Specialist: Could a single/dual attumement elite work?

[Zunki.3916]

Maybe VERY UNPOPULAR idea but I just had the "shower though" of a way to make a non/reduced attunement swap ele possible:

Elite spec with the downside that you lose all attunement that you did not have the traitline for.

• You could have a minimum of one and a maximum of two attunements available by design (either take arcane + element or 2 elements = meaningful decision)
• You would get weapon swap as an upside
• Every trait that activates on attunement swap would also activate on weapon swap (just like every effect that activates on weapon swap also activates on attunement swap already)
• The new elite might boost all dmg of chosen attunements and further reduce cd (has to be balanced around this ofc)

I think that this could actually work and change how elementalist plays in a meaningful way. Also it does not need a complete rebalance of all weapons as they are balanced around having multiple attunements availabe. If you take them away you can increase the power of everything with the elite mechanic.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Zunki.3916

[Jski.6180]

It would be very hard to make the F1-4 into something else i would image. I think the better tick would be to have 1 wepon set with add on effects base off of your current atument. So you could be an all in on one atument with out losing the ability to swap to other atuments for there added effects only.

Its like asking could you remove an wepon swap from an class or could you simply remove an class F1-4 comply.

[Fueki.4753]

It definitely can work. In fact, one-Element play styles already work with the current designs, so an elite specialization focussing on that is far from impossible.

Lock attunement swapping in combat (or make it a substantially higher cooldown) and give that specialization access to in-combat weapon swap (Junksworn losing in-combat weapon swap is proof that it also is possible to give it to Elementalist via a specialization).

Attributes can be raised via trait choices.

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[soulknight.9620]

Good news, the class u are looking for already exists - revenant. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

The main problem is that the devs specifically force the ele to constantly change attunements. Tempest, Weaver and catalyst traits all simply force the player to continuously swap attunements or lose ~20-30% dps.

 

I'm not sure wether the single/dual attunement idea would be good though. Anet's balance between the elements has been lackluster at best. A double fire skillbar is atm kinda OP.  In order for this to work i feel like all attunements should be somewhat equally viable for this to work. Air attunement for example has been complete kitten for like 6 years now (except somewhat for sword)

[Infusion.7149]

Or they could just give up water attunement... since most builds don't get damage out of it whatsoever. I'm not sure why you would want a single attunement or double attunement ele. You can already do that more or less with single attunement condi tempest or dual attunement weaver (power fire+air or condi fire+earth).

[Kaleban.9834]

I've been harping on this since release.

The Ele should not be balanced around "stance dancing" with attunements.

Instead, purpose build each attunement.

 

Fire: AoE + Burning

Air: Single Target + Vulnerability

Water: Healing + Boons

Earth: Breakbar + Defense

 

No Attunement cooldowns, you'd have access to each attunement whenever you needed it. The flipside is that Water and Earth do ZERO damage, both attunements are for utility, healing and CC. You'd use each attunement for when it makes sense, such as Fire for AoE/zerging, Air against bosses, Water for healing teammates and Earth for stunning and deflections/blocks.

 

The weapons then modify primarily the range at which you attack (i.e. Staff 1500 range, Dagger 180, etc.) and also the Area of Effect (Staff widest range, Dagger 1v1 Dueler, etc.). Then ANet can balance damage numbers, boon duration and everything else around the idea that an Ele player isn't going to be blasting through all four attunements to maximize damage, and certainly not nerf the profession because one guy from SnowCrows plays it like it's Dragonforce.

[Fueki.4753]

3 hours ago, Kaleban.9834 said:

The flipside is that Water and Earth do ZERO damage, both attunements are for utility, healing and CC.

This would be horrible for people who want to specifically play ice mages, water mages or earth-related mages.

And no attunement cooldowns still means you'd be expected to regularly flip through them all, which is not what this thread is about.

And why would you want Earth to be the CC attunement anyway? Air would be more fitting with launches, stuns, etc in addition to providing Vulnerability and Weakness.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Erenias.6947]

I've been working on an elite spec concept like this for a while. It's even called Specialist lol. Maybe I'll actually post it.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 9/9/2022 at 3:46 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

The main problem is that the devs specifically force the ele to constantly change attunements. Tempest, Weaver and catalyst traits all simply force the player to continuously swap attunements or lose ~20-30% dps.

Fresh air tempest can get away with spending more than 90% of its time in air attunement. I think tempest does deserve some credit for giving an incentive for spending more than 3-4 seconds in an attunement before switching.

On 9/9/2022 at 3:46 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

 

I'm not sure wether the single/dual attunement idea would be good though. Anet's balance between the elements has been lackluster at best. A double fire skillbar is atm kinda OP.  In order for this to work i feel like all attunements should be somewhat equally viable for this to work. Air attunement for example has been complete kitten for like 6 years now (except somewhat for sword)

Dagger air is also pretty good, mostly for the strength of the autoattack. But yes, I could see the proposal creating a solved problem far too easily. Most roles and weapons have two attunements that are clearly the best for a particular role: usually fire and earth for condi DPS, and fire and air (but not staff) for power DPS. Support is a bit less obvious when choosing two, but water is always going to be one of them if you plan to heal.

[draxynnic.3719]

Regarding the OP: The basic idea is one I've discussed with people before, and I don't think I'm the only one.

One flaw is that even with weapon swaps counting as attunement swaps, the arcane traitline is really not strong enough to be worth losing an attunement for. There are a couple of possible ways to resolve this. One is to introduce an 'arcane attunement', although that's a lot of work if it involves adding a fifth attunement to every core weapon. The alternative is to make it so that if you choose arcane you can choose your second attunement freely, using a similar interface to choosing revenant legends. A third possibility could be that if you choose arcane, you go back to being a generalist in terms of elements and give up the weaponswap, essentially becoming a specialist in the weapon.

[kiri.1467]

Sounds like the idea behind the GW1 ele.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Fresh air tempest can get away with spending more than 90% of its time in air attunement. I think tempest does deserve some credit for giving an incentive for spending more than 3-4 seconds in an attunement before switching.

True, fresh air Tempest is the exception on the rule. For any other build you still need to finish an overload every 7 seconds to maintain the 15% dps increase of transcendent Tempest. Dagger Air AA provides decent dps but dagger and the offhand weapons don't offer any significant dps skill in air. 

On top of that overload air has been significantly nerfed over the years (i believe it lost like 30-35% dps) making it a pretty weak skill. 

Dps Tempest simply is in a very bad place atm. The only dps increase Tempest offers are the overload skills and transcendent Tempest. The minor traits and adept & master major traits do not offer any dps increase

[Kaleban.9834]

20 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This would be horrible for people who want to specifically play ice mages, water mages or earth-related mages.

And no attunement cooldowns still means you'd be expected to regularly flip through them all, which is not what this thread is about.

And why would you want Earth to be the CC attunement anyway? Air would be more fitting with launches, stuns, etc in addition to providing Vulnerability and Weakness.

Well with the current system you can't play a specific water or earth mage, so the point is irrelevant.

The no attunement cooldowns means you can access each purpose built attunement when you need it. You would no longer need to cycle multiple attunements just to keep pace with DPS, as it would all be in one or at most two attunements (i.e. Fire and Air). Water thematically in most magical fiction is about healing and support, while Earth is all about blunt force, knockdowns and slams.

And I guarantee you're more likely to be stunned by a rock to the dome before a gust of wind.

[Ace.1784]

I don't like this idea just like I dislike the archer idea.

If you really get down to it, majority of Elementalist builds only use 1 or 2 attunements (i.e. Power DPS Weaver is Fire/Air, Condi Weaver DPS is Fire/Earth). This idea just removes the flexibility given to Elementalist.

Personally, I would like our next elite spec to play with the shroud mechanic.

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

True, fresh air Tempest is the exception on the rule. For any other build you still need to finish an overload every 7 seconds to maintain the 15% dps increase of transcendent Tempest. Dagger Air AA provides decent dps but dagger and the offhand weapons don't offer any significant dps skill in air. 

On top of that overload air has been significantly nerfed over the years (i believe it lost like 30-35% dps) making it a pretty weak skill. 

Dps Tempest simply is in a very bad place atm. The only dps increase Tempest offers are the overload skills and transcendent Tempest. The minor traits and adept & master major traits do not offer any dps increase

Yeah, DPS tempest has certainly had better days. Still performs fairly well in open world, but doesn't really cut it for raid DPS. That said, when it was functional, it still allows for more time in a single element than Weaver or hammer Catalyst. Even without FA, you can still do an A-B-A-C cycle.

 

6 hours ago, Ace.1784 said:

Personally, I would like our next elite spec to play with the shroud mechanic.

The 'archon mode' idea? Yeah, that has potential. Could also cover the 'specialise in an element' factor if you have four element-themed modes to choose from rather than one arcane form, but they all draw from the same resource, but that would obviously require more work. And a weapon (even if it ends up being an offhand because most of the work went into four shrouds..).

[Ace.1784]

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The 'archon mode' idea? Yeah, that has potential. Could also cover the 'specialise in an element' factor if you have four element-themed modes to choose from rather than one arcane form, but they all draw from the same resource, but that would obviously require more work. And a weapon (even if it ends up being an offhand because most of the work went into four shrouds..).

I think you may have just did something here.

Having Elemental shrouds that share the same resource (and a healthy cooldown) could allow them to create moments of play where you are in a single attunement with options for damage and support. Because it is a separate bar, there's no need to rebalance older weapons, do awkward hacks to amplify damage, or deal with awkward situations (water staff has nearly zero damage on it for example).

 

 

[LyraOrpheo.8450]

The best way to have an ele that focuses on an element instead of dancing around several is to receive a force shroud like Specter, the shroud would of course have very different skills depending on element, and would preferably be activated like Tempest's overloads where you push the element a second time instead of an F5.

[Serephen.3420]

On 9/10/2022 at 7:10 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yeah, DPS tempest has certainly had better days. Still performs fairly well in open world, but doesn't really cut it for raid DPS. That said, when it was functional, it still allows for more time in a single element than Weaver or hammer Catalyst. Even without FA, you can still do an A-B-A-C cycle.

 

The 'archon mode' idea? Yeah, that has potential. Could also cover the 'specialise in an element' factor if you have four element-themed modes to choose from rather than one arcane form, but they all draw from the same resource, but that would obviously require more work. And a weapon (even if it ends up being an offhand because most of the work went into four shrouds..).

Or a shroud for each element but balanced by sharing the same pool of I suppose arcane/elemental energy. But I suppose one arcane shroud is far more likely than thematic ones for each element. 

[draxynnic.3719]

6 minutes ago, Serephen.3420 said:

Or a shroud for each element but balanced by sharing the same pool of I suppose arcane/elemental energy. But I suppose one arcane shroud is far more likely than thematic ones for each element. 

Yeah, one arcane shroud was my initial thought, followed by the thought that if they really go for broke they could have fire, water, air, and earth shrouds. They could probably also get away with having the shrouds more specialised, since while regular elementalists are generally expected to cycle through elements, our hypothetical elemental shroud elementalist would probably want to conserve the shroud energy for whichever element is most useful for their build and circumstances. 

[Bast.7253]

11 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yeah, one arcane shroud was my initial thought, followed by the thought that if they really go for broke they could have fire, water, air, and earth shrouds. They could probably also get away with having the shrouds more specialised, since while regular elementalists are generally expected to cycle through elements, our hypothetical elemental shroud elementalist would probably want to conserve the shroud energy for whichever element is most useful for their build and circumstances. 

I’ve always wanted a transform type ele spec. Having a shroud could be cool. 
 

if not a longbow pet class that’s easy like mech a shroud could be cool. 
 

I wish they’d do more for these shrouds than just make them dark though, like giving a form similar to lich form or something. 
 

But yeah, I think an arcane attunement could work at least. Then give utility skills that let you augment abilities. I know we have augments with catalyst but they’re pretty meh. 
 

either way I’d love a more traditional casting spec and I think shroud might be the only way to do that without sacrificing too much sustain

 

Why do engis get the laser beam super Saiyan skills and we don’t? I want to throw a planet sized meteor at people. 🥹

 

going full into the arcane/celestial theme could be cool. Like stargazer or astromancer or something. 
 

then give us a gravity well as a shroud skill so we can trap harbs for payback.

[draxynnic.3719]

Celestial theme could be fun, yes. GW1 had the Starburst skill, and sun aspect Zephyrites have a few celestial-themed skills, so there's definitely precedent.

(One of my hopes, in fact, has been for ArenaNet to come up with a fourth Aspect - Crystal, perhaps - and do a Zephyrite-themed Elementalist elite specialisation. That they haven't done so yet, though, unfortunately means they probably won't.)

[Serephen.3420]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Celestial theme could be fun, yes. GW1 had the Starburst skill, and sun aspect Zephyrites have a few celestial-themed skills, so there's definitely precedent.

(One of my hopes, in fact, has been for ArenaNet to come up with a fourth Aspect - Crystal, perhaps - and do a Zephyrite-themed Elementalist elite specialisation. That they haven't done so yet, though, unfortunately means they probably won't.)

Well with aurene being the prismatic elder dragon, the potential for something like a prismatisist or looking at the celestials in cantha, might not be completely out of the question. Time will tell I suppose. 

[Zunki.3916]

On 9/10/2022 at 5:48 AM, Ace.1784 said:

I don't like this idea just like I dislike the archer idea.

If you really get down to it, majority of Elementalist builds only use 1 or 2 attunements (i.e. Power DPS Weaver is Fire/Air, Condi Weaver DPS is Fire/Earth). This idea just removes the flexibility given to Elementalist.

Personally, I would like our next elite spec to play with the shroud mechanic.

I completely understand. The issue is that especially weaver feels balanced around some insane 4 attunement switches and to remove this disadvantage of the balancing the idea was to remove access. Ofc a change in balance philosophy would be sufficent enough to solve this issue.

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

Well with aurene being the prismatic elder dragon, the potential for something like a prismatisist or looking at the celestials in cantha, might not be completely out of the question. Time will tell I suppose. 

Yeah, the thought has crossed my mind that Aurene could be a source for such a theme - Zephyrite powers are linked more to Glint, but there's obviously a lot of overlap. There are a few elite specialisations that could be said to have such links (herald and holosmith are the obvious ones, and arguably Mirage), but elementalist would be a good fit there.