[Great weapons feature for the next expansion?]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Flipside of that, though, is that elementalist weapon skills are usually individually weaker than other professions and/or only half of them work with your build, you've got no ability to customise in order to build synergies or contingencies that aren't built into the weapon, conjures are mostly too clunky to be much more than a gimmick, and elementalist utilities aren't all that great.

People pay a lot of attention to that big scary 20-26 weapon skills number, and don't consider how much elementalist has already given up for the sake of a number that might, if anything, be hindering more than it helps.

Thank you so much for this reply. This really touches on a class philosophy that I've had issue with elementalist as a profession for so long. It necessitates the piano playing playstyle of the profession which for some is rewarding but for others frustrating and it invalidates the use of certain elements by design given that certain attunements will result in drastic lowering of dps. The profession just seems so kitten when it has 4 elemental attunements but only really 2 elemental skill sets it can use at a time to put damage out. I'm not really an elementalist. I'm a pyromancer dabbling in some earth or lightening. 

[They really hate us, huh.]

Anyone else disappointed by the balance update for ele? 

[Redacted]

Redacted

[So, come Tuesday, aka patch day, what are people hoping for? Just be basic...]

Some love for ele pistol and some more trait changes to set up a complete restructure of our outdated traitlines (looking at you, Water).

[Big Fail! Pistol is the worst weapon.]

1 hour ago, CafPow.1542 said:

This really never gets old huh?

reroll then?

>“nooo i’d rather wanna make ele like the others reee!“

I feel like this is slightly reductive. It's clear many ele players play ele because of the class fantasy. Asking them to reroll defeats the whole purpose of why they were drawn to elementalist originally. 

It isn't unreasonable to be asking for a simple variant of an elementalist playstyle given the breadth of opportunity the design team has had for new weapons and elite specialisations. 

[The bullet mechanic with pistols]

4 hours ago, Tinker.6924 said:

Comparing pistol to scepter, since both are very similar condi-oriented, pistol just comes across janky and since nothing is straight up better with pistol, it comes across as overall worse.  pistol 2/3 abilities without bullets feel weaker than scepter 2/3, but with bullets pistol 2/3 is only on par, maybe slightly better.  Good luck seeing the bullet boon in it's random location among all your other boons.  The lack of predictability just makes it an overall worse choice.

They should have just done away with the bullet mechanic entirely and combined the "no bullet" and "bullet" effects into a single thing. That may have still created a very interesting weapon.

Or made the 1-skill a bullet generator and the 2 and 3 skills bullet spenders.  For example, you fired your 1 skill 4 times and "loaded 4 bullets" now you can activate your 2 and 3 skills a total of 4 times before you are out of bullets.  Possibly even simplifying things further by just having a "bullet" and not a "fire bullet", "ice bullet", etc... Fire your 1 Fire skill 3 times, hit 2-fire, then 3-fire switch to earth, and immediately be able to use 2 or 3 earth.

I love this idea. Borrowing ideas from Thief initiative for skill augments!

[Can we please improve water attunement?]

On 8/20/2022 at 4:14 PM, Sifu.9745 said:

Water Attunement should be healing and support only. NO dmg at all! Now only Staff do some nice healing in Watter, all other weapons are more or less doing nothing in Water: very low dmg and some useless defensive buffs + one or two useless healing spells.

Just take a look at Firebrand  for example, that's how healing and support should look like: F2 (Tome of Resolve) provides only healing and support spells, no dmg and stupid Vulnerability at all. Why Elementalist has to do dmg in Water attunement is beyond my understanding.

Water elementalists had respectable damage and were capable of some fantastic AoE and CC in GW1 and that is a class fantasy still missing from our current elementalist class in GW2. With the introduction of bleed conditions in the water attunement for pistols, I'm huffing copium that the design team might be slowly working in the back to allow for single or dual attunement options in the future that aren't pigeon holed by role. 

Just let me throw tsunami waves and ice shards in end game content without it hamstringing my squad, @Cal Cohen.2358!

[Pistols Grant Elementalists the Choice between Greater Damage and Defense]

12 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

In principle, I can agree with your sentiment. In practice, though, I see a few issues coming up:

First, like hammer, they've introduced a mechanic that seems to offer a benefit for cycling through all the attunements. Unlike hammer, it's not necessarily the ideal way of using it as opposed to spending the bullets 'in attunement', but they do seem to have taken into account the possibility that players might do so.

Similarly, elite specialisations might want you to cycle elements. Weaver has Weave Self. Catalyst will probably want to drop the air sphere every so often.

Third, they could have made a 'utility' attunement without it being such a clear 'kitten you'. If pistol wasn't designated as a condition weapon, one could see it as a position where the DPS attunements you use depends on whether you're going conditions or power - but given that designation, it's unlikely to be a suitable weapon for power builds. Under that circumstance, they could have made air a 'utility' attunement but still given it some conditions so it's less of a drop. Or they could have given confusion to air, and calibrated it so that air is better against fast-attacking opponents and weaker against slow-attacking opponents, encouraging the player to change their attunement use depending on what they're up against. Now that could have been interesting.

Last but certainly far from least:

This isn't the only time air attunement has been shafted.

Staff air is already a 'utility' attunement regardless of whether you're running power or conditions. The autoattack is bad, skill 2 seems to be primarily an area blind skill with the damage being secondary, and everything else does no damage. Scepter air is decent for a power build, but that's fallen out of favour outside of the sPvP Fresh Air spike build, due to being powercrept by other options (including condi sceptre). It's a bit tiring to see another ranged weapon where fire and earth are the designated primary attunements. Striking people with lightning at range is part of the elementalist fantasy - it would be nice to have more options to do that than just sceptre with its long ramp-up time.

Your final line definitely resonated with me as a long time GW1 Elementalist and how I have bemoaned the loss of specialising in an element such as Water attunement for the class fantasy. The forcing of having to almost always use fire and earth as damaging attunements is getting boring after so long. 

[Can we please improve water attunement?]

Thanks everyone for the wonderful comments on this post. Some really creative discussions and I was taken aback by how easy it could be to male the water traitline more interesting. Reaper was able to functionally utilise chill as a damage applying condition. Why can't elementalist have something similar or play into vulnerability a bit more. 

 

The core fact is that playing attunement swap elementalist feels bad because of how overspecialised the attunements are. There are so many ideas the devs could get looking at how water attunement skills from GW1 performed. Why not have water weapon skills that deal bonus AoE damage if a target is already inflicted with chill à la fire ele's bonus damage with burning. 

 

The class fantasy of a water elementalist being able to perform respectable damage is just one that I feel is sorely missing from the game. 

[August 23 Balance Update Preview]

I do think these are some excellent patch notes - especially from an Ele perspective so there's nothing but respect from me here. 
That being said I do feel as if this patch doesn't quite fix some of the major issues Elementalist has as a profession. Namely, I find it strange that still to this day, elemental attunements are focused on specifically one type of function. This seems to be part of the core philosophy that the elementalist needs to cycle through different attunements unlike in GW2 where elementalists usually specialised. This is at odds then with builds that are of a specific function such as DPS where attuning to Water in most cases represents a sizeable DPS loss (and removes a class fantasy where a water elementalist is just as equally capable of damaging foes as fire elementalists but I digress).  Or consider Heal Support builds which currently only Tempest contains viable endgame builds where there is a natural pressure to stay within Water attunement to benefit from sustained healing yet Elementalists are punished for camping the Water attunement. 

 

I think each attunement should have clear DPS and support skills in each of the attunements if the philosophy of Elementalists being forced to switch between all the attunements is to stay. Or there needs to be a fundamental change in the trait lines (which all mostly provide their benefits only within respective attunements) to allow for for universally enjoyable play around attunement swapping or camping. 

 

I just want me kitten water mage using Mirror of Ice, Shatterstone, Glowing Ice and Mind Freeze. So many fond memories of being a specialised Elementalist!

[Can we please improve water attunement?]

This is mostly just a post inspired the latest bunch of changes for elementalist which has deadened my resolve to continue my favourite flavoured class. 

 

Can we please stop with the trope of each element having a particular combat niche such as water being associated with healing? It reduces the amount of fun the class has access to and with gorgeous and deadly water animations from Soo-Won, it just seems so old fashioned and conceptually flawed. Locking damage and healing around particular attunements seems to be doing more harm than good when players are then forced to only spend time in certain attunements.

[[Suggestion] Spellhunter Elite Specialization]

Hey John, I really love the effort put into this. I particularly love the flipping of support/damage between fire and water attunements which is something I've been craving for years now. The concept of avatars is a really awesome one - i'd love to be able to channel some of the Djinn magic that we've come to see.

[[Suggestion] Water DPS trait/skills for Elementalist]

As a long time water elementalist player from GW1, it's so frustrating for me to see how disparate the traits for the water line are. I understand that developers have tried to make water the "support/healing/utility" attunement but even then, most of this utility and support comes from runes and stats rather than skills themselves. I'd genuinely be ecstatic if the developers brought back the ice dps themes from GW1 which made water such a wonderful attunement to play and could be so easily implemented with water traitlines that allow dps to occur on inflicting conditions like chill or vulnerability. If reaper can get some frost-themed love, I'm sure water elementalists can get that too!