[The evolution of ele class]

Forgot the earlier state of doing damage with FGS and IB to enemies against a wall.

[[Suggestion] Jade Sphere Changes]

Here is an idea of how the jade sphere could be slightly reworked to better fit the theme and improve gameplay.

Jade sphere have two states: active and passive.

In passive state, it floats near the catalyst (as the scraper function gyro) and provides 1 boom every time it gains 2 energy (2 seconds ICD). Boom is to the catalyst only and based on attunement. The sphere passive boom changes with the catalyst attunment.

When activated (ground target AoE) the sphere drains 2 energy per second, provides a combo field and booms in the area, based on attunment. When active, the sphere does not change attunements when the catalyst changes, and cannot gain energy. The sphere becomes passive when energy is completely depleted.

In this way you can still deploy the sphere for combos and boom support, and maintain it in a single attunement (for a single boom support) while you rotate attunements.

With the sphere passive providing boons every 2 energy gained, the catalyst can maintain self boons when not using the sphere to support the group or combo fields, and the boons are applied when swapping attunements and traited with energized elements.

Auguments used on the right attunement with the sphere in passive mode, will always trigger the bonus effect/reduced CD.

For further support, sphere specialist or spectacular sphere could extend the passive boom generation to 5 targets around the catalyst.

The elite augument could also copy your boons to 5 targets around your sphere (around you in passive mode, or in the AoE in active mode)

[Catalyst is garbage in WVW]

The only way to play catalyst in WvW at this stage is with dagger/dagger and using auras to try to survive in the middle of the zerg... 

Spheres are only good for buffing before fights, or helping with combos (to get more aura buffs)... if that.

[A new ranged spec for Ele is simply both undoable and boring.]

It's very simple...

Staff is a slow cast, power focused, long ranged AoE weapon. It works best by stacking multiple fields and effects in an area and hitting multiple opponents to maximize dmg (or heals). It's the only ele weapon that is crap at condi dmg.

Scepter is a burst (slow cast big effects with some fast cast low dps fillers) mid range weapon, can be used as power or condi. It has some AoE on it, specially for burst (phoenix, shatterstone, dragons tooth).

 

How to make a different weapon? Here it goes:

Longbow - A fast casting, single target focused, long range burst weapon, with some AoE (hail of arrows style skill 5). Arcane archer style with imbued arrows in each attunement.

Quote

Longbow Long range (1200) weapon

1: Imbue shot - Fire an arrow with imbued energy giving it special properties based on your attunement (A: Static charge extra hit; F: AoE explosion; E: Pierce; W: Heal around target)
2: Quickshot - Fire multiple arrows in succession (projectile finisher) dealing conditions based on attunement (A: Vulnerability; F: Burn; E: Bleed; W: poison)
3: Fan shot - Fire four arrows in a fan in front of you dealing conditions based on attunement, if all arrows hit the same target create a special effect (A: daze/stun; F: burn/AoE dmg; E: Cripple/Immobilize; W: Chill/Frozen stun)
4: Charged shot - Charge a shot with powerful elemental magic and fire it for devastating effect (A: Push back foes on its path and cause a massive lightening bolt on its target; F: burn foes in its path and cause a large fire explosion in its target; E: immobilize foes in its path and knockdown its target; W: heal allies in its path and clear conditions around its target)
5: Elemental tempest - Fire multiple arrows up towards the target area causing multiple hits in a large area and creating a large elemental field (A: lightening strikes the area leaves static field; F: fire explosions strikes the area leaving fire field; E: crippling shards strike the area leaving uneven ground field that pulses cripple; W: Healing arrows strike the area healing allies and leaving an ice field)

 

Pistol - A single target focused, fast casting, mid range weapon with some burst (unload style skill 3).

Spellslinger style.

 

Also, with the number of attunments skills and core ele weapons, you could remove attunement-unique skills and create new weapon skills for core weapons as part of a new elite spec and it would be the same number of new skills as a new 2h weapon... This could make a new elite spec that would bring ele a really new playstyle:

[New Elite Spec - Disciple (Weapon swap and Longbow!)]

Reformatting the initial post.

Hopefully next espec we get something nice that actually provides a different playstyle. 

[Catalyst and Dagger/Staff?]

Seems that staff is the best weapon to get energy for your sphere.

You gain energy per hit, and with staff having multiple AoE and lasting fields, the energy gain is quite high.
You can probably keep the sphere up through the whole fight using staff and fresh air...

[Have we seen what the Catalyst trade-off is?]

looses access to tempest and weaver traitlines.

[For the love of Melandru please make staff a viable option]

8 minutes ago, BlackBeard.2873 said:

However, staff doesn't have a lot of reason to spend a lot of time in air to build up swiftness.

You don't need to stay in Air casting air spells.

You can use conjures (FGS or LH for damage), you can cast spells from other attunements with long cast-times (meteor shower) and swap to air (FA is specially useful there) to get the quickness going.

[For the love of Melandru please make staff a viable option]

It could be a good dps option with Catalyst, depending if hammer has better numbers or not.

Fire/Air/Cat with fresh-air, persisting flames, longer sphere booms.

Fresh air lets you always go back to air for quickness topup, while persisting flames gives you bonus dmg for fire fields (fire sphere). Now add the Elite and water augments and you can potentially get powered up meteorshowers.

Combine staff fields and finishers, with catalyst sphere+lightening hammer+gliph of storms+shatering ice augument+elite augment for CD reduction.... Thats one nice combo for PvE dps with added group might and quickness.

Lets say, start

1. in earth: cast magnetic aura (for aura dmg buff) and eruption (for blast), 
2. swap to air for quickness placing the F5 sphere over eruption for a combo, which gives you aura (more aura dmg buff),
3. swap to water for another blast (water#2) and another aura,
4. straight back to air for FA buff and more quickness,
5. go to fire (another aura), lava font+F5+Meteor shower with double strike from augument+pull lightening hammer (another aura from conjurer) and get another combo (auto-attack) for more auras (auras on combo). With the elite augument and all the hits from fields, meteors, attacks, your meteor shower should be ready for a second cast. Cast lava font and metor shower again before going
6. back to air for more quickness and sigil of storms, grab the second  LH for more blasts and auras before starting over.

That's 5 Auras before your first Meteor shower, so 10% dmg from Catalyst aura trait... And its also 8% to all stats going to 10% when you get into air again and grab the second LH.

 

[Potential Combos for Catalyst]

D/D cele build abusing all the dagger finisher and auras... Should be good fun.

using arcane line and arcane brilliance for big combo on water for healing...

 

Staff could go very nice with it too for power dps...
Fire/Air/Cat fresh air... use LH in air to combo quickness, swap to fire for meteor shower with the elite and water auguments... double hit quickness meteors that reduce its own CD on hit... than back to air for more quickness and combos with LH auto...

[Hammer Ele confirmed]

49 minutes ago, Keldaros.8695 said:

For those who didnt watch the stream, here is the silhoutte: https://imgur.com/a/AAGThO8

Edit: I wonder what the swirly thing is with the straps / cage

Ele hammer with elemental gyro....

We are scrappers now... great...

[For End of Dragons, more than a new elite spec what I want is the ability to swap weapons in combat.]

Yes to both the above!

I wish I knew how to do one of those flashy montages for this

[Mindblowing new weapon revelation]

13 hours ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

Fresh Air Tempest was easy mode ele

Condi fire tempest (top dps on early HoT raids) was the easy mode ele

[Mindblowing new weapon revelation]

31 minutes ago, Azara.8023 said:

I'm incredibly disappointed that hammer was the leaked weapon for Ele. i was super excited for the expansion and that just killed any excitement i had..hammers are what i enjoy using the least out of any weapon type in any game...and ele is the only class i enjoy playing. ive been hoping for a longbow for a longtime...this news makes me want to just go play a different game now if it is in fact true that hammer is what they are giving us.

Yea, I'm holding my disappointment. Maybe the spec will work well with the core weapons...
Also hoping the leaks were just wrong  or misleading (weapon boxes from some other elite concepts, maybe not updated) and that somehow we don't get hammer.

 

 

[Why are we holding a staff in hand if all spells come from the other hand ?]

It's to keep your balance while you cast.

[Torch for new spec will be weird and boring.]

I strongly disagree with your take on how the elite specs work for Ele.

 Weaver is not fire or even fire oriented, and tempest is not water...

 

Elite specs for ele work around the attunements.

Tempest focus on staying longer on attunements and creating long-lasting AoE (with overloads or warhorn). Be it for support (shouts, sharing auras, group healing) or dmg (fire camping burn tempest, FA overload tempest) tempest is about to staying longer in attunements to overload them, sometimes camping attunements (healing tempest, fire condi tempest) sometimes by quickly going back to it (FA tempest).

Weaver focus on steadily rotating attunements. Its buffs are short and maintained by constantly swapping attunements, so if you want to use to the fullest, you need to keep weaving those attunements in the right order to make use of buffs and mixed attunement skills.

 

How is the next elite spec fit into this?

Not sure... my take was that it would remove attunements in a way (likely the weapon skills are gone, but the attunement stays there for traits), while letting the Ele use weapon swap.

 

Torch as the elite spec weapon? I hope not.

What will it bring? PBAoE? Dagger and warhorn provide those. 

What ele needs is a single-target fast-paced long-range weapon. Longbow is IMO the best choice, based on how longbow works for other classes. Rifle is nice, but its, in most cases, too slow. Look at rapid fire from ranger LB in comparison to volleys from warrior and or deadeye rifle. 

Pistols can be really fun too, but it feels they would overlap with scepter too much (single target mid range), and I'd rather they make scepter better than just kill it with a better weapon set. If they make scepter more AoE oriented, then pistols could be the single-target mid range weapon...  

[Icon of new Elementalist Elite spec:]

8 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

A much simpler solution that what I went with haha.

Although I must admit I do love the idea of an element specialist ^^
Back in Gw1 I based all my Ele characters and Hero builds around a single element but in Gw2 this is a really inefficient way to play the class.

I have a few problems with the idea of less elemental attunements.

 

First, it will make arcane traitline much less useful. Half the traits give boons on attunement swap or have effects for each attunement, some of those with an ICD per attunement. Going with single or double attunement will pretty much half the benefits of those traits, some of which are minor, and therefore not optional. Less attunements also means less attunement swaps, so much less buffs from arcane traitline.

Weapon skills will have to change drastically. Currently you use a few skills in an attunement and then swap out of it or overload. Reducing the attunements to swap into for new skills without changing core skills will make it that weapon swap will be needed not to deal with changes in the fight (ranged/melee/offense/defense) but to have enough skills to enable you to do anything besides auto attack. Basically you'll be in a fight with your skills in CD, your only other attunement in CD, and you will either have to weapon swap to have something to use or conjure weapons to fill the gap.

 

I think that if ele gets weapon swap it will have to loose all individual attunement skills, with attunements just giving bonuses to skills (as mentioned on the linked post). 

It might sound too far off, but they got rid of mesmer clones, they might get rid of ele attunements, but in a way that there is still a swap (just no unique skills for each attunement).

 

 

[Shortbow is the next Elite spec]

8 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

One can only pray...this community is hard tired of melee combat where you need to constantly hug your target for damage, let's ele players for once play like a  classic glass cannon ranged mage like elementalist class is in all other MMOS, only in GW2 an elementalist has to go toe to toe melee range with enemies while still being an actual mage.

 

1) No hybrid weapon....full kitten power damage on all attunements, no half baked skils , half condi, half power BS where you need to use cele gear to max anything

2) No long kitten casting time with rooting bullcrap, after cast and snail moving animations

3)An actual scary elite to slot and something people are constantly afraid of..like they are of rampage, lich form etc etc

 

I pray for all of this......

 

I'd lower your expectations. 

Historically, melee combat is higher dmg. And even if bow is best dps, you'll still stack in melee for high end PvE content (fractals, raids, strikes).

 

High ranged dmg will be great for open world and PvP/WvW if, and that is a big if, ele gets weapon swap if it to be able to deal with melee situations.

 

Keep in mind though, the elite spec is more than just the weapon. 

The bow can be a great addition, but the spec could also have great synergy with core weapons.

[Icon of new Elementalist Elite spec:]

Arrow point (seen from the front) imbued with elemental magic.

 

 

[What would you like to see as elite spec? - End of Dragons]

I want to see a martial artist elementalist.

Attunements become fight styles and no longer give individual skills, but each weapon skill gives a bonus effect based on attunement (like a skill that apply conditions apply burn in fire, bleed in earth, poison in water, vulnerability in air).

As the number of skills is reduced, they get weapon swap in combat. 

This lets the elementalist have weapon swap, while keeping attunement swap (for traits and uniqueness) but without having more than 10 weapon skills. This also gives the opportunity to create traits that lets you be in multiple attunements at once (since they don't give unique skills) combining multiple effects.

Yes, this means that ele would need to get new set of skills for core weapons. But as the new weapon will only have a single set of skills, the number of new skills its the same as a new weapon with 4 attunements:

1 weapon * 5 skills * 4 attunments = 20 weapon skills.

4 weapons (d/d, sc/f, staff, longbow) * 5 skills * 1 set = 20 weapon skills.

So you get to use old weapons in a new way, using martial arts... 

Longbow is the new weapon, acts as imbued arrows...

Daggers work a bit like thief and warrior daggers... Melee offense and mobility
Scepter works like a guardian/warrior mace... Melee defense and support

Focus works like a guardian/engi shield... melee defense and Support

Staff works like thief/rev staff... Cleave and offense

 

As a marital artist, the new utility skills would be physical skills. Short CD, ammo, skills focusing on mobility and control.

 

 

 

[Why Does the staff seam so underpowered ?]

I think staff could use some more condi dmg, making it more viable as a hybrid (as all other Ele weapons) and even as power, giving it a bit more dmg via the condi related traits (more dmg to burning, bleeding, etc).

 

• Fire auto should apply burning. Enough to keep 1 burning stack on autoattack without condi duration bonuses.
• Lava font should burn on each tick, and the last tick should be a bigger radius explosion.
• Flame burst should copy burn from your target to up to 10 nearby foes (like a fire epi)
• Meteor Shower... Yes burn on every hit, or make it a huge fire field pulsing burns and having the meteors falling as it is.
• Air auto needs to be quicker. Quicker to cast, quicker to travel, quicker to bounce. Never seen lightening so slow.
• Lightning Surges blind is a bit useless considering how slow it is to cast. Make it apply a big stack of vulnerability instead
• Gust is too slow... it misses people running perpendicular to you at mid range.
• Windbourne Speed needs a lower CD. You need 100% boon duration to have perma swiftness with it... shouldnt take this much
• Static field is great, but should at least stun people when its cast. 
• Earth auto should apply bleeds. Weakness is very nice, but should be in another skill.
• Unsteady ground should apply cripple/weakness  to people passing over it.
• Shock wave is just so slow it never seems to hit anything. Maybe make the wave immob and leave a field on its wake that still cripples/bleed. (this way, all staff skills 5 would be a field)

[Things I Want For Tempest]

I feel your pain...

Its not even that elementalist and tempest are bad, they are just... meh. And it's just that there is so much potential there to be better, without it being OP... 

 

I've posted here a few times on things I wish it could be changed for Ele/Tempest/Weaver to make them more unique and viable... 

 

 

I truly think that moving aura-share to tempest (and swaping it with aura heals into water) would make it possible for tempest to run as a more versatile support (offensive or defensive). Specially if you give more synergy in the elemental traitlines to be able to provide quickness (in air) and resistance/resolution...

 

[I find all Elementalist elite spells to be really lame.]

Weave self is great.

 20% Boon Duration, 20% Outgoing Heal Effectiveness, 20% Condition Damage, -20% Incoming Damage, 50% Movement Speed... for up to 30s with a 90s CD... And unlike tornado, you can still use your weapon skills and rotations.

In both PvE and PvP its a great skill to have.

 

Elemental signet is very good for certain fights (PvE and PvP). 
Use it in air before you get into combat and you have a nice CC and ranged dmg during the fight.

Use in water to get ice fields and heals during the fight (ice fields to blast for frost aura that reduces incoming dmg)

Use it in fire to deal lots of burning (if you have condi dmg its great)

Use it in earth to trigger AoE weakness (and have a tank in PvE, can solo tank a lot of champs like the first lane boss in the twisted marionette event where you need to dmg it from behind the shield)

 

Rebound is really good in WvW organized squads.

 

FGS is great in PvP for cleaving downed and escaping fights. In PvE is a great option for ranged and spiking

 

Tornado is a great skill to stop people ressing in PvP. Particularly good in 2v2 and 3v3 comps

 

[Open World Domination: Fire Weaver]

I've played around with some stuff in the build editor.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYRMJmJOKXavbA-zxIY8ohvMysAKNBc4gECdbgFI+0A-e

Using full dire with balthazar runes and some infusions to get 80% burning duration (100% with weaver prowess) you have about 2900 armor, 26k hp, 2227 condi dmg (with 10 might), and not much of anything else. 

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYRMJmJOKXavLA-zxIY1oh/MyUBUzEQeTDBu0A-e

Using full celestial, with sigil of stars and runes of the traveler you have about 2700 armor,  22k hp, 1250 condi dmg (with 10 might), 73% crit chance (with fury), 210% crit dmg bonus, 770 healing power, some* 60% condi duration (80% burning, 100% with weaver prowess) and some* 80% boom duration. 

* estimations as the builder is not yet updated.

 

These are very good stats and I can see with some changes in the build it can work very well.

Mostly I'd use dagger offhand instead of focus to use the burst, and look at dropping arcane for air to increase crit dmg (up to 250% crit dmg) and make better use of all that crit chance. Could also go water instead of air for the raw dmg mods and healing. There can be a good combo there with piercing shards stacking vuln (with water/earth or earth/air dual skills) and then using flame grab win water/fire for maximum burst.

 

Celestial is looking good, but not really for the fire weaver build...

[Make Tempest a viable support - Move aurashare to tempest line!]

16 hours ago, Erick Alastor.3917 said:

Interesting suggestions, but I wouldn't swap Elemental Bastion and Powerful Aura. 
Since they need eachothers to really shine.

They really don't.

They only need each other if you want to use auras to heal your team. 

You could still share auras for buffs (offensive buffs if you spec in fire/air, defensive if you spec earth/water).

Or you could use auras just for yourself (by not going tempest, or not using aura-share trait) to get more sustain (water with aura heal, earth with protection and stab) or any other other of the traits (more burst and mobility with air, more dmg with fire).

 

And yes, I fully agree that regen and vigor from auras should be also in water in some form.
Tempest should be about overloads and big AoE (AoE auras, AoE buffs, AoE effects).

This and other suggestions HERE.