Long time player of The Secret World here. I originally started playing Secret World Legends when it first came out but left due to the weapons imbalance and the hammer and assault rifle being uber over any other choice.
I came back recently after reading about the “huge balancing patch” that just came out a few months ago with the hopes that it addressed some of the more glaring issues with my original choices. You see, I chose Elemental as my primary weapon (I know, I know… I can clearly hear you all laughing out loud as you read this…) rather than hammer or assault rifle. And while I can manage Elemental for most missions, I am finding the downsides to it (long delays, casts not even completing, lockout due to heat) are just too much for some of the higher end content like Dark Agartha and the higher level scenarios. And after doing some reading and research it appears that it is mostly agreed that Elementalism is best either not used or used as an alternate weapon even after the last balance patch.
So, as they say, “If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em!” and I have decided to relinquish any hopes of Elemental being viable and competitive as a main hand weapon for higher end content. My issue is that my weapon is mythic and I have another mythic Elementalism focus that is almost ready to fuse to legendary. Is there some item in the shop I did not see or some rare item from a mission you can get to change one weapon over to another? I would hate to just have to use my Totemic Hell Lord as “fodder” for a new weapon build.
TLDR: I chose the wrong weapon at the start of the game and was wondering if there was any item in the game that would allow me to change my mythic weapon to one of the viable ones.
No, there is no sort of weapon transmogrification item.
What is your secondary weapon, out of curiousity? You could always swap that to your primary and make Elementalism your secondary.
Also, if you’re finding heat being an issue you should be slotting some cooling abilities to mitigate that. That is how Elementalism is intended to be used, with a balance between heat-generating abilities and heat-mitigating abilities.
I’d keep it for off-hand at the very least. It’s still one of the most popular off-hands. There are builds where it’s really fun to use as main and finding the right utility can be a struggle, but it’s also kind of fun? What level elites are you running, btw?
Keep your elemental for offhand, it won’t be wasted then.
You can choose to level any other weapon you like, in fact you can level all the weapon choices if you wanted to.
The “living flame” (with passive) is very useful in Dark Agartha and the Faction Missions (Rogue Agent and Into Darkness) When cast upon the enemy - it will taunt and impair the enemy, which will then attack the living flame instead of you.
You can also defensive target the Living Flame and heal it to keep it alive longer, or alive long enough for the cooldown to come off so you can cast again, or alive for the duration of the fight.
You can continue to damage the enemy in the meantime with much ease.
(Living Flame can also be used to solo tank New York Raid E5)
For me, turning on “Simple ground targeting” helps very much, I play via keyboard only and so one press of a key and anything that is classed as a “ground target” ability, is cast upon the enemy without me having to use the mouse to select the ability, find an area and then place it.
This option might be worth looking at for you if you have difficulty or hindrances in placing any AOE’s. You can always turn it back off if it is of no use to you, however you prefer.
I personally found Elementalism a really odd class to use. I have a Character who is semi RP and given his background, he would naturally use Fire only - there would be no room, rhyme nor reason for him to want to use any ice or cold abilities. Of course he mourned the passing of “Crystallised Flame” and welcomed the “Living Flame.”
But I do wish there was no “Alternating mechanic” that punished the user for its choice of ability used. You can use as much cold as you want, but Fire no… That heats the user up - despite it coming from the ele focus that in 2021 is incapable of utilising its own internal heat management through clever technology or magic. These must be some very archaic and ancient ele focuses here, so one must be careful. lol
(I personally think you should be able to use any of the ele abilities without punishing limitations)
All that aside, you can level any other weapon you want for main hand use and AR and Hammer are good main hands.
Hope you find a good one to use that you like and good luck
Yeah, I thought as much. I had looked around, but thought maybe there might be some hard-to-get item from some Elite mission I was not aware of.
My main secondary is blade, but I also have a chaos focus and shotgun leveled up for different encounters. None of them are anything special though, just standard Mk III weapons. I am trying blade with elemental as secondary now. Other weapons seem so FAST compared with the slow cast times I am used to with elemental, but thus far it looks promising.
Yeah, I use super-cooler and generally do not lock myself out too often with heat. Normally having to wait a few seconds to build back up to acceptable damage levels is not too bad, but I have found it makes a profound difference at the higher level content where seconds can mean the difference between success and failure.
Yeah, I was amazed that so many articles I read relegated elemental to a good secondary weapon, but none of them touted it as a good main. That would have been good information to know when I first started playing, to be sure.
I vary my Elite depending upon the encounter, but normally run either Blizzard or Elemental Overload.
I gave Living Flame a shot in Dark Agartha a few times. It tended to die rather easily and while it did taunt the Boss it’s damage was so small I did not think it was really adding all that much. I may give it another look-see though.
I have tried both of them. For me, the targeting is not so much the issue as the delay in the casting is. If there was some payoff for having elemental abilities take between 1 and 3 seconds to cast then I could understand it, but from what I have read the damage output is actually less than the weapons who all have instant abilities. Seems odd and out of place to have such lengthy delays in casting abilities in a reticule based targeting game. It might make sense to me if there were a tab targeting option, but with the reticule and the pace of the game casting times are just more of a hindrance than any kind of benefit I can see.
I can relate to that. I wanted to be a magic-user in SWL just as I was in The Secret World, which is why I started out as a Magus class. I may just have to relegate that “class fantasy” with some melee or gunplay though as it has become obvious to me that there are just some weapons that are either favored by Funcom or were just better designed for the new play style of Secret World Legends.
For living flame - its not so much the damage that is contributed by it, but more - it takes the attention off you - so you can apply the damage and can rely less on healing yourself. I sometimes just target the Living flame and give him a leeching ray from AR which is my basic and only heal for DA and Faction missions. Just enough to keep it alive long enough for CD to come off, then when it dies i can summon another full HP one. The impair is also useful for impairing casts such as Frozen Heart, Anima Transfusion & The vampire draining one.
Blood and Ele have punishing factors to their gameplay. (Blood offering makes sense - ele doesn’t really lol)
Shotgun has a hindering and annoying mechanic
Hammer, AR, Pistol, Chaos don’t appear to have any hindering factors - AR only has grenade timing.
No idea about blade tho, i’ve never used it.
This ability definitely has some merit to it I had not seen before. The flame managed to tank the bosses in Dark Agartha (Elite 5 level anyways) quite well. I will have to do some more experimenting with it.
Just wanted to add that with @Rizzle suggestion, combined with the passive Synergetic Flames I have been able to finish Dark Agartha at Elite 7 (my current item level).
@Neelie The Elemental passive for the Living Flame does quite well at keeping it alive as well, if you mostly use Elemental abilities. Doesn’t keep it alive during enrages, but at least they take out the enrage on the flame an not on you.
I wanted to extend my thanks once again to everyone for their input and especially to @Rizzle. I had no idea just how well that little flame could taunt and be kept alive by my Elemetalism abilities. Going to keep at it with my Elementalism for a bit longer with the new information.
