Curse

Aeon221 · Mar 04, 2011, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Eles and Rangers, like the Paragon, really only have a couple of viable builds for HM. Most of them are counter-intuitive (ER prot?) and totally different from the original vision of the class.

That said, even with a damage buff most of the builds would be straight up dull. Rangers with better damage would still be boring and focused on spamming skills. Same with eles -- you can only fire off SF so many times a minute before you get bored as hell, even with higher damage.

Elementalist:

Eles have a lot of interesting skills in different lines, but if they go damage they're mostly tied to a single element, energy storage and either a line from a secondary class or pve skills. Finally, they aren't all that flexible. They can spec into utility, where they spam one or two conditions, or they can spec into damage and spam damage spells.

How about spells that cause a specific damage type also cause order independent combo effects.

Fire > Earth: cracked armor
Earth > Fire: weakness
Cold > Lightning: armor ignoring damage to adjacent foes
Lightning > Cold: energy
Fire > Cold: disease
Cold > Earth : armor ignoring damage to current target

All these effects would scale with the energy storage attribute. They would also be chain capable, so you could go earth > fire > cold and get weakness and disease on a target, say, or lightning > cold > fire > earth for bonus damage, some energy and some aoe damage. You could also do things like deep freeze > invoke to cause all foes hit by both spells to hit all adjacent foes with some aoe damage, or deep freeze > earthquake to do bonus damage to all targets hit by both spells.

You would have a window of three seconds to continue the chain. Only elementalist spells would be valid for chaining, so that you can't use frost burst, conjure lightning and an IAS to cause insane bonus aoe damage.

Suddenly every cast requires a bit of thinking, rather than a simple face roll. And, better yet, the order independent chain allows flexibility based on enemy types faced.

AmbientMelody · Mar 04, 2011, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Reminds me of 'elemental chains' from Heroes V on Warlock, although that's a completely different thing (enemy creatures had pre-assigned 'elements', and by using your elemental spells on the right counter-elements you could attain higher damage ... water>fire>water, air>earth>air).

Personally, I'd rather see Energy Storage somehow contribute to Ele's damage or secondary effects caused by Ele spells, rather than just provide a flat +energy bonus.

When it comes to skills itself, I've been inspired long ago by a Polymock game ...

To make Eles more useful regardless of their raw damage output, one could introduce more secondary effects to existing skills, as well as rework attunements. Here is a bunch of examples:

Disclaimer: numbers below are subject to change - they only illustrate a concept/idea behind skill combos powered by primary Elementalist attribute and elemental attunements.

Water Attunement (PvE)

Enchantment Spell. (36...55...60 seconds.) You gain 1 Energy plus 30% of the Energy cost when you use a Water Magic skill. Your Water Magic skills have 0...30% armour penetration against foes under an effect of a Water Magic hex. (SKill Attribute changed from Water Magic to Energy Storage).

Ice Spikes (PvE)

Hex Spell. Also hexes foes adjacent to target (2...5...6 seconds). These foes move 66% slower. Initial effect: deals 20...68...80 cold damage. Inflict bleeding for "8+(ES*)" seconds, if you are attuned to Water.

* - how much Energy Storage attribute have you got

Vapor Blade (PvE)

Spell. Deals 15...111...135 cold damage. Inflict cracked armour for "8+(ES)" seconds if target foe is under effect of a Water Magic hex. Half damage against enchanted foes.

Shatterstone (PvE)

Elite Hex Spell. (3 seconds.) Initial effect: deals 25...85...100 cold damage. End effect: deals 25...85...100 cold damage. inflicts deep wound for "6+(ES/2)" seconds, if you are attuned to Water.

---

Skill combos in the same manner could be made for Fire, Air and Earth lines, either increasing damage or providing secondary effects (in form of conditions & hexes) on a per-skill basis. For obvious reasons there should be viable combos for single-campaign skillset as well as cross-campaign options.

For instance, Fire line could spread bleeding, burning & weakness as well as follow up with increased fire damage, for AoE pressure - your typical damage dealer. A bunch of skills ought to be reworked (e.g. Rodgort's Invocation, Breath of Fire, Inferno, Phoenix) for more spammability as well as utility in general builds.

Water line weak in damage could focus on secondary effects on top of hex-based movement speed reduction, providing bleeding (Frozen Burst, Ice Spikes), poison (from frostbite, i.e. Deep Freeze), cracked armour (Vapor Blade, Rust), weakness (Freezing Gust, Chilling Wind) and deep wound (Shatterstone). This line would probably retain longer recharge for AoE skills and remain a crowd control tool, which can provide necessary support beyond wards by weakening opponents.

Earth line focused on defense could provide more damage abilities viable against single targets to assist in boss fights, providing more knockdown, weakness, dazed, deep wound and bleeding, preferably with spammable single-target skills. It's AoE skills would remain largely unchanged.

Air line would get shorter casting time & recharge on single-target spells such as Lightning Strike, Arc Lightning, Enervating Charge as well as increased overall damage output. Glimmering mark could be turned to something marginally more useful and conditions such as daze & weakness ought to become more common. Air magic would provide best damage-per-second against single targets, on top of the ability to shutdown a single target at a time (blind/weakness/daze/knockdown).