Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Elementalist

[Sekai.2987]

i dont see any reason to play it over other weapons , be it as power or condi, it feels lackluster, the "new" bullet mechanic is recycled cataclyst, in wvw dagger/sword/scepter is still far better then pistol

 

 

ps: i wonder if we will get a longbow before i die of old age

[Lavafrost.2830]

13 hours ago, Tempest.8479 said:

P.S. thank you to @Lavafrost.2830 for the inspiration for Shell shock

No problem there. It just seemed like the perfect place to reference that skill, with an Elementalist and a gun.

3 hours ago, Sekai.2987 said:

ps: i wonder if we will get a longbow before i die of old age

Please this, was incredibly disappointed that it wasn't a Longbow in EoD, and Longbows as a whole feel underutilized.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

So, after messing around with the pistol for a few days, I am overall ok with it theme wise. There are a few issues though that I have a problem with even though I like it as a whole. The first one is you have to do something with elemental unload. That skill is pure useless the way it is. It is a dps loss to even use it compared to the time it takes to even make it. The second issue is something I am not sure is an issue. I am talking about the combat animations. I am generally fine with the AA and some of them, but a lot of them lack a punch feeling. I am not sure if that is because they are not finished yet or not, but as much as I love shooting bullets, you can at least make some of the bullets firing look more magical like you did with the guardian pistol animations.

Number wise I am sure a lot will be adjusted, but I do agree with most that the attacks need more pierce or something to them even if I like single target damage a lot. I also think the bullets need to travel faster as well since they seem kind of slow. Overall though I am ok with the general direction the pistol is going, but it does need some more time in the oven to cook properly.

I should mention I spent all my time in condi weaver since  if I am to use it, it would be on my condi weaver dps build. So, water 3 attack was just a normal ice bullet basically along with all the other ones. It might just be that weaver needs a lot more special animations added for it to actually feel weighty in combat.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Stallic.2397]

On 11/28/2023 at 5:24 PM, Panda.1967 said:

I've been thinking... what if they just remove the auto attack and turn Pistol into an Off-hand weapon? As others have pointed out, its way too similar to Scepter as is... so why not just make it an offhand and let it complement the Scepter?

Offhand pistol would be perfect! Takes so much complexity out of this weapon choice 

[CETheLucid.3964]

Sharing in the feedback thread; suggesting Elementalist automatically generate bullets on attunement swap.

[Archmage Talaftia.9853]

there should be something done for ammo , cuz ttheyre so small to see , either make them bigger nd more visible or add something to boon table that shows it.

[apharma.3741]

My thoughts on this is as follows:
The bullet mechanic is clunky and dumb.
If this was rifle and skills 2, 3, and 4 gave bullets which are consumed on skill 4 use then this starts to work better.
Of course, this would require the skills team to make 26 skills instead of 18.
Range on rifle should be 1200 and have less ground targeted AoE to make it distinct from staff but have some AOE damage around the target with some PBAoE skills and defences.

[TwistedAlga.4235]

On 11/28/2023 at 11:30 PM, Razarei.2809 said:

It's not Hammer 2.0 its Hammer -10.0. Hammer is actually an amazing weapon.

My bad. Hammer for ele is awesome actually! 🙂, but cata is something else, xD

[Jzaku.9765]

My main feedback is that this is the Elementalist's gun but barely feels magical at all. Guardian pistol in this same beta has laser beams and magic glyphs, please improve the cool factor of the weapon. 

[Poelala.2830]

I also feel like there has been no thought to dual-attuned skills AT ALL since the launch of Weaver? Hammer dual-attuned AND pistol dual-attuned just feel like the exact same skills as the core skills with slightly different numbers whereas all the core weapons + sword legitimately feel like new skills when compared to the core 3 skills. It feels like there was less than 1 hour of thought and exactly 0 ounces of creativity in designing these skills.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Poelala.2830

[Anthony.8056]

Lack of design and laziness describes this weapon and that is my honest opinion. When I first started the game when it came out, I was impressed by the visuals and creative skills that elementalist had which was a reason I enjoyed it. Like I said in my previous post Tempest and Weaver are fun with great abilities but once hammer Catalyst was announced and I saw the skills it all fell flat. No earthquakes or tidal waves or nothing other than Hurricane of pain make that weapon boring to use. I can come up with a million ideas to make it at least fun to use but once again Elementalist is punished for having to many skills.

[Sweetbread.3678]

2 hours ago, Poelala.2830 said:

I also feel like there has been no thought to dual-attuned skills AT ALL since the launch of Weaver? Hammer dual-attuned AND pistol dual-attuned just feel like the exact same skills as the core skills with slightly different numbers whereas all the core weapons + sword legitimately feel like new skills when compared to the core 3 skills. It feels like there was less than 1 hour of thought and exactly 0 ounces of creativity in designing these skills.

For real. I guess I kind of get it with Hammer since it and its orbs were so clearly not designed with Weaver in mind, but Pistol dual-attacks are just so so so boring. Like if they're just gonna phone the dual-attacks in, then why even make it a main hand to begin with? Although considering that 14 of the 16 base, non-Weaver attacks are just "shoot one elemental golfball with a status effect" I'm not sure this is even a dual-attack specific issue; boring and phoned in (while somehow also overdesigned and overly complicated?) seems to be a consistent theme across the entire weapon.

[Matt H.6142]

As my main profession, though I've proclaimed it the roleplay class, I like the pistol, but having used it exclusively as a weaver, I don't think I can fairly assess it while there are no skill icons to help identify what I'm using, and perhaps too, the animation fx are fairly similar on a lot of skills.

Love Fire 3, and Glacial Shot and its upgraded version.  Going faster on ice?  Skating anyone? 

Boulder Blast is too big to just be single target.  Fire 2 - zero power if it can't bounce.  Air clearly struggling for an identity, but appreciate the cooldown and evade it has.

[TYTan.5246]

People saying the it is difficult for Anet to make weapons for Ele because of the many attunements, why do they have to stick with giving all attunements different abilities?
Change it like they did with many other classes, like Thief has different mecanics in all its specs. Anet doesnt need to make the same attunement always. Make a new attunements like Arcane and make it the only one, or combine the 4 and make 2 only. 

And for this weapon alone - An idea Anet, I would 100% prefer that you made only 5 skills and if we swap attunements we gain ONLY the trait bonuses, but being 5 great skills, than 12 random, clunky, rushed skills.

Edited December 2, 2023 by TYTan.5246

[Doctor Hide.6345]

10 minutes ago, TYTan.5246 said:

People saying the it is difficult for Anet to make weapons for Ele because of the many attunements, why do they have to stick with giving all attunements different abilities?
Change it like they did with many other classes, like Thief has different mecanics in all its specs. Anet doesnt need to make the same attunement always. Make a new attunements like Arcane and make it the only one, or combine the 4 and make 2 only. 

And for this weapon alone - An idea Anet, I would 100% prefer that you made only 5 skills and if we swap attunements we gain ONLY the trait bonuses, but being 5 great skills, than 12 random, clunky, rushed skills.

 

That is because what you suggest is even more work on their end to totally change fundamental coding to the class to be that way. It is a lot easier to just make 18(or 16 with weaver) skills then to change all that internal work for the class and hope it works. It would be an even buggier mess than we have now. Changing core class mechanics is not as simple you think it is. Hell, I imagine just getting weaver to work took some time. Adding animations can take more time, but overall it is a lot less work to just re do or add new animations instead.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Jski.6180]

From the same point of wvw and aura support pistol is the best MH aura support weapon ele can use. Only earth dose not seem to have any real effect for support aura out side of self barrier with an single target root.

It needs some major ui the ammo is impossible to see you often have to guess. It would also be nice to see an 3 target effect for most of the skills.

If you use it right is realty powerful in a big fight and i can see it being an amazing chase weapon something else kind of lost from the old d/d set up.

[ViolentMuffin.9573]

Cool, quick, straightforward weapon.

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Feedback for Elementalist pistol

When the pistol got revealed I was decently positive about it. It seemed to have a fun mechanic. 
After playing with it for a bit I find myself in a strange split.
Let me start with the good thing, being that the damage is there.
I was a bit worried at first if the damage would be high enough, but it turns out to be a complete non issue (and I am pleased about that).
Even more because it is not locked to a single spec for its DPS viability.
While I already expected that if the numbers turned out to be good a Condi Weaver build would emerge, I am surprised and pleased to see that there is also an even stronger Condi Tempest build floating around (and it has been ages since I played anything DPS releated for tempest, so this seems like a good occasion to give that spec a go again!).
The goal of damage has been achieved, so far as good.

BUT....

I will be honest: The weapon to me feels so straightforward that it does not feel very fun or unique. Many of its skills just give me a "meh" feeling where I would love to have a feeling of "yeah, awesome!" if that makes sense.  When GW2 launched, I remember devs talking disgusted about the weapon skill design that was rampant during that time: 'you swing a sword. you swing a sword again'. Yet I cannot help but getting this feeling from pistol in a way: "I shoot a bullet. I shoot another one. I shoot one again". And the bullet mechanic unfortunately does not seem to spice things up as much as I would have hoped. I often don't even notice I am using it as a mechanic as I cycle my 2-3 2-3 3-2 etc on the pistols. It's something you'd do no matter if there would be a bullet mechanic or not, it does not define your playstyle if that makes sense, like it is more of an afterthought.

I'd like to see bullets being more defining to your pistol gameplay and not something that just happens because its tacked to your opimal button presses. I think partially you could be more creative with the effects granted by skills being boosted by a bullet ( example: Why does a boosted earth skill not shoot a massive rolling boulder, or why does an Ice bullet boosted Glacial Shot not cause knockdown with its icefield (slippery ground reference to GW1) and give superspeed to allies on it (Iceskating!)? Dare to make the effects a bit more unique, many of the current ones, while mostly effective, feel very phoned it/basic. To me that simply isn't very fun.

I'd also like, if that is even possible, for bullets to also have an effect/be able to consumed outside of their original attunement for more mix and matching. To clarify: What if for additional effects, a Fire skill can also get boosted by an Ice bullet for a certain effect, or an Earth skill boosted by an Air bullet, etc. I think that would encourage more combo'ing and also the setting up of bullets in advance.

For that I guess you'd maybe have to change how bullets get generated (maybe on attunement swap or something, I am not sure). This is a lot of text that essentially comes down to me not really being wowed by many of the current boost effects and feeling like the bullet mechanic is currently underwhelming, despite the weapon achieving its goal as a condi DPS mainhand.

This comes on top of some more practical notes, like it being never worth it to collect al 4 bullets and then shooting them at once, many auto attacks not bouncing or air attunement having no conditions on a condi weapon (why is that? air has a connection to lightning and lightning BURNS. Or how about engineer? their lightning/static shot has CONFUSION. There are options here Anet!).

TL;DR: DPS numbers have been achieved, but the fun factor, wow factor and bullet mechanic could in my opinion really use some work.

[AshenOwl.2485]

Ele Pistols. Looking beyond the uninspired animations (which I'm hoping will be worked on before official release), there's some clunkiness to this weapon, but also a lot of promise. Right now it feels very mid, but I think it could become a very appealing weapon with some changes.

The main problem I had with it is also the thing that I think gives it a lot of promise, and that's the "elemental ammo" mechanic unique to this weapon. I'm a big fan of meaningful synergy, but there's little meaning to the synergy in this one. While you can store the elemental bullets (and get a cool floating orb above your head when you do), you can only spend them in their element. There's no reason to save them or build up 4, besides aesthetic, so you really just want to attune to an element, use a move that creates an elemental bullet and then the one that spends it, and then attune to another element and repeat. There is an element of decision making in which move move you use to make the bullet and which to spend it, but mostly you just create a bullet with 2 and spend it on 3.

I think a positive change they could make to Ele Pistol is giving it a true ammo mechanic. When you attune to an element you gain 2 ammo, when you finish the autoattack chain you gain 1 ammo, and you can store a maximum of 4 (which will still be represented by the floating orbs). The 2 weapon skills could be generic ammo skills with no cooldown, the 3 pack a bit more punch so they do have a slight cooldown in addition to their ammo cost.

Another alternative is to focus on the "generator/spender" theme. Make the 2 skills generators, making one bullet per cast, and then the 3 skills consume all bullets, regardless of element, for additional bonus effects that also change depending on attunement. So Fire Pistol 3, as a possible example, will always inflict burning. But if you consume a fire ammo it'll grant you a Fire Aura, and if you consume another elemental ammo it'll inflict additional conditions depending on the ammo stored (like Water=Vulnerability, Air=Confusion, Earth=Bleeding).

These are just a couple ideas I've brainstormed, but the main point I want to get across is Ele Pistol just needs a more interesting mechanic to not only set it apart from Ele Scepter but to also stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the more interesting weapons mechanics the other professions are getting. So the major bulletpoints I want to leave on Ele Pistol are:

-Diversify animations for more unique feel per skill
-Develop elemental ammo mechanic so it has more impact and unique feel.

[FalsePromises.6398]

I've been more interested in the DPS options presented by new weapons, trying out necromancer swords, guardian pistols, elementalist pistol, etc. 

Guardian pistols seem to have drastically lower power scaling than other guardian weapons, even other condition damage weapons like axe and torch. The biggest thing I was hoping guardian pistols would do is provide a more practical alternate power offhand weapon for open world use, since focus is rather passive and unengaging. It didn't even need to be a good power offhander, just one that was usable... but guardian pistol offhand is laughably low damage for power. The condition damage on pistols, especially the burst, is great, but the poor power scaling and low duration symbol leaves no room for anything other than condition damage willbender. 

Elementalist pistol was nice, it has some interesting skill synergies and had a fun bullet mechanic, but the biggest problem was that it was almost purely condition damage again. I used pistol mainhand with both focus offhand and warhorn offhand and even though I felt like I dealt a lot of damage, I also felt like something was missing. Then I tried dagger offhand and realized it was missing power damage: my dagger skills felt way better at actually killing enemies because even on viper stats they could deal a chunk of damage with their initial hits. Elementalist pistol skills spent too long ramping with not enough punch. 

Necromancer swords though... as a pure power set, bad through and through. Damage was way too low, animations are buggy, health costs are awkward and large, and cast times are way too long. The damage was on par with necromancer axe, the laughing stock of the class's arsenal. Literally, I tested axe/sword camping vs sword/sword camping and hit the same DPS, which is rather sad because necro doesn't need a second mainhand axe. All this and both were beaten by greatsword autoattack DPS alone. One reason was just bad power scaling and coefficients, but that's been a common theme. The sword skills themselves had long cast times and disruptive aftercasts: this was most prevalent on skill 2 and 4, but also on autoattacks. The autoattacks could not progress until the previous projectile either dissipated or hit, meaning you lost up to 35% total DPS (yes, I tested it) between melee range and max range. Going further, the sword skills' casts were too long and the effects too delayed for a practical ranged set. Sword 2 initial cast was fine, but the second cast was way too long for an effect that honestly could be ingrained into the initial skill, plus it seemed to cause an aftercast that may have been intended to force you to wait till the projectile finished moving till you casted the flip, but just resulted in disruptive, wasted time. Same was for the 4 skill, except the 4 skill had a long initial cast too. The five skill's flip effect was so useless that it felt like it could be thrown into the base skill as well, if it's literally just a fear. Lastly... not sure what was thematically supposed to be going on with sword 3. Sword 3 doesn't really fit anything: just a tad too short range for a solid mobility skill, doesn't do enough damage for a dive skill, and above all is a melee gap closer on a ranged set. I just don't think it fits, and all the goobers that pester devs for mobility on necromancer frankly just don't get that they're supposed to be pulling and debilitating enemies instead of chasing them. 

Swords left a LOT to be desired, but they weren't wholly bad: there was a nice concept of cast and forget damage as well as a good kite weapon. However, if this was the aim of the weapons, they should have their cast times adjusted and their flip skills merged into the initial attacks after a delay, and then have the damage scaled up. If burst becomes a problem, convert it into ticking damage like the fifth skill.

tl;dr elementalist pistols need more power damage, guardian pistols need more power damage, necromancer swords need to drop the health gimmicks, increase power damage, merge flip skills into the initial skills as delayed effects, and do something else with that 3 skill

[FalsePromises.6398]

1 hour ago, AshenOwl.2485 said:

There's no reason to save them or build up 4, besides aesthetic

When you have four elemental bullets your autoattack flips to an elemental bullet salvo skill. Dunno how strong it is in the greater scheme of things though, especially since it's way more practical to be generating and expending one bullet per attunement instead of generating an extra bullet.

[Riot Inducer.8964]

My initial impressions of ele pistol have been mixed.

The bullet system is interesting and promotes unique combos and ways to move through the skills. However it also layers extra complexity on top of weaver when trying to use it with that specialization that is frankly not worthwhile and feels like it detracts from the dual skills. With the dual skills themselves feeling exceptionally weak with their effects carved off into the bullet bonuses.

The Elemental Unload skill was hidden from all skill previews and I only discovered it by reading other comments here. It is an interesting idea but seems too convoluted to activate in normal gameplay. 

In general the condition focus of the weapon does work and it feels like you can very quickly build up lots of bleeding and burning, faster than other ele weapons certainly. However Air attunement feels a bit left out here with it only offering small amounts of vuln application and relatively weak CC options. 

The auto attacks tend to feel very weak across the board, hitting slowly and weakly, it is only fortunate that the weapon encourages aggressively moving between attunements so you don't have to rely on these autos for more than a couple seconds at a time.

My suggestions for the weapon:

1. Speed up or improve the effects of the Auto Attacks
2. Give Air Attunement a reason to exist on this weapon, some damaging conditions or stronger CCs since Power Damage is not an option.
3. Improve the Dual Skills so they are not limp when not using both bullet bonuses.
4. Better define if Elemental Unload or the bonuses to skills 2 and 3 are the focus of the bullet system.

[Khaldris.9026]

So for perspective, I've been playing Elementalist since release. Primarily in PvE, though I've done a bunch in WvW and PvP. Trying to play Weaver slides off the smoothness of my brain, so I won't be commenting on the Weaver-specific skills.

Overall, it's nice to see another 'mid' range weapon for Elementalist. But the weapon feels really slow to use. The design of Elementalist has evolved to be constantly rotating between your attunements, so the sluggish cast times and animations (I know they're currently WIP animations) makes me just want to avoid the pistol entirely.

The elemental 'bullets' stocked by skills are an interesting concept, but in execution you're going to have a 'preferred order'. I feel like this design suffers the same issue that Catalyst Augments do (designed to be 'on the fly' decisions on what you need, but requiring too many buttons pressed for the speed of combat in GW2). The Elemental Unload skill is unnecessary, and detracts from the overall power budget of the weapon. Either the bullets are good enough to spend now, or they're not really worth being part of the kit. As it stands, I'd rather see the elemental bullets concept scrapped entirely, and the skills balanced around their usage as-is with no setup.

Fire
S1: Fine, for the most part? I feel like it needs to do something more than just 'hit the target'. Perhaps a small AoE explosion like the staff Fire S1.
S2: The bullet buff is very uninspiring, and I highly dislike the idea of maintaining yet another unique buff (Catalyst design creep is awful for this).
S3: The projectile is incredibly slow, and the bullet buff is uninspiring (Fire Aura is nice, but this is a condi damage weapon, support Elementalists should probably look elsewhere).

Water
S1: Perfectly fine, addition of selfish healing based on conditions stacked on the target is interesting.
S2: Multi-hit is cool, the bullet bonus continuing the selfish healing is a good trend for this attunement
S3: Good sized field, has a good duration, bullet bonus is an interesting mechanic.

Air
S1: Drop the vuln stacking, give it a ricochet to 1-2 additional targets (chain lightning stuff)
S2: Relatively okay CC, bullet bonus feels... weird to make use of properly. This works well with Ranger (Quick Draw), but it continues the trend of adding extra button presses to situations where you'd want to respond right now with a good skill.
S3: Having this be a chain of 3 skills is not good. The attack needs to be part of the dash, so there's only two potential button presses.

Earth
S1: This should actually pierce.
S2: This should just be a large AoE from the target on-hit, not a weird firing of additional projectiles from the target you shoot. The bullet buff is an interesting start, but only three hits with a single stack of bleeding isn't enough to make this feel like an actual condi weapon.
S3: A solid immobilize, the bullet bonus continues the selfish defense from water.

 

As it stands, I don't really see why I'd use MH Pistol over a Scepter or Dagger at this point. Scrap the elemental bullets and balance the skills around being worth the button press as soon as you hit a given attunement.

P.S.: Glacial Shot's the coolest ability here (pun very much intended).

Edited December 2, 2023 by Khaldris.9026
Forgot to mention my lack of Weaver experience

[Flapjackson.1596]

This weapon showcases how important visual clarity is. The bullets need better indicators, and players need better agency in general over how they can modify their UI and reduce the visual clutter on their screens. 

[BenaSPACE.6028]

I like the theming of this weapon, but it feels like it needs a complimentary pistol in the offhand to make the ammo mechanic more engaging and meaningful.