Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Elementalist

[phoone.8230]

Initial thoughts from an Endgame Group PvE perspective: damage seems good. A bit overtuned, especially versus larger hitbox enemies (with the Ice Bullet bonus, Glacial Shot is a little bit ridiculous), but that can be solved with some number tweaking. I like the idea of water attunement being relevant to a condition build for once, I think it helps the weapon feel more unique, and I'm looking forward to testing how strong the defensive effects feel while playing solo. However, I'm already seeing some pain points with the pistol.

The most pressing concern, to me, is the lack of feedback the weapon gives to the player. I believe one of the competitive mode players above mentioned having similar issues in SPvP- it is just too hard to tell which bullets you have when it matters. I went quite a while with dramatically lower damage at one point before realizing a stray Ice Bullet had reversed the bonuses I was getting from my skills. I believe readability and visual feedback are important in all gamemodes and to all players, regardless of what you're doing, so I think fixing this would benefit everyone using the pistol significantly.

My proposed solution is pretty simple, just provide better visual feedback on what bullets you have, besides the physical bullets over the player's model. Others have already suggested some changes here, including buffs or new UI elements, but I don't think that's even necessary- just make weapon skills glow (in the same manner as combo finishers or CC skills against breakbars already do) when a bullet is ready for use. This might cause a little confusion given the two factors that can already cause skills to become highlighted, but I think the fact that there are very few situations where both skills in an attunement would be glowing at the same time is enough to communicate to the player effectively that they have a bullet readied.

I have some other concerns as well, but would like to do more playtesting first.

Tl;dr: Make pistol skills 2 and 3 glow on your hotbar if you have a bullet ready for them to use.

[Redfeather.6401]

I wish the bullets had passive effects like you are summoning little signets. And more mobility. Right now I really am not excited to use it over something else. The range is no better than scepter and weaver with scepter is way cooler than what I play around with for pistol weaver.

[Faebe.7341]

Heres my Pistol Feedback:

Im not impressed. The things I dont like:

It looks like Scepter 2 to me. Adds nothing new.

Animations for skills 1 and 2 are non existing its all the same.

Projectile speed is too low for my taste (hello staff)

No pew pew pew skill in air

Every auto attack is single target, at least fire could have been a little aoe 3 targets

I hoped the water auto attack would be like phantoms scepter instead of another self-heal like on ele scepter,

low combo potential

I dont like putting additional mechanics like those bullets on a weapon, at least the unload skill sucks so theres no weird rotation

It is too similar to scepter and one of the weapons will be obsolete after release, both weapons are locked to condi builds because they took the best support skill from scepter too in an earlier patch.

 

The things I like:

Water 3/2

[Lavafrost.2830]

I usually don't bother giving feedback on these kind of things at all, and I'm not good at it, but this weapon just... why. Why is this a condi weapon instead of a power or hybrid weapon when we don't have any good ranged power choices. Why does almost everything outside of Fire feel so underwhelming to use. It barely even feels like I'm firing a gun, much less a magical gun. Why does it feel like the Guardian version of pistol is just flat out better at the gunmage feel, AND I'm pretty sure it fills in a niche for them that they didn't have. Compared to the Guardian pistol, Guardian feels like it's ready for release, where Elementalist feels like an alpha build with placeholder assets.

 

My suggestion would be to make this a Power or Hybrid type weapon. There's zero reason I'd want to use this over the tried and true Scepter if it releases as-is. Heck, if the VFX and SFX of Elementalist's pistol remains as lackluster as it is now, I'd completely ignore it over Scepter just because of how unsatisfying it'd be to use.

[HotDelirium.7984]

-The huge elemental unload of all 4 bullets is going to be that skill that many ele's just won't use just like with hammer (though the spinning and reset make it a smidge better).

-Can you try to adjust the exit area from where the bullet shoots from? It's far away from the muzzle.

-Can you adjust the bullet for water it just looks like were shredding paper.

-Square combo fields were said to have been worked on years ago but they never were....

-for water pistol 3 instead of the field just giving increased speed maybe give swiftness since boons are apart of many traits and builds for synergy.

-there is stilla graphical anomoly with certain effects, you can see it when you shoot a bullet over the square ice fields

-water skill 2 or 3 should inflict vulnerability instead of bleeding since it will synergize with water attunements focus on vuln

[Doctor Hide.6345]

So, I am still in the process of messing around with the pistol, but even with my love of guns, I don't see the point of elemental unload. To get there is such a dps loss because you have to switch so much and just hit 2 and rely on AA because if you hit 3 on weaver there goes the bullets. So, it is not much of a build up when you have all 4 bullets out for elemental unload because of the loss it took to get there.

[Panda.1967]

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?

[Kryldost.3401]

The damage isn't all that much, I find the bullet mechanic very interesting but its really hard to use them properly during combat. The fact that you are limited to a single element per atunement gives little room for imagination even as weaver. Would be nice to actually be able to gain more elemental bullets to allow the skills to truly shine. As of right now, you are stuck to using 2 skills to either gain OR use a bullet plus, no other skills grants you bullets. Perhaps gain a bullet with one and use it with the other? Auto attack could also be used to gain a bullet with a multi-skill shot. Shot 1.2. 3 at 3 get bullet with a maximum number of bullet stored. As a weaver having multiple bullets for the unloading skill could really add some shine to the weapon by shooting with all elements at once adding further condies along the line. But yeah, it's way too long to gain the bullets. On a power build, I didn't really feel like I was contributing enough. Condition really is the only option for the weapon which is a little disapointing to me.

Also the fact everything is 1 on 1 prevents you from clearing bigger groups and gets you killed more often than not when being overwhelmed during combat. Some target skills would also amazing. Off weapons you can synergize with is very limited compared to other weapons. 

Overall I think the weapon is a great idea, just needs work on the number of targets and ways to gain/use bullet.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Kryldost.3401

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, 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?

Hrrmn. Would be short recharges for an offhand, but some offhands do have short cooldowns. Could work!

...Although I should test pistol weaver first before I actually agree to that.

Edited November 29, 2023 by draxynnic.3719

[scerevisiae.1972]

I only play this game for WVW as the rest of the game holds no appeal for me so suffice to say I feel again utterly let down as a player & customer as none of the weapons added to Ele since launch have been good in WVW.

So i am still stuck playing the same OG weapons for 11 years: staff/sceptre/dagger/focus. 

Specific issues with pistol:

• the UI for bullets is really bad. Can we have a animation above the elements in the UI rather than a bullet on the character? it's really hard to see with all the other stuff on screen. like maybe put the bullet animations above the F1-4 elements UI.
• almost 100% projectile-based already put it at severe disadvantage
• really low power coefficients restrict use to condi builds only, which sucks for WVW
• too single-target focused, most or all of the skills should pierce
• very limited range of condis
• as with hammer this weapon is only going to be good in (boring) PVE. yawn.
• I don't care for the bullet mechanic at all, i don't get the feeling i am choosing between greater damage or defense at all.

 

Honestly the best outcome for this weapon would be: rework power coefficients to make it a viable power weapon, or just make it an offhand and delete all the autoattacks. 

FWIW i think you've all done a great job of most of the other weapons - just Ele has again gotten really the short end of the stick. Please consider actually doing something with all these feedback you're asking for -- hammer was also recieved extremely poorly yet it still exists in more or less the exact same state today, which makes us all wonder why bother even asking for feedback.

Edited November 29, 2023 by scerevisiae.1972

[Poelala.2830]

I feel like accessing the full bonuses of weaver dual attuned skills is too complex and cumbersome to justify their effects.

[Aedil.1296]

Can we have some nice visual effects please? Compared to other classes Ele doesn't feel magical at all. I would like to see more of the elements we control on the screen.  Other classes got new cool visual effects. 

[Sweetbread.3678]

It's an interesting concept but feels kind of underbaked and contradictory atm.

Pros:
- Cool idea.
- Flows decently well on Weaver.
- Some interesting skills like Water 3 and Air 3.

Cons:
- Fills a niche that Scepter already has covered (and at the exact same range no less). 
- It's got a lot of theoretical depth, but it's also just kind of boring? Feels like it'll shine the most under Weaver (probably even more so with Unravel), but otherwise it's just 2>3, swap, 2>3, swap, 3>2, swap, etc., etc. . Even on Weaver though it only really feels better because you have an extra bullet to generate, not because the dual skills are particularly interesting.
- Skill effects might be somewhat varied, but the actual gameplay is incredibly one-note; basically every ability besides Water 3 and Air 3 is just a medium range pistol shot. 
- The animations are incredibly basic (although I imagine this is more of a placeholder art issue).
- Unload is almost never worth using atm and being an almost straight up copy of Grand Finale feels incredibly underwhelming.
- A lot of memorization here. Just the 2 and 3 slots have 16 unique variations and that goes up to 34 variations on Weaver. I don't mind a deep skill pool, but it feels like a lot of the depth/complexity here just comes from skill knowledge as opposed to tactical gameplay choices. It's less depth and more an artificial barrier for entry.

Crazy rework idea that nobody asked for:
Honestly imo this would probably work much better as an off-hand; it's basically a 2 skill weapon already and the Weaver variations aren't game changing enough to warrant it being another mid-range main-hand condi weapon that competes directly with Scepter. To me, having it be an off-hand with an extra bullet on attunement swap and possibly a simplified version of the Weaver multi-bullet mechanic baked in would probably work a lot better. Having a bonus bullet on attunement swap would allow for one empowered ability and one ammo generating ability on each swap leading up to a guaranteed Unload every full cycle. Optionally keeping a more standardized version of the Weaver multi-bullet mechanic would add a lot of depth while cutting down on the memorization issue while effectively replacing Unload. The current element's bullet could keep its unique bonus effect while each other bullet could have a standardized mechanic to make it more intuitive (e.g. fire = aoe/combo field, water = cd reduction/whirl finisher, air = piercing/projectile finisher, earth = cc/blast finisher).

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[Artemis.8034]

Camp fire is the only good dps option, pistol 3 in air is just terrible not even wanting to use it. personally i think longbow or even shortbow would have been preferred, it would suit the theme of an ele, shooting elemental arrows

Edited November 29, 2023 by Artemis.8034

[scerevisiae.1972]

7 minutes ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

- Fills a niche that Scepter already has covered (and at the exact same range no less). 

omg dude don't say that they will turn it into another crappy melee weapon.

[Sweetbread.3678]

3 minutes ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

omg dude don't say that they will turn it into another crappy melee weapon.

Honestly, making earth attunement just be "Oops! All Pistol Whips!" would be way more interesting than what we have right now.

[Artemis.8034]

6 minutes ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

omg dude don't say that they will turn it into another crappy melee weapon.

Im so sick of melee, this game is losing its variety making everyone melee so boring.

[NaRT.1674]

Please rework on elemental bullets and skill animations. Currently, it seems way too cheap compared too others, like mesmer's or gardian's.

[DarkLancer.1902]

Damage output is disappointingly underwhelming, but it seems not to need it; I'm not having any problems with survival. It's a good concept though; when you get around to the ground-up rebuild of the Catalyst (which, by the way, it DESPERATELY needs), this is the principle you should build it around, not the utterly useless circular projectiles.

7/10 overall. Just tune up the numbers to bring it in line with the rest of the elementalist kits.

[TheDetective.8172]

I think water auto should either:

1) apply bleed 

2) when you hit X number of times within a certain timeframe, freeze the water around your enemy and cause it to explode and bleed the enemy, like Virtuoso dagger.

[scerevisiae.1972]

compare necro swords to ele pistol, it's night and day. necro sword got: 

• great ranged autoattack with good power coefficient that pierces
• the 2 pierces / is AOE
• the 3 is a great double leap that heals
• the 4 is a great ranged AOE
• the 5 also pierces and is a CC

ele pistol got 8 (+7) skills but frankly those 15 skills collectively are worse than necro sword's 5 skills. can we just delete pistol and get necro sword?

[CETheLucid.3964]

So, ele pistol is fast. Quickness makes your pistol an illegal mod. I kind of wish pistol 2 in air (Dazing Discharge) did confusion instead of vulnerability, but I was pleasantly surprised by Aerial Agility. This is a great evade and fun mobility skill. Wish it carried you a little further. Raging Ricochet in Fire is also really good and I wish consuming the bullet granted the ricochet effect to all of your attacks for 10s as opposed to a flat +5% condition damage.

Bouncing around with air and using fire and earth (your two attunements with the skills to deal with multiple mobs) is going to be dicey in high-end PvE (or I'm still cutting my teeth on it either/or), but single damage wise it doesn't disappoint. Bleeding on water is an interesting choice but I don't hate it. It's good. It helps. It's why I feel Air 2 needs confusion to really solidify it's place as a (mostly) condition DPS weapon. Being dazed is a rather confusing event! In addition it would have the benefit of being a condition unique to pistol.

It would also be nice if the skill called "Piercing Pebble" actually pierced mechanically. Much loved QoL for PvE. It can be made PvE only if there is worry about piercing being a thing in competitive modes.

It's not the 1200 range DPS weapon I feel elementalist could use but I'm not nearly as let down as I thought I was going to be. It's not bad at all and in spite of competing with scepter in the same range, pistol certainly has it's own identity. It's pretty kitten cool. I thought Guardian got the better gun(s) but they're both on par for what they do. I feel ele's is actually cooler and more mobile (especially with dagger) but that's probably my bias.

The previews they do for these things don't do them any justice either way. Get in game and play it.

Spoiler

Also now that we're 900 range gunslingers, let's get some staff buffs going pls & ty

 

[Anthony.8056]

Once again let down by the boring visuals. Some skills on skill 3 were ok but it just all looks the same.  I expected bullets with conditions and that was what most were. The enemies in game have some good visuals that Ele could use to make it more appealing. I just want some distinction between some of the skills to give the weapon some flair to feel like an elementalist. Some changes I would like to see.

Fire

1. Scorching shot- explode on impact similar to necromancer pistol vile blast

2. Raging Ricochet -change to Raging Inferno- Guardian gets a big blue fire ball on their pistol so why can't Ele get one

3. Fine

Water

1. Soothing Splash- change to Soothing Stream- Fire a stream of water bullets, the visual similar to guardian pistol skill 2 but with a water visual like a stream of water.

2. Frigid Flurry I guess keep. Would have liked to see the Naga water ability Bubble shot similar to the underwater ability that we use but on land.

3. Fine. Though, I would have used another Naga ability that I can't understand why it isn't on the Elementalist kit especially hammer but they get a Water Vortex that would be perfect for one of its abilities.  Shoot a water vortex out or a frozen vortex that freezes the ground as it travels. I know we will never get a skill like that because they changed Dust Devil and Unstable Bladestorm to not be projectiles and made them stationary. I enjoyed them while it lasted.

Air

1. Electric Exposure- Speed up projectile

2. Dazing Discharge- change- Fire an electric bullet that ricochets between enemies, tethering them with lightning. Other than staff chain lightning, which does horrible damage, we should have a good chain ability with lightning that is nonexistent on this class.

3. Fine. I hope they put a wind animation on this skill because they gave warrior the flash animation.

Earth

1. Piercing Pebble- Here is an idea, have them pierce.

2. Shattering stone-change to Stalagmite Fusillade- Shot a bullet that creates stalagmites along the ground as it travels, once it reaches its target a big stalagmite emerges underneath the target and hits all surrounding enemies.

3. Fine.

These are just some ideas that would make the pistol on Ele feel more Ele. This is just my opinion and I know nothing will change but I would prefer this over what is currently given to us.

 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

I think everybody else stated already what I also found out during testing except for one thing which worried me from the start and bothered me even more now.

 

And that is that there is no proper ranged OH available for elementalist.

In order to maximize damage, I have to use dagger, so melee range. Very similar to scepter except for that I think scepter uses focus. 

 

So, we get again, a weapon with 900 range but can't use at 900 range because of lack of OH weapon?

[Mimiga.9815]

I've done a bit more testing regarding SPvP viability. It's safe to say that Carrion stats are pretty much the only reliable spread since elementalists need to take Vitality, condi builds need more defense to allow their burst to eat through, and there's nowhere near enough power to warrant hybrid damage. I've been having decent success operating as a duelist in most games, using the Fractal Relic combined with a starting attunement in double Earth as Signet Weaver. Taking Undead runes for some Toughness along with Signet of Earth really helps to round out the numbers, and /F offers its utility and defense as always. Of course, 4 Signet elementalist works well regardless of what you're using for the most part, as it's a build carried by traits and utilities. Pistol being condi just helps its case. I was having trouble finishing targets off since, by its nature as a weapon, pistol doesn't really DO anything after its initial volleys. Weaver helps by offering an extra button to press, but I was really starting to notice how the core skills don't require facing but the dual skills do, and I found my ability to kite severely limited while I was between attunements.