Has anyone given thought to what an elementalist with a rifle might be able to achieve fantasy wise ?

[Seperta.2975]

elementalist imbueing their ammo with the elements for different effects like incendiary ammo, taser bullets for crowd control, Earth shards for shotgun, and last but not least, the most deadly of them all, Nerf Super soakers with water infused ammo ! 

no but seriously theres soo much that could be done with this and i cant think of any mmo out there that has done anything similar to it 
 

[draxynnic.3719]

There's been a few such discussions. One I recall from pre-Catalyst discussions was essentially having each attunement replicate a particular weapon type - so fire might be flamethrower-like, air might be long-range single-target, earth shotgun-like, and water might be grenade launcher-like. Another possibility could be for it to take inspiration from the various elemental rifles found as environmental weapons, especially in core Tyria. A third possibility could just be for it to be another spellcasting implement, albeit one where most effects are channelled down the barrel.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Skill 1: Stab with magic bayonet.

Skill 2: Bash with the butt of the rifle.

Skill 3: Push back with the side of the rifle

Skill 4: Evade forward while reloading with the rifle

Skill 5: Actually fire a bullet.  30 second cooldown.  

Edited March 21, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493
Spelling errors

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Skill 1: Stab with magic Bayonette.

Skill 2: Bash with the but of the Hammer.

Skill 3: Push Back with the side of the rifle

Skill 4: Evade forward while reloading with the rifle

Skill 5: Actually fire a bullet.  30 second cooldown.  

The authentic muzzle-loader experience, eh?

[MarzAttakz.9608]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The authentic muzzle-loader experience, eh?

Yeah exactly the inspiration Anet would go for when considering Elementalists - then again that's my own confirmation bias kicking in since most all the other rifle skills follow a similar pattern in game.

 

I'd much rather a Longbow for proper range or alternatively dual pistols for 900 range (feel pistols have a better base line of skills to work with).

[Jski.6180]

I like the ideal where you "charge" your ammo by sitting in an atument or doing combos in that atument. Then use that ammo in any given atument for added effects.

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Yeah exactly the inspiration Anet would go for when considering Elementalists - then again that's my own confirmation bias kicking in since most all the other rifle skills follow a similar pattern in game.

 

I'd much rather a Longbow for proper range or alternatively dual pistols for 900 range (feel pistols have a better base line of skills to work with).

They really don't. Warrior rifle has one melee knockback skill - it's bad, but not because it's melee-oriented (pistol, however...). Deadeye is 1200 range with the option to 1500 range at the cost of some mobility. Engineer 'rifle' is more close-in oriented because it's really more blunderbuss themed.

There's a track record of ele specs getting melee weapons, to be sure, but I don't think there's any reasonable evidence that they're more likely to do that with rifle than anything else. They've already done melee offhand pistol, and justifying melee bow on a magic profession is absolutely something one could do if one was willing to make a melee rifle.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

They really don't. Warrior rifle has one melee knockback skill - it's bad, but not because it's melee-oriented (pistol, however...). Deadeye is 1200 range with the option to 1500 range at the cost of some mobility. Engineer 'rifle' is more close-in oriented because it's really more blunderbuss themed.

There's a track record of ele specs getting melee weapons, to be sure, but I don't think there's any reasonable evidence that they're more likely to do that with rifle than anything else. They've already done melee offhand pistol, and justifying melee bow on a magic profession is absolutely something one could do if one was willing to make a melee rifle.

I just want pure 1200-1500 range mate. I don't care what wood I use to do it. I'm one of the few who runs staff in most things these days (open world excluded).

If it's another melee spec we get then I think I'm calling it quits after more than a decade of being an Ele main.

[draxynnic.3719]

If Arenanet does a fourth "this specialisation will let you melee as an elementalist" spec, that would be massively tone-deaf. Sure, I know you CAN play the current elite specs as ranged, but the design and marketing spoke volumes.

1200 isn't necessarily guaranteed, though, let alone 1500.

Edited March 22, 2023 by draxynnic.3719

[Doctor Hide.6345]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:23 AM, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Yeah exactly the inspiration Anet would go for when considering Elementalists - then again that's my own confirmation bias kicking in since most all the other rifle skills follow a similar pattern in game.

 

I'd much rather a Longbow for proper range or alternatively dual pistols for 900 range (feel pistols have a better base line of skills to work with).

      While I would love for them to give dual pistols instead of just one to the ele, I don't see it happening sadly. They always give only one weapon out at a time, so at most we will get either main hand or off hand pistol.

     Now, I can see mesmer getting dual pistols since it already has offhand pistol use. As for ele, I would happy with rifle, bow, or mh/oh pistol.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

      While I would love for them to give dual pistols instead of just one to the ele, I don't see it happening sadly. They always give only one weapon out at a time, so at most we will get either main hand or off hand pistol.

     Now, I can see mesmer getting dual pistols since it already has offhand pistol use. As for ele, I would happy with rifle, bow, or mh/oh pistol.

They did give dual daggers to spellbreaker. Which is, admittedly, something of the exception that proves the rule, but it does indicate that two of the same weapon is not beyond the pale.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

3 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

They did give dual daggers to spellbreaker. Which is, admittedly, something of the exception that proves the rule, but it does indicate that two of the same weapon is not beyond the pale.

That is true. I always forget Spellbreaker did that. I always seem to think they already had offhand dagger since warrior has most weapons, but you are correct. That gives me hope actually it could happen albeit with a low chance.

[Infusion.7149]

Would prefer a shortbow focused on AoE honestly to fulfill a less defensive/boon support role (see renegade shortbow or DH longbow which do not perform any support function at all). However, rifle could be a more offensive variant of ranged damage with "linear" attack projectiles for most of the skills, which would make it not that great in PVP/WVW but allow for higher power-based DPS in PvE. To differentiate it more clearly the attack rate would be higher than staff (think virtuoso daggers compared to mesmer greatsword and staff or harbinger pistol as compared to staff / axe) and there would be zero combo fields.

i.e. Fire attunement does power damage with some burning and might generation (akin to engineer rifle maybe), Water attunement ditches healing completely from the auto in exchange for chill and vulnerability, Air does vulnerability and weakness (as opposed to blind which is not that great in PvE), Earth does bleeding and cripple.

Example:

• Fire auto = 0.75s attack rate in line with other rifles plus ~0.5-1s burning
• Fire #2 -5 has burning in some fashion and possibly might because everyone and their third removed relatives have might generation
• Water auto = 0.75s attack rate in line with other rifles plus 2s vulnerability
• Water #2-5 has actual damage, chill application
• Air auto = 0.75s attack rate in line with other rifles plus vulnerability
• Air #2-5 have weakness, hard CC (daze ,stun, or other), fury generation
• Earth auto = 0.75s attack rate in line with other rifles plus 2-3 bleeding
• Earth #2-5 has cripple / immob application , maybe even poison

edit: a spec that capitalizes on grieving stats would be really neat to differentiate it from other specs ; for a short time the preferred lower effort scepter builds used grieving with a focus on burning. The easiest way to facilitate this is with a trait that allows for additional condition damage or crit chance if the target has movement impairing conditions (chill/cripple/immob) or weakness.

However, a full "glass cannon" with a charrzooka would be thematically on point.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

You want melee gun-fu? Giving Ele a rifle is how you get gun-fu with 4 different color options.

[Serephen.3420]

 

On 3/21/2023 at 9:23 PM, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Yeah exactly the inspiration Anet would go for when considering Elementalists - then again that's my own confirmation bias kicking in since most all the other rifle skills follow a similar pattern in game.

 

I'd much rather a Longbow for proper range or alternatively dual pistols for 900 range (feel pistols have a better base line of skills to work with).

I'm with you on longbow. I still feel rifle is something that mesmer could pull off more convincingly.  Longbow would be more reliably long range too than rifle if you look at all ingame examples.

[asket.5674]

Dual pistols would be indeed rad and a perfect reason to craft H.O.P.E 😄

[Sweetbread.3678]

I think it would be interesting if they did something like locked in Revenant style heal/utilities/elite skills that have ammunition costs, but no cooldowns. Make each spell cast grant 1 bullet of that attunement type and then you can use them to power and alter your heal/utility/elite or pistol/rifle skills with different bonuses depending on what combination of elemental bullets you have.

[Markus.6415]

On 3/20/2023 at 3:29 AM, Seperta.2975 said:

elementalist imbueing their ammo with the elements for different effects like incendiary ammo, taser bullets for crowd control, Earth shards for shotgun, and last but not least, the most deadly of them all, Nerf Super soakers with water infused ammo ! 

no but seriously theres soo much that could be done with this and i cant think of any mmo out there that has done anything similar to it 
 

While looking at what anet was able to do with the hammer in terms of ele abilities.... It'll be just another super boring set of the same shoots and bangs but with different colors. Zero interest from my side.

[cyberzombie.7348]

Well even in vanilla there are npcs that uses firearms for spell casting so the idea isn't far fetched. There's even consumable guns around Tyria that I'll show a pic of once I get on my computer. 

Though one spitball idea I have is to function similar to Maliwan's guns in the Borderlands series. Where each attunement have a unique debuff. 

[Gibson.4036]

The rifle hovers in the air above the character. All the time. Even out of combat.

Attacks involve the rifle slamming into the ground, stock down, at a range of 300, causing AoE effects with 130 radius.

All skills with significant damage are self-root channels.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Strixxe.2019]

Something similar to spellslinger in wildstar probably.. 

[mega.7816]

Or, something like the gun dress in FF x-2. I hate to say it but it can work.

[Arfoirian.6354]

It's an easy thought, mage marksman who enchants his bullets with the elements. Fire for incendiary rounds (Cond damage), water for ice based chill/vuln, air for high velocity (Power damage), earth for shatter/bleed (Cond damage). Arcane could be thrown in for extra support such as a projectile blocking wall, a reposition (teleport/blink), knockback, ext. That being said as much as I would love a proper ranged elementalist spec. ArenaNet has a long hatred of anything not melee and seems to want elementalist to be Avatar The Last Airbender, not the wizard the profession started as a decade ago.

[draxynnic.3719]

11 hours ago, Arfoirian.6354 said:

ArenaNet has a long hatred of anything not melee and seems to want elementalist to be Avatar The Last Airbender, not the wizard the profession started as a decade ago.

Even that doesn't explain it. A:TLA has plenty of cases of benders having ranged fights throwing elemental forces at one another, and ArenaNet have shown that they can make ranged-oriented elite specialisations for other professions.

I do wonder, though, if part of it is that another ranged weapon for elementalist would require a lot of animation work. Melee elemental attacks have the advantage that they can often just be regular melee attacks with a particle effect. Given the short timeframe EoD was on, this might explain a lot about catalyst...

...they could still give hammer fire and air 900 range, though.

[Stalima.5490]

I think we already know the answer to this one, being an old outdated proffesion the elementalist would pick one up by the barrel, and begin to club a rock, he would then get bored and decide to throw some feces at his elementalist buddy who would respond by thowing some at him, they would then jump up and down frantically, not understanding the sophisticated technology within their posession choosing instead to utilise the nearest wooden club to become a shaman.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Stalima.5490