using a skill will kill you, and you still press it: that is not a designer issue, it's a player skill issue. Hells, Scepter is right there if you want a bit more leeway on your damage options. (sidenote: I really wish they'd just full-on rework Staff to make it feel less slow) Also adding my bump in solidarity with wanting this reverted.

I'll put my vote in the "this is bad, please revert" camp. The flow of combat with dagger mainhand is completely thrown off with this change, and you lose out on the pass-through damage (which is a rather large part of the power budget for these skills). I hate to seem... elitist, I guess, but any talk of "this was to help people not whoosh in to bad" is a skill issue.

But Chronomancers don't lose out on anything (other than the boons, of course) by standing outside their wells. Augments have a pretty sizable chunk of their power allotment stuck in activating them within the correct Sphere field.

When even the devs make Elementalist downed state "jokes", it's pretty clear that the class isn't OK.

The issue with Catalyst is very much mechanical, not numerical (I also daresay the entirety of Elementalist's core trait lines need reworked). Can we please address the fact that Augments are simply worse Stances? The new Jade Sphere cooldown is just... kind of awful and makes it feel kind of useless to a non-boon-focused build (imo).

The Virtue grandmaster traits feel really bad to use with Willbender. Permeating Wrath only interacts with the passive of Justice (which Willbender does not have). Indomitable Courage loses out on the entire second half of its stat block. Battle Presence is the only trait that has an explicit callout for Willbender. While the healing is nice, it's not exactly what I'm looking for in a damage build (either power or condi). Coming back in with a later edit - are the grandmaster traits here supposed to be affecting the buffs that Willbender Virtue skills give? It's not communicated very clearly if that's the case. Also why is Glacial Heart still a thing?

Is there any way you could take a look at Glacial Heart as well? Chill just... doesn't with the Guardian kit as a whole.