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

[Puck.3697]

What if we get conjures done right. 

Attunements go, replaced with the ability to summon weapons with different abilities and we effectively become arcane. 

So Ur able to summon a arcane longbow, Greatsword, Sword and shield, Staff. 

It would uphold the normal flexibility for our active defensives with a proper set of melee abilities. On the back of a completely new mechanic which would be completely unique to anything staff brings? 

That would be a ranged specc unlike staff no? 

Weapon would be main hand focus, and function as a 2 handed weapon as our hands would be filled by the summoned weapon. 

[volca.7234]

18 hours ago, Grimjack.8130 said:

Its really not about the Elite spec having a Melee or a Ranged focus. Its about your ranged variants sucking. Elite specs give everything on a class a new way to play, this means if you have viable ranged builds you have new ways of playing them, but Ele doesn't.

Scepter sucks and has been turned into a 1shot weapon in sPvP and can only see play on one of the 4 specs thanks to the brutal overnerfing of Electric Discharge. Staff has been unusable in PvP *forever* and left to rot and whittle away with its far too long of CDs and skills that do the same thing but in a different attunement.

In WvW Scepter is especially bad without every nerf that has come to PvP happening in WvW too. Its fallen even farther behind due to powercreep. Staff may be viable in Zergs but even then its not meta and not even remotely comparable to DH or Herald's impact.

You can't play Core Ele as a ranged spec because Staff and Scepter suck.

You can't play Tempest as a ranged spec because Staff and Scepter suck.

You can barely play Weaver as a ranged spec because Staff and Scepter suck.

You can't play Catalyst as a ranged spec because Staff and Scepter suck.

It's not just about if an Elite Spec gives you a ranged weapon or not, it would be foolish to not say that would encourage more of an incentive to be a ranged spec, but its not even close to the only or main reason.

 

PS. Hammers kit is surprisingly solid, and can see play in PvP and even WvW(15s/20s) if it gets the needed defensive buffs, especially if ranges on Fire/Air go up to 900 perhaps.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

We dont need another Ranged weapon because we have Staff. XD No we dont have staff... Staff is like fighting barehand and naked...

Atleast in Player versus Player content Staff is completly useless. And for PvE Sword is just straight up better in every single way.

But its k! we dont need ranged! we have Staff ❤️ #MakeStaffGreatAgain

 

Both of these posts do not engage with the subject of the thread at all, Here we aren't talking about balance how strong a weapon is or how viable it is, we are talking about the PLAYSTYLE of the weapon, The game loop under constraint of the game engine tech and the game meta-balance, so yeh i do agree maybe staff needs a buff here and there and maybe more encounters that actually takes advantage of its distance control run and gun playstyle rather than fighting stationary target, as for scepter it is a really good spike dps weapon its just under current game balance you can get higher dps spike with less risk on other classes and builds.

Again please understand the purpose of this thread, its not about balance, i do agree current balance isn't a 10, its about the metagame of playstyle risk vs reward under the hood design of the weapons.

 

 

6 hours ago, skunkstank.6128 said:

Ok so first things first ... it would be boring to play at range? If you truly think that i really want to know what your opinion is on the new engi spec because although it gets mace the mech is going to be the biggest part of any build for that spec and it will basically transform the spec into a range spec. Also why would it be ok for every single class in the game to have a viable range build and only eli the class that was supposed to represent the mage class be the only one left out.

I mean i agree in part that there is no need for a new ranged weapon but a buff or revamp on staff and scepter would already make a lot of difference in build variety and strength.

4 hours ago, Mik.3401 said:

I think like an Archanist being able to wield longbow and use only chosen 2 elements along with weapon switch would be cool as hell allowing switching between ranged and melee.

ranged being boring is only your perspective. There are millions of ways to implement it. That longbow idea here took me 1 minute surely if a dedicated class/balance gram worked on it for a while they would come up with some great ranged spec.

I NEVER SAID RANGED IS BORING. I said A NEW ranged option would be boring because we already got the ranged DPS space covered by staff scepter warhorn and focus

On the Archanist: The main issue with your proposal is the fact that nothing is in the idea of 2 attunments 2 weapons inherently needs or must be ranged DPS infact it kinda promote hybrid range playstyle of long range weapon + close range weapon, so it goes against the idea of a new long ranged DPS weapon, and since ele has more ranged DPS weapons rather than melee(only dagger in base ele) the Archanist MUST COME WITH A MELEE WEAPON and not be in the dagger space of meleeDPS-bruise sustain, something like uhhhh THE CURRENT IMPLEMENTATION OF HAMMER since its hybrid range is flexible to be paired with either a melee weapon or a ranged one.

On the Mechanist: i am not familiar with the engie metagame to comment on it.

Edited February 14, 2022 by volca.7234

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

There must be a deeper reason to why they dont make a ranged weapon on ele... because there is SO many good ideas. Either they dont play ele and dont notice that we are  missing a good ranged weapon (Ranged should be the standard version of a elemental caster in my books) or they fear that it wont be usefull in PvE content... as a majority of the playerbase is PvE and they need a selling point for the expansions. They tend to tailor everything towards a pve Community.. i even think they said they havent desigend EoD specs with PvP/WvW in mind... so they officialy stated that...

I think part of the problem why Elementalist doesn't get a ranged weapon is that they players early on basically decided that stacking is the correct way to play. Arenanet tried to combat that (the best example would be the numerous reworks of the spider boss in the Ascalonian Catacombs), but gave up and embraced stacking for most parts.

Most other professions can have ranged weapons for elite specializations, because weapon swap during combat exists, so they can have a melee weapon alongside a ranged specialization weapon. The lack of weapon swap during combat possibly is the reason why Elementalists and Engineers only get melee weapons to have the best possible performance when stacking. Jokesworn can serve as further proof of this idea, since it also lacks a real weapon swap out of combat (for no real reason) and the pistol turned out to be yet another melee weapon for a specialization without weapon swap.

So I think that the way for Elementalists to get a ranged weapon would be a specialization that enables weapon swap in combat. A possible trade-off would then be that Attunements can only swapped out of combat. This way, players can have both a new ranged weapon and a the elite specialization gives a play style that is not represented in core or any elite specializations: commitment to one attunement.

This would definitely be actual fresh air for playing Elementalist (unlike that trait that went stale after being over-used), as well as bringing in closer to how Elementalist was in GW1.

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Trident!

Theme everything around water (Fire attunement has Lava-like style; Water is water obviously; Air can be Mist or straight up electriccharged water ;earth has some...idk..small boulders being within the water(those skills would be the hardhitting ones because... Flippinrocks in a strong waterstream HURT).

Shouldn't that idea make the Fire Attunement consist of boiling water and steam abilities? Lava is closer to molten rock than anything water-related. Air could be themed around storms with hail and lightning (since lightning is related to small ice particles in clouds). Earth could be themed around mud, with access to poison.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

i think part of the melee hate for elementalist is because of all the minor master traits in the element lines. swapping to fire, earth and water all provide point blank AoE spells. even though most of the base weapons have some range. (secondly, most e-specs are designed around frontline combat, which adds to the hate) 

 

[SUGGESTION] these need to be reworked into 1200-range small AoE spells that provide their buffs (if any) to the elementalist and its close proximity allies.

 

such as: the water trait spell should apply a small AoE chill around the target, and siphon health to the elementalist. the animation could show the ele sucking water out of the target, and if the animated water passes through an ally, than the buff / effect also gets applied to the ally.

 

the earth spell (since it's animation is an explosion of a shockwave) should also pushback enemy target within 1200 range.

 

the fire spell (sunspot) can simply be applied on target instead of on the caster.

[Jski.6180]

I think ranged is the better way to go for the ele class as it has no means of swapping wepon in combat and sadly you cant make a "melee" wepon able to do ranged yet you can make a ranged wepon do melee. Things like dagger and sword and soon to be hammer will always have less use because of there range limitation then say staff and scepter. Maybe if conja weapons ever become a real tool for ranged attk but that would be a lot of updating that i just dont see anet ever doing.

[Infusion.7149]

Even if not 900+ range, some range is better for openworld which is where the majority of players are playing. I think that is why hammer was given 600 range because presumably phase shift limits are around that range. The gap closers on hammer are on 20 cooldown so regardless it isn't looking good. Have you tried to do a phase shift bounty with a sword or dagger? It's a horrible feeling and you might as well afk half the time. I don't think 600 range is even enough to range the Deimos pre-event chains, it's closer to 900 range.

In fact, playing with scepter is recommended by fast farming (an openworld focused site) and only recently was condi tempest with a dagger added.

In instanced content whenever you need to do a bomb mechanic or split off from the group (i.e. on Matthias , Keep Construct, Ai, Slothasor, Sabir, Whisper of Jormag), being relegated to a melee ranged weapon is horrible without weaponswap and doubly so if the mobility is poor on the weapon. If ele had decent sustain at range and a teleport type skill that was on par with daredevil it would also be able to do pylon duty on Qadim the Peerless for example.

Currently if you range on hammer it's more or less Hurricane of Pain (Air 2) which doesn't track the target  and has 10 cooldown, Triple Sear (Fire 4, which requires a larger hitbox that is nonmoving to hit three times) on 20 cooldown, Surging Flames (Fire 2) on 8 cooldown, and Grand Finale at 800 range which gives up all bonuses from the circling jade orbs. There's no cleave or piercing on fire and air auto whatsoever which is horrible outside of instanced single boss content.

edit: For comparison under quickness:

• Guardian scepter auto is up to 400ms or so , official cast time is 0.5s. The power coefficient is 0.6 in PVE and 0444 in PVP/WVW. Keep in mind it is 900 range and after some nerfs to make sword+GS the power weapons.
• Revenant Shortbow auto is up to 490ms or so, official cast time is 0.5s. Power coefficient is 0.65 in PVE and 0.44 in PVP/WWVW with bleeding. This is 900 range.
• Ranger axe auto (Ricochet) can take up to 600ms even if official cast time is 0.5s , 0.8 coefficient in PVE / 0.533 in PVP and WVW. This is 900 range.
• Singeing Strike (fire auto) if you don't cancel the animation can take up to 760+ms. The official cast time is 0.5s so there's a huge aftercast unmitigated by quickness. Coefficient is 0.67 (plus burning) in PVE and 0.50 in PVP/WVW. That makes no sense really as you want more hits for burning from traits.
• Wind Slam (air auto) can take up to 690ms if you don't cancel animation even if the supposed base cast time is 0.75s. Last known as 0.73 coefficient in PVE / 0.6 in PVP and WVW. For a skill with 600 range , lame damage, no cleave or vulnerability/weakness or anything at all that's horrid.
• Even elementalist's own fire scepter auto (Flame Strike) takes about 640ms under quickness and is 900 range , the official cast time is 0.75s. This does 0.6 power coefficient in all modes and has burning.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Jski.6180]

12 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Even if not 900+ range, some range is better for openworld which is where the majority of players are playing. I think that is why hammer was given 600 range because presumably phase shift limits are around that range. The gap closers on hammer are on 20 cooldown so regardless it isn't looking good. Have you tried to do a phase shift bounty with a sword or dagger? It's a horrible feeling and you might as well afk half the time. I don't think 600 range is even enough to range the Deimos pre-event chains, it's closer to 900 range.

In fact, playing with scepter is recommended by fast farming (an openworld focused site) and only recently was condi tempest with a dagger added.

In instanced content whenever you need to do a bomb mechanic or split off from the group (i.e. on Matthias , Keep Construct, Ai, Slothasor, Sabir, Whisper of Jormag), being relegated to a melee ranged weapon is horrible without weaponswap and doubly so if the mobility is poor on the weapon. If ele had decent sustain at range and a teleport type skill that was on par with daredevil it would also be able to do pylon duty on Qadim the Peerless for example.

Currently if you range on hammer it's more or less Hurricane of Pain (Air 2) which doesn't track the target  and has 10 cooldown, Triple Sear (Fire 4, which requires a larger hitbox that is nonmoving to hit three times) on 20 cooldown, Surging Flames (Fire 2) on 8 cooldown, and Grand Finale at 800 range which gives up all bonuses from the circling jade orbs. There's no cleave or piercing on fire and air auto whatsoever which is horrible outside of instanced single boss content.

Its not just the ranged though its about how the attks work on hammer even though its 600 they are set type of attks they come from low and mostly travel along the ground daggers has 2 ranged attks like this as well and it very hard to make them work as ranged attks for non melee hit-able mobs. Its an issues anet never fixed and it holds the ele class back a lot where they should have a type of ranged ish attk.

I say turn water 1 on dagger 180 so its flying disk and make the fire 1 dragon claw into a "flying by dragon hit" not one coming form the ground. Air 1 on hammer needs to start at the center of the player not the players feet fire 1 i think is ok on hammer i not realty tryed it out for an ranged attk.

[Mik.3401]

5 hours ago, volca.7234 said:

 

Both of these posts do not engage with the subject of the thread at all, Here we aren't talking about balance how strong a weapon is or how viable it is, we are talking about the PLAYSTYLE of the weapon, The game loop under constraint of the game engine tech and the game meta-balance, so yeh i do agree maybe staff needs a buff here and there and maybe more encounters that actually takes advantage of its distance control run and gun playstyle rather than fighting stationary target, as for scepter it is a really good spike dps weapon its just under current game balance you can get higher dps spike with less risk on other classes and builds.

Again please understand the purpose of this thread, its not about balance, i do agree current balance isn't a 10, its about the metagame of playstyle risk vs reward under the hood design of the weapons.

 

 

I NEVER SAID RANGED IS BORING. I said A NEW ranged option would be boring because we already got the ranged DPS space covered by staff scepter warhorn and focus

On the Archanist: The main issue with your proposal is the fact that nothing is in the idea of 2 attunments 2 weapons inherently needs or must be ranged DPS infact it kinda promote hybrid range playstyle of long range weapon + close range weapon, so it goes against the idea of a new long ranged DPS weapon, and since ele has more ranged DPS weapons rather than melee(only dagger in base ele) the Archanist MUST COME WITH A MELEE WEAPON and not be in the dagger space of meleeDPS-bruise sustain, something like uhhhh THE CURRENT IMPLEMENTATION OF HAMMER since its hybrid range is flexible to be paired with either a melee weapon or a ranged one.

On the Mechanist: i am not familiar with the engie metagame to comment on it.

But wait, for instance core Mesmer has only one melee weapon too and it is doing great as hybrid ranged/melee combo in many different scenarios (not so much in PvE endgame but in there melee is the only option period so well). I did not state it must come with ranged weapon, but I do think it is a possibility. Dagger may not be the best weapon in the world but it has both power and condi uses.

I think staff and scepter are not the only ultimate applications for ranged gameplay for elementalist. They satisfy max range power or support and mid range single target spike or some condi niches respectively. What about 1200 condi weapon for instance? Like if you compare staff/GS on Mesmer or Staff/GS on ranger these are completely different play styles. 

[scerevisiae.1972]

On 2/13/2022 at 12:42 AM, volca.7234 said:

How will you make a ranged kit that differentiate itself from staff

Funnily enough, had hammer actually been a 600-range weapon, it could have. However what hammer actually turned out to be is a 2/3rds melee weapon with a few short-ranged skills.

Which was kittening stupid cause we ALREADY HAD dagger/sword.

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

Funnily enough, had hammer actually been a 600-range weapon, it could have. However what hammer actually turned out to be is a 2/3rds melee weapon with a few short-ranged skills.

Which was kittening stupid cause we ALREADY HAD dagger/sword.

That's true. The OP's inability to imagine a situation where a new ranged option can't exist because it doesn't differentiate itself from existing weapons is not proof it can't. 

Frankly, I see some very wide range of weapons, melee or ranged that do things that no ele weapons currently do. It's not hard to imagine either; just look at what other classes can do with ranged weapons. How has the OP concluded the Ele can't do those things too?

[Sahne.6950]

17 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Shouldn't that idea make the Fire Attunement consist of boiling water and steam abilities? Lava is closer to molten rock than anything water-related. Air could be themed around storms with hail and lightning (since lightning is related to small ice particles in clouds). Earth could be themed around mud, with access to poison.

AWESOME IDEA! I was just putting it all together in a few seconds^^

[draxynnic.3719]

A lot of what I'd say has already been said, but to address the question from a playstyle perspective rather than a balance one:

Let's start by looking at the existing ranged weapons.

Staff is a fairly 'slow' weapon, which balances that against having large areas of effect. Lava Font and Meteor Shower both rely on the enemy staying within an area for a duration. Lightning Surge has a channel (although not as long as it used to be - 1s isn't too bad, all things considered). Eruption requires that the enemy still be in the area 3s later to do anything at all (unless it triggers a combo field). That's the main damage from staff. Water is, if anything, the MOST reliant on combat remaining static, since both healing fields rely on allies staying within the field, and Ice Spike is another delayed effect.

This is a large part of the reason why staff is in the position it is now. Its characteristics are pretty much optimised for raids, where most bosses remain stationary for long periods of time if not the entire fight, and therefore these effects can get all their damage in. Prior to raids, staff was balanced on the assumption that it wouldn't get all its damage in because enemies would move (or that additional means would be needed to prevent that), so it was allowed to have higher damage than other weapons - raids, however, eventually caused it to be normalised to the performance of other weapons. Problem is, this means it comes out fairly under par in any situation where there is significant movement happening, unless the large area effects are also valuable.

Scepter has pretty much the same problem. Dragon's Tooth and Shatterstone are infamous. Even the autos get in on the action - Flamestrike requires the enemy to stay in place to get the second strike in, and Arc Lightning does half its damage in the final second of a 3.5s channel.

 

Now, I've seen arguments that this is just how the elementalist is, but I think we can look at the wide range of skills and builds available to Guild Wars 1 elementalists to see that this just isn't so (although builds based around laying down a lot of persistent fields was obviously still possible, and quite effective in the right circumstances). A ranged elementalist whose skills have more immediate effects, and thus would be more practical in the more mobile combats seen in most modes of Guild Wars 2, is not incompatible with the way the Guild Wars elementalist has been played out.

So, to take the popular idea of a bow elementalist (not necessarily my first preference, but anyway...), we can see that there are quite a few arrow-type skills already. For Fire, Lava Arrows could reappear as the autoattack, Liquid Flame could provide an area attack (perhaps rebranded as firing an arrow with a vial of liquid fire from the bow), they could Immolate a target, fire an arrow up into the air that comes down as a Meteor to knock the target down, or perform a Rodgort's Invocation (not everything has to involve firing something from a bow, after all). Water could launch Ice Spears, fire an arrow that explodes in Ice Spikes on hitting a target, and probably have a couple of support skills in there because Water. Air could work with Shock Arrow as the auto, Lightning Javelin (possibly turned into dealing extra damage if the target is using a skill rather than an interrupt), Enervating Charge for Weakness, Shell Shock for Vulnerability, and some form of mobility skill. Earth could have some form of rock projectile, fire off a Magnetic Surge, fling effects like Stoning and/or Ebon Hawke, and likely have a defensive skill or two.

Think of something less like existing elementalist ranged weapons and more like, say, ranger shortbow. Quick attacks with (near-)immediate effects, mostly single-target oriented, and highly mobile. Very different in style to the existing elementalist ranged weapons. And that's just one approach that can be taken.

 

To give hammer its due, the few ranged attacks it does have do somewhat fulfil that paradigm (which is actually to its detriment in the context of the rest of the elite spec, since Catalyst wants to trigger combos, and hammer doesn't offer many fields to combo off). But any elementalist weapon that has a mix of ranged and melee attacks and a mechanic that pushes you to cycle through all the attunements is, in practice, no more of a ranged weapon than dagger is. You're going to want to get those orbs to fire off, and that means dipping into water and earth, which means that if you want to keep doing damage while in those attunements you want to be in melee - you're basically a melee setup at this point.

A true hybrid weapon should have two attunements be ranged (and more like 900 than 600), and two being melee... but if you keep your distance and use just the ranged attunements, you should be able to still have a similar level of capability to a weaponswapping profession that has a ranged set and a melee set, but which is sticking to the ranged set. And I don't think that's something that catalyst hammer can realistically claim.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

You only have to take a look to the Heretic/Hexen games for some great ranged magic weapon ideas, including magic hands, hammers, swords, wands, bows and staffs

 

 

 

[Infusion.7149]

@draxynnic.3719, from a balance point of view rather than playstyle point of view you can sum it up in a different way.

Ranged damage is kept in check by several factors:

• Projectile nature with a travel time (see stoning, fireball , every rifle , pistol, shortbow and longbow skill in existence that isn't an AOE as well as grenade and mortar kits on engineer and dagger on virtuoso)
• Using long cooldown as a mechanism to mitigate its dominance (see meteor shower, rapid fire with 20+ second base cooldown)
• Using long cast times with a huge tell  (see meteor shower, rapid fire , piledriver, plasma beam, phase smash, unload, hunter's ward before it was buffed)
• Self root (see meteor shower, piledriver, rapid fire and rifle deadeye) which allows melee to close the gap
• Pulsed damage rather than instant (see Thunderclap on scrapper, every ranged guardian symbol, wells, etc)
• Delayed damage (see eruption and ice spike on staff, but also Thunderclap and Coalescence of Ruin to an extent)
• By using conditions as a bulk of the damage so the spike isn't instant in competitive modes
• Lowered damage at range or more damage in melee range (see Blunderbuss, splitblade)

For staff what you have is something that has generally long cast times , for scepter you don't have as many long cast times after fire auto was changed but delays on shatterstone, dragon's tooth, etc.

To make a ranged weapon dissimilar from scepter it is easy, add a higher strike damage focus and different balance mechanism. To achieve decent sustained damage on scepter currently it is possible on condition only , in PVP it's more of less some sort of fresh air spike weaver rather than sustained DPS.

Instead of AOE it (hammer/shortbow/longbow/rifle/pistol) could be more single target focused except for conditions. Any balance problem is solved then, you need only look at untraited revenant shortbow (which is not split for PVP/WVW in terms of power damage), guardian scepter+focus , thief shortbow, and rifle deadeye.
 

You can look at example I posted above in a different post as an example of even more radical differences: if you have a skill that triggers on you and a target ally simultaneously then you deal damage without being in melee and yet melee is still maximum damage (think Mirror of Ice or Double Dragon). This would make use of the scepter UI improvements. Skills that fan out will always do max damage in melee yet also have ranged capability, this is definitely not something you see on scepter, dagger (except fire auto), or staff.

GW1 Skills you mention such as Shock Arrow are 50 damage at 15 air magic on 480 health bars with 25% armor penetration, if translated to the average GW2 healthbar of 16-20K you would be looking at 1.7-2.1K damage on crit and additional +41% versus any highly armored targets from armor penetration. Lava arrows was more spammy and had 65 damage at 15 fire magic on 480 which is around 2.1K-2.7K converted to GW2. Liquid Flame had 112 damage on 480 healthbars at 15 fire magic, which is around 3.7-4.7K converted to GW2. Ebon Hawk was projectile and would be a great addition reskinning Phoenix, did 85 damage in GW1 on 480 healthbars which would be around 2.8-3.5K converted to GW2. Lastly, Obsidian Flame was an armor ignoring skill with 2s cast time and full range that was kept in check by animation and single target nature : brought to GW2 it could simply ignore barrier and protection.

[Telgum.6071]

I don't really get this attraction towards ranged. In the high end PvE you'll be playing on melee because you need to be stacked, and in competitive elementalist truly shines on melee/midrange gameplay, and has a fair gap closer potential.

No offense, but this sounds more like open world players who want to play safely like longbow rangers because they can't survive and refuse to improve. Players who I've met outside these forums are ok with hammer because of the competitive potential, as soon as it isn't gutted like most of the other hammer classes.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Telgum.6071
Typo

[Jski.6180]

4 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

I don't really get this attraction towards ranged. In the high end PvE you'll be playing on melee because you need to be stacked, and in competitive elementalist truly shines on melee/midrange gameplay, and has a fair gap closer potential.

No offense, but this sounds more like open world players who want to play safely like longbow rangers because they can't survive and refuse to improve. Players who I've met outside these forums are ok with hammer because of the competitive potential, as soon as it isn't gutted like most of the other hammer classes.

There no cost for having ranged in pve. There a cost for not having ranged in pve.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

I don't really get this attraction towards ranged. In the high end PvE you'll be playing on melee because you need to be stacked, and in competitive elementalist truly shines on melee/midrange gameplay, and has a fair gap closer potential.

What you've said is actually a large part of the reason why elementalist should get a more ranged-oriented specialisation. It already does fairly well in melee and close range with existing elite specialisations, generally by outhealing pressure as long as it can avoid having its low base health get spiked down, because that's what the existing elite specialisations are designed to do. Tripling down on that is starting to get redundant, especially when elementalist is still being presented as a "favours ranged" profession in character creation. Elite specialisations aren't supposed to just keep doing what previous elite specialisations of the same profession were already good at.

5 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

No offense, but this sounds more like open world players who want to play safely like longbow rangers because they can't survive and refuse to improve. Players who I've met outside these forums are ok with hammer because of the competitive potential, as soon as it isn't gutted like most of the other hammer classes.

There are open world bosses with abilities like phasing that make it impossible to melee, at least for some portions of the fight. Some day, it's possible that similar mechanics will be introduced to high end PvE encounters so you can't just assume that you can stack and smack everything.

[Anthony.8056]

It's funny when I think of a mage/caster class I think ranged not melee. I have no problem with melee, but I find the hammer skills to be boring. I would have thought it would be like Thor with really strong powerful attack animations, but they seem weak and reused animations. Also, the auto attacks on fire and earth don't match, they feel out of place. Sorry for going a little off topic but if we get melee at least buff or rework the ranged weapons we do have they seem dated.

[Sahne.6950]

Just putting something out there....

Shortly speaking OP said, that we dont need a range weapon because we have ranged weapons, that already fill every possible role for ranged....  Now let me turn this whole argument around 😄

New title:

A new meele spec for ele is simply both undoable and boring!     Because we already have enough meeleweapons... amirite?

[Clownmug.8357]

To me it seems more like there's a lack of effort put into ele specs. Like the devs made that Catalyst trait that encourages using combo fields but all it does is give you an aura. Could've come up with something interesting instead like a pistol spec where shooting certain skills through combo fields upgrades them into different forms, like fire field splits a bullet into shrapnel or air field makes bullets bounce with chain lightning.

[Teratus.2859]

The issue isn't so much a lack of ranged ability, although I do agree this area of Ele could be better.

The problem is that Ele's are locked into whatever weapon they have when combat starts and thus lack the ability to swap between range and melee play efficiently like pretty much all other classes can.

In other words they are forced to play range or melee where as options exist on every other class to jump between both.
Unless you use the conjure weapons of course, though that requires sacrificing a useful utility skill so.. yeah.

This isn't an argument for giving Ele in combat weapon swap though, I absolutely agree that this would be ridiculously overpowered.
But I am saying that there needs to be more variety in the elemental attunement skills when it comes to some skills being range and some being melee rather than relying on the weapon deciding whether the skills are ranged or melee.

I made a post somewhere a few days back talking about how it would be really good to have a multiple choice of skills for weapons that gives the player the option to decide things like if they wanted to sacrifice damage to increase the size and target cap of some AoE skills, or remove or add conditions at the benefit or cost of power damage, or to give up some damage in order to make a multi hit skill (like Hundred Blades) usable while moving etc.

Such an upgrade could be used very well on elementalist to give people more choice and better the ability to switch between Range and Melee play in combat.
Perhaps you choose to take Melee Dagger skills on Fire and Air attunement and ranged dagger skills on water and earth attunement.
I would love this personally and if we had something like this then you basically solved the ele range problem without needing to break the class with in combat weapon swap.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Telgum.6071]

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

What you've said is actually a large part of the reason why elementalist should get a more ranged-oriented specialisation. It already does fairly well in melee and close range with existing elite specialisations, generally by outhealing pressure as long as it can avoid having its low base health get spiked down, because that's what the existing elite specialisations are designed to do. Tripling down on that is starting to get redundant, especially when elementalist is still being presented as a "favours ranged" profession in character creation. Elite specialisations aren't supposed to just keep doing what previous elite specialisations of the same profession were already good at.

There are open world bosses with abilities like phasing that make it impossible to melee, at least for some portions of the fight. Some day, it's possible that similar mechanics will be introduced to high end PvE encounters so you can't just assume that you can stack and smack everything.

This doesn't add up. And in terms of what may change "some day" I rather believe the actual dev team developing the stuff instead the complains of players wanting to roleplay mages.

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

This doesn't add up. And in terms of what may change "some day" I rather believe the actual dev team developing the stuff instead the complains of players wanting to roleplay mages.

I like how you mention instanced content but somehow forget there are mechanics that need specifically ranged , such as pylon kiters , pillar kite (unless you are going to max melee and everyone else stacks far tighter), messenger kite, and Sabetha flak kiters. If anything ever goes wrong or you need to do a mechanic (such as sloth poisons , Cairn CM greens, MO CM blues, Deimos oils, greens on Broken King, shackles or affliction "bomb" on Dhuum, fires on QtP, or Matthias poisons) your DPS uptime dips severely if you are melee only. That's not even including instabilities such as Social Awkwardness or flux bomb.

One of the main reasons I mostly play scepter on elementalist in PVE is because having to deal with phase shift is annoying and even in fractals if someone drops a flux bomb or something on the boss, you aren't going to be standing in it for long unless you are playing marauder or some non-meta PVE gear. Look at 98CM, MAMA has an expanding ring that makes shortbow renegade and scourges effortless to play while if firebrands are nerfed you are looking at needing to move out of those rings. On Siax during the split you do more damage if fully ranged DPS because of the time to walk to each add. Look at 99CM, if you need to do anomaly it is way easier if you can take it down ranged: I've even seen some players run condi BS on Arkk so they don't need to move off the stack. That doesn't even include when you get the bomb and need to get in the dome. On 100CM if you decide to play elementalist it's actually far easier on condi scepter than on any sword weaver build due to the splits and movement.

If you look at common builds outside of power warrior (where rifle is underwhelming and typically not seen), pretty much every class has a 900 range option as a weaponswap:
* Power guard has greatsword and scepter+focus (33K+)/ longbow (34K+), firebrand uses axe along with scepter+torch (900 range)  , cele HB uses axe+torch and staff (1200 range)
* Condi renegade has shortbow 900 range and mace+axe, camping shortbow is 33-36K+ DPS depending on single or double shortbow ; there's a hand kite with hammer (1200 range) + staff
* condi BS has sword+torch along with longbow (1200 range)
* Just about every DPS engineer in PVE runs grenade kit without question, which is 900 range with AOE
* Necro has axe+dagger or axe+focus (900 range) and greatsword if reaper ; all condi variants have 900 range scepter / pistol
* Ranger has axe x2 + greatsword or axe x2 + longbow as a common use as well as dagger+torch with longbow or axe mainhand hybrids ; single shortbow is ~33K
* Condi mirage has "staxe" build doing 37K+ (staff , axe+torch) , StM chrono has sword+sword or sword+focus along with greatsword (1200 range)
* Thief has shortbow as a swap for all variants , but usually staff + shortbow or pistols as a swap and condi variants usually are 900 range

So yes I think hammer ought to be 900 range when you swap to the ranged portion if they're trying to emulate a weaponswap. A 20s cooldown gap closer with 600 range in water attunement isn't going to change that.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[ScottBroChill.3254]

On 2/12/2022 at 10:44 AM, volca.7234 said:

No, melee unlike range is a high risk playstyle since you are in the dmg range of all types of dmg, ranged or melee; so the sustain part of it is inherently more interactive since the "maintain distance" strat is no longer an option for balance reasons

And simply saying make "make it condi" not only doesn't get you out of the  "distance control" playstyle of the staff, but the condition usage here is arbitrary and doesn't serve a bigger gameplay role, Usually conditions are used to imply a possibility of delayed kill "Much like how mirage uses this delayed kill idea to encourage a playstyle where you swap targets with axe 3 skill just before your first target dies from the condi to keep up your illusions at max as a reward", it doesn't slot in the 1200 range playstyle in any meaningful way by your simplistic description.

My issue is that every melee ele build ends up the same; shove as much survival as you can on the build and try to outsustain the enemy. It's fun to have that as a playstyle option but not as the only option. And also, why does the ranged option have to be thye top dps option? it obviously isn't, but we have no good weapon for open world or anything that requires distance anymore because staff mechanics are kinda archaic and don't fit into the more mobile and aggressive game we have today. It's slow, clunky, and sijnce it's power damage everything can just walk out of the aoe circles and not worry about it. The reason I said make it condi is because we already have 2 power ranged options, scepter i guess is hybrid if you consider that but it's really only useful as a power damage 1 shot build. The one shot potential is another reason why scepter sucks so hard, can't make the rest of the weapon that strong if you can cheese a bunch of no cast time skills together. A condi long range weapon can also hit with an instant aoe attack but still have the damage over time effect without requiring the enemy to stay in a spot. 

What ele needs is a useful all around weapon that has range so we don't have to build the same build every time. We need something we can kite with that is also threatening enough, but isn't held back by the rare "potential" of random meteor shower attacks on large hitboxes, and has more damage spreadout through the attunements instead of having all the damage slammed into fire attunement. Other classes have other unique ranged options that work well. Heck, even renegade has a ranged weapon that is basically taken on every build now because it's such a useful weapon so don't pretend like ranged can't be good "because balance". 

 

Rather confused on why people think staff on ele has used up every possible idea that could ever be made for a ranged elementalist attack. Idk if you've seen what anet has done but they have made a hammer you throw at people, throwing axes, and bow that shoots through portals, a greatsword that shoots laser beams, but I guess all four natural elements are just pidgeonheld by lack of ideas. 

[Serephen.3420]

I'm kinda in the middle ground on this debate to be honest. Though I am glad we got a new two handed weapon at last.

When I heard about hammer I was thinking about and hoping for something more like this. While it wasn't my first choice for a weapon I'm just glad we didn't get torch or rifle/single pistol.😅

https://youtu.be/BYRAGtJnnoM

 

Maybe rework staff as full cc and support and make a new dps option like a longbow that is a bit more mobile friendly. 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Serephen.3420