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Mar 26, 2006, 10:21 PM // 22:21
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#21 |
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: In this universe. In north america. That should keep you pedophiles guessing^^
Profession: R/Me
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I have no problem with ele's.
In fact I love ele's. You can use them in so many different ways. These days I see so many caster heavy teams in gvg. Especially eles. Blurred vision or blinding flash verse warriors. And wards. And spikes. So many possibilities. |
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Mar 26, 2006, 10:33 PM // 22:33
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#22 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: London, England
Guild: I Uprising I [RAGE]
Profession: R/
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If your a fan of air eles, i suggest you go for a combination of blind, envenerating charge and orb and lightning strike. nrg management comes from air attument and ele attunement.
Now, i know exactly what you mean about eles. In gvg i spend a great deal of time doing nothing, w8ing for a target to be called before i unleash hell. With the build above you can blind ppl until a spike is called, and then hit em hard for 210 dmg on soft targets. On smoldering ashes, make enough noise so they improve it. I didnt notice it before, but looking at it now i am thinking 'man, is that crap' Double the fire time, and we can talk, but immolate is better for everything really... |
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Mar 26, 2006, 11:34 PM // 23:34
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#23 | |
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I'm back?
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Here.
Guild: Delta Formation [DF]
Profession: W/E
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Quote:
However, a few powerful utility skills do not make the class a damager. The elementalist has entire lines devoted almost purely to dealing damage, and with all of that they still aren't able to kill anything without a spike. That's the problem. |
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Mar 27, 2006, 01:41 PM // 13:41
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#24 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Profession: E/Rt
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What I often wonder is, why are long-cast time Elem spells given such a huge recharge as well? Surely it should be one or the other, unless the spell is very special indeed. Witness the necro spell Deadly Swarm, it has a long cast time but a very short recharge. I would have thought that a majority of Elem damage spells would be similar in design - easy to interrupt, but spammable and useful.
Certainly, Ele's would be much more capable of "pressure", if they could say, sustain multiple firestorms at once etc. (ie, if firestorm retained its long casting time from release but had a recharge of like 1 or 2 seconds.) I also wonder why there are so few AoE DoT spells that are similar in behaviour to Balthasar's Aura. I would have thought that Elems should get spells that do damage in every way available in the game. Instead they get lots and lots of very similar static AoE DoTs with long recharges, long cast times and secondary effects that are more or less completely useless. (I felt sad in the FPE when my Ele, which I rolled up to try out the new skills, became 10x more deadly when I switched to a Necro secondary and changed to blood nukes and that life-stealing elite enchantment. Vampiric Spirit? Something like that.) Last edited by Rieselle; Mar 27, 2006 at 01:44 PM // 13:44.. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 12:40 AM // 00:40
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#25 | |||||||||||
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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Quote:
Still, you're right, elementalists have a lot of emanagement options, and that's likely part of why their skills are so expensive. That's a ridiculous idea, though, because this game allows multiple professions per character. If elementalist skills are all priced for great emanagement, and other professions are not, then it would simply make sense to combine the elementalist's emanagement with the efficient skills of other professions. Which is largely what's happening. Quote:
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The problem is that the elementalist skill set plays like a domination mesmer, not an illusion mesmer. I'll clarify that. An illusion-specced mesmer is a damage character that plays both ways, simultaneously offensive through his degen, and disruptive/defensive through the various snare or slow effects that come with them. He's riding the recharge on that Conjure Phantasm, trying to maintain 3-4 copies of Conjure at a time. He's also likely spreading Migraine around, keeping a couple copies of that for a bit more pressure. When he's not using his damage spells he contributes a bit more with other disruptive hexes, or he's busy managing his energy so that he can continue to spam that Conjure and Migraine. In other words he's a very active character, and it oftentimes feels like you can't do things fast enough when playing him. A domination guy plays completely differently. Instead of spammables, for the most part you have several strong spells on moderate recharge that you use situationally. You have some solid energy debil skills that you can use to slowly work someone over - one of the biggest mistakes new dom players make is using their burns too quickly. You have Shatters and Drains that you can use to help warriors power through. You can black a target out for a spike. For the most part you aren't queuing up your skills trying to spam faster, but looking to maximize each individual skill on your bar. While the illusion guy is a spammer who just tries to create chaos for the other team, a domination mesmer is a precision tool designed to break down specific aspects of an opponent's defense. Back to the elementalist. The vast, vast majority of his skills are not priced for spamming, in the rare cases that they even have a recharge that allows it. Each one has stats that cast it like a precision tool. But like a domination guy, precisely placed spells aren't used to create pressure, they're used to strengthen other game situations. Lightning Orb cannot be spammed around effectively, but when coordinated with a spike it can be rather strong. You never want to be spamming Deep Freeze like crazy, but if you can catch someone in a choke point with it the skill is devastating. But what are you doing while waiting for those skills to recharge, or for those situations to come up? Wanding or regenerating energy or running a flag. When I'm playing an air elementalist, I can toss random Lightning Strikes around but that's about it. If warriors aren't charging adrenaline and spiking my character's offensive output is next to zero. A water elementalist is solid right now because the utility on his skills is very conductive to playing like a mesmer, using Blurred Vision to break up warrior spikes, snaring a target for a few seconds so your warriors can converge, or buying enough time that your guys can get away. But you most certainly do not deal any meaningful amount of damage. When all of your skills are either conditionally effective or have long recharges, you cannot effectively apply any sort of pressure. That is the conceptual issue that eles have to deal with. A fire elementalist that can apply some beatings with spammable, unconditional damage skills, then rock teams with well-placed Meteors or Rodgort's Invocations would be a viable character. A character that doesn't do anything for long stretches while waiting for a situation to use Meteor or Rodgort's is not. Quote:
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In general that's true for all of the professions, there's nothing that's really revolutionary. If a profession had good stuff before it got more of the same - if it was a pile of junk, well, same deal. The biggest change that I see coming is to monks, a lot of those elites have potential that might let them run without hard emanagement from a secondary profession. Quote:
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Granted this was a month ago when I wanted a fatty Distortion as well so I had a really high illusion spec, but that a 12 Illusion Conjure Phantasm outperforms a 16 spec Immolate is pretty telling. Quote:
What it does have going for it right now is Gaze From Beyond, that skill is just retardedly overpowered right now. 126 damage to the face for 5 energy and a 1 second cast time? Yes please. I wanted to make a really lame HA build using that, Spirit Transfer (216 heal for 5 energy and a quarter second cast, no recharge) along with a bunch of spirit spammers, but we never got the people or skills to pull it off. Hopefully they'll fix that before release and I'll never get the chance. Quote:
It's exactly what you said about Firestorm. The problem with that skill wasn't neccessarily the casting time (though a shorter casting time does make it more useful). It's that the recharge is so bloody long that you can't get a lot of milage out of the skill. If I was tweaking that skill I would have upped the damage slightly (to the standard 5...35 elementalist DoT damage) and lowered the recharge to 10 seconds. Then you could actually use the skill to control small portions of the map, even if each cast was a pretty significant investment. Ah, well. Peace, -CxE
__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 01:09 AM // 01:09
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#26 |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: UK
Guild: Portrayors of Valour [pV]
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There really needs to be a change in which AoE works IMO.
I think giving the Elementalist the ability to control where to place his AoE's instead of only being able to cast on a target, would give the Elementalist the buff it desperately needs. How Anet would implement this is not my problem |
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Mar 28, 2006, 01:34 AM // 01:34
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#27 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Sep 2005
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I agree.
It always seemed counter-intuitive that an elementalist couldn't decide where to put his spell. I'm sure getting a targeting cursor would be a major development w/ regard to programming, but it'd be worth it in my opinion. Might not make a HUGE tactical difference, and surely wouldn't change their DPS, but it would add a bit more utility to the ele. If a character gets enough utility, they start to become indespensible. For aoe spells, you could hold down a key while activating the spell, and it would give you a targetting cursor. If you don't hold down the designated key, it would work as it does now. . . or something. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51
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#28 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: ..!
Guild: We plunder you now
Profession: E/
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Elementalist. My favorite class. During the Alliance battles I had a lot of fun with this class. I'm going to look at a few skills and tell you why I was disappointed to see no buffs at all for elementalists in the last balance update.
First of all, Stoning. If its damage wasn't so terrible, might be the offense for a warder. Earth was one of my favorite elements. I'd always ward and use Aegis or Heal party. I could never help out offensively, Stone daggers is a double 8 attribute flare. (Although useful against Reversal of Fortune) Anyway, back to Stoning. Slightly less casting time as Lightning orb, a lot less damage than lightning orb and same recharge and cost. Lightning orb can do 140 damage without protective spirit. Stoning can knockdown if you target has weakness on him, and do 85 damage or so. That's half than Lightning orb, but is knockdown the same as less casting time and another 60 damage? Not to mention the conditional weakness. Point is, this skill surely needs a damage buff. In my guild's HA build, our elementalist uses two offensive skills. This all comes to down to the fact that Elementalists are simply back up singers. Spam Blinding flash and Heal party, spike the target incase the other classes are having trouble, speed buff the monks and warriors, and kite all at the same time. This can get stressful. Depending on your build, an elementalist is a hard class to play, and the effort doesn't even make give as much in return. On the other hand, me and my guild came up with a build based on Elementalists. Still in testing, but the damage output seems to be really good in HA. Anyway, I agree, the damage isn't that high but an elemnetalist can dominate overall. Last edited by Hurricane; Mar 28, 2006 at 01:58 AM // 01:58.. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 02:06 AM // 02:06
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#29 | |||||
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: May 2005
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I really hate how necessary these energy elites are for any ele even trying to put out dps. Other classes aren't hamstrung into giving up their elite for energy management the way eles are. And any time you do take another elite, you have no hope of decent dps. Instead of adding more energy elites, eles need more non-elite energy skills. Attunement and glyph of lesser is not good enough. Other classes obviously have elites that are used more often than others, but I don't think this is the same thing. Even monks don't have to use an energy elite. Quote:
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Mar 28, 2006, 07:21 AM // 07:21
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#30 |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Sep 2005
Profession: N/Me
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Wouldnt it be easier to reduce the cost of Ele spells across the board, hardly any other class can afford to use Ele skills atm.
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Mar 28, 2006, 10:35 AM // 10:35
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#31 | ||||
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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When you're looking at any strategy game like Guild Wars, be it chess or starcraft or Magic or what have you, the goal, at least explicitly, is always a very simple objective. Kill this target, or take this piece, or something that at least on the surface is easy to understand and explain. But what makes those games interesting is that they really aren't about doing that thing at all. They're about controlling access to whatever that key thing is, about defending your own and threatening your opponent's, and from that about controlling access to the resources neccessary to do those things. They end up being about smaller battles that are naively unrelated to the ultimate goal, but are really about controlling the situations in the battle that will allow you to take the rather simple objective without your opponent being able to stop you. When you look at Guild Wars what that means is that it isn't simply a game that's about beating each other over the head with damage and whoever wins the race is the winner. Instead it's a game about controlling the state of the battle, of finding or creating situations where certain types of damage will rock your opponent, while stopping your opponent from doing the same. It's about disrupting your opponent's strategy, by proactively screwing up his offense and setting up defenses that he isn't prepared to deal with. It's about shutting down your opponent's ability to do the same to you. You think about all of these things when making a character, you take attacks that can help in specific situations, for spiking down targets or AoEing the hell out of people in a choke point or that will help overwhelm them with degen. Or you look at attacks that get around common defenses or help you break them down, like Shatter Enchantment or Irresistible Blow. Maybe you take skills that help with the movement game, or disrupt your opponent's ability to defend like a knockdown. In other words when you take a look at your skill bar you'll likely find a list of tools for overcoming or placing the various obstacles that you'll encounter during a typical PvP game. Ok, with all of that said, let's take a look at Flare. Flare does not contribute anything to any of these various meta-battles. It isn't disruptive or conditional or anything of the sorts. All it can do is hit someone for some damage. Now in order for this skill to be relevant at all, it has to do enough damage to make up for the fact that it contributes nothing to the larger strategy of the game. It has to have enough of an impact to be competitive with some of these other aspects of the game. But that's where the problem arises. If such an option to just go straight for the throat, so to speak, was actually competitive, then all of that beautiful diversity that makes the game interesting gets destroyed. Thinking about disruption and spiking and all of the other things becomes irrelevant because you can be competitive simply by mashing on Flare, or Power Attack, or whatever stupid damage skill you happen to be using is. It becomes the proverbial game of two people bashing each other over the head until one passes out and that isn't interesting for anyone. Hopefully I explained that well enough. Basically what it boils down to is that a game where Flare is good is not a fun game. It would be orders of magnitude worse than what iWay did to the game. People go into a match looking for a good fight - losing to something so brainless just leaves people with a bad taste. Flare is an important part of the learning curve, but it needs to remain just that, a skill that's discarded once a player outgrows it. Quote:
Now hammering them for not rectifying the imbalances they worked into the game almost a year later, after millions of matches and data points have been gathered? That is completely justified and well deserved at this point. Peace, -CxE
__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 10:43 AM // 10:43
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#32 | |
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Academy Page
Join Date: Jul 2005
Profession: N/Me
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Quote:
Even if exhaustion where not an issue reducing spell costs to match their effects would basicaly just turn elementalists into spell casting warriors imo... spaming weak sauce spells left and right. I personaly am much more in favor of buffing the power of ele skills to match their cooldown and energy cost. This will turn elementalists into more of a nuking class imo. Big spells but not all the time, the problem is that you have to make them big enough that they are worth having go off on a less than a spamable basis, in other words, the spells have to be effective. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 01:08 PM // 13:08
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#33 | ||
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(屮ಠ益ಠ)屮
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Hong Kong
Guild: Guildless
Profession: Mo/
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I'm pretty curious on how Ensign feels about the AoE control-over-area-instead-on-top-of-the-player thing.
Which is: Quote:
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Mar 28, 2006, 05:52 PM // 17:52
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#34 |
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Pre-Searing Cadet
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Reposted from other (huge) thread
I think that Ensign's points are well taken, but there isn't a proposed solution.
Here's an easy proposed solution that I'd be interested in hearing feedback on: Make elementalist autoattack wands (and only elementalist wands) do more damage without requiring enchantments or energy use. Couple of ideas: 1) Increased damage for each elementalist wand attack (instead of 15-20, make it 25-30) so that having an elementalist concentrating wand fire on a target is nearly equivalent to having a Warrior just autoattacking it. Slight pressure with added spike capabilities. or 2) Have all elementalist wand attacks do a slight amount of degen (-2) for 1-2 seconds of the appropriate elemental type. This again provides slight pressure for their attacks as a Warrior gets for autoattacking. This has the advantage of making the elementalist slightly more team useful in applying pressure while not overbalancing the already useful spike, utility, and energy management skills. Thoughts? Insanity |
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Mar 28, 2006, 06:29 PM // 18:29
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#35 |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Dec 2005
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i would say no to the degen becuase that is armor ingoring, but if a wand scaled with the related attribute that would give hte eles something to do in between the spells. But remember to consider the ranger, at some point the ranger becomes worthless next to the ele.
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Mar 28, 2006, 06:37 PM // 18:37
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#36 |
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Core Guru
 Join Date: Feb 2005
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For 1, i'm not really sure that increasing wand damage will do that much for eles, as you already lose dps due to flight time, that and wand attacks do miss. I'm not saying it won't help at all, just unsure as to how much that will actually help.
For 2, well, maybe, but i'm kinda concerned that you actually have to reduce eles to wanding bitches to actually do any kind of pressure damage at all, and as it should well be obvious, you can't be casting spells and wanding away at the same time, its either one or the other and with eles having to constantly kite, i wonder if you even get to wand much at all. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 08:12 PM // 20:12
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#37 | |||
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: May 2005
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No, I don't like the wand idea. Wands already do decent damage in comparison to bows. They do about the same damage as the medium speed bows, and do more than the slow bows. I think a 16 marks bow should do significantly more damage just attacking than a wand. Right now it doesn't.
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If ele skills are left as inefficient, then you just have spiking. I think it's fine to have spike skills, but it shouldn't involve all of them. And if they're all inefficient.. you're just going to take the highest damage one and spike with that. Quote:
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Last edited by Rey Lentless; Mar 28, 2006 at 08:15 PM // 20:15.. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 09:19 PM // 21:19
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#38 | |||
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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As I mentioned in another thread, that requires two changes - the money needs to be less conditional, and the spammables need to be more efficient. The spammables are actually the harder part because so many of them are unconditional, and have to suck for reasons already explained. I think the profession can be cleaned up entirely with skill tweaks. My current list: Glyphs (all): 1/4 second cast Glyph of Lesser Energy: 20 second recharge Ether Renewal: 8 second duration Air: Air Attunement: 30 second recharge Chain Lightning: 2 second cast Glimmering Mark: 1 second cast, 10 second recharge Lightning Javelin: 10 second recharge, knocks down if attacking Lightning Surge: 10...85 damage, 25% armor penetration. Remove exhaustion Lightning Touch: 10 energy Earth: Crystal Wave: 15 second recharge, increase AoE to "nearby" Earth Attunement: 30 second recharge Earthquake: 15 energy Eruption: Adjust effect to cause blind on every pulse Magnetic Aura: 10 energy, 30 second recharge Stone Daggers: 3...28 damage Stoning: 10 energy Ward Against Elements: 10 energy Ward Against Melee: 15 energy Fire: Fire Attunement: 30 second recharge Fire Storm: 3...35 damage, 3 second cast, 10 second recharge Flare: 16...55 damage Immolate: 1...5 seconds of burning Inferno: 8 second recharge Lava Font: increase AoE to "nearby" Mark of Rodgort: 15 energy Meteor: 20 second recharge Meteor Shower: Increase AoE to "nearby". Adjust effect to knock down on the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth meteors. Mind Burn: 10 energy Phoenix: 2 second cast, 15 second recharge. Increase PBAoE effect to "nearby" Rodgort's Invocation: Increase AoE to "in the area" Searing Heat: Adjust effect to cause burning on every pulse. Water: Armor of Frost: 30 second recharge Frozen Burst: 20 second recharge Ice Spear: 10...70 damage Ice Spikes: 2...8 second snare Maelstrom: Increase AoE to "nearby" Mind Freeze: 4...10 second snare Mist Form: Add "and move 33% faster" Swirling Aura: 30 second recharge Water Attunement: 30 second recharge Notes: *Every non-energy elite is going to be marginal until there are reasonable non-elite emanagement options for this energy-hungry profession. *The Air line is going to remain spikey. To be a competitive damage line, it needs that aggressively priced Chain Lightning, and another 1s cast, straight damage skill with an attractive recharge. This is a tricky line to adjust, because as mentioned simple, to the face damage effects are not things that you can price aggressively. *Half of fire's problems are solved if Immolate becomes playable. The big nukes don't suffer from lack of damage, but lack of utility - long recharges and small AoEs that make them unwieldly. *Water elementalists play like mesmers instead of damage professions. They desperately want a reliable way to deal damage. The built-in conflicts with the fire line are maddening, as fire and water are the two lines with the most inherent synergy. *Flare effects shouldn't be a total joke, but they aren't something you want to ever make attractive. *Magnetic and Swirling Auras have effects that want to be stances. They're tricky to balance when they can just be Shattered off. *I seriously have no idea what to do with Thunderclap. That skill is scary. Quote:
Peace, -CxE
__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Mar 28, 2006, 10:04 PM // 22:04
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#39 |
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Perfectly Elocuted
Join Date: Sep 2005
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To the OP:
Would you say that an Elementalist being outdamaged by an SS necro is a problem? |
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Mar 28, 2006, 10:29 PM // 22:29
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#40 |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Aug 2005
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We're talking pvp here, and if SS outdamages an Ele, it isn't a problem with the skills, it's a problem with the idiot wamo you keep playing with.
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