1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6.
7.
8. Rez
See what's wrong with this skill bar? Maybe if the game is designed around 16 skill slots then it would work. Of course, by the time you finish casting 5 different prep skills, the rest of the party already obliterated the entire mob.
That's it. The ultimate Elementalist Buff:
Energy Storage [PVE]. Functunality added: For every 3 Points in Energy Storage you gain an additional skill slot which can hold an Energy Storage skill, a Glyph or an Attunement.
That way ES gives energy management in form of additional skill slots (for the holy trinity Attunement, GoLE and AoR) and elementalists can use ALL 8 skill slots for the actual build.
Last edited by Mashiyu; Jan 28, 2011 at 12:01 AM // 00:01..
Seriously just make elemental weakness count for something.
Give more monsters elemental weaknesses and shit will be fine, Elementalists will just change builds based on the general weakness of their enemies. If more enemies gain elemental weaknesses Eles will be fine.
Unless you're using AP none of it is on a decent recharge (20-30 seconds) and you push 40ishx5 +75 from EBSoH (base)=275 (maximum damage). BUH adds to everything so I don't count it (RoJ?).
Also you need something for the scattering effect, such as (and mainly) Deep Freeze.
Updated elementalist skill bar:
1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6. Deep Freeze
7.
8. Rez
See? Problem solved, eles don't need a buff. Also if you want to protect your 2s cast time Deep Freeze from interrupts, just put Mantra of Concentration in the optional slot 7.
Now your ele has no energy problem (like other caster classes), no recharge problem (like the other classes), have damage that match up to the ranger, no problem with scatter (like the other classes), and no interrupt problem (like other classes with their 0.25s-1s cast time spells). You even have the option to bring Mindbender instead of rez so that you can cast normally.
Why would you be bringing a rez, AoR, and Deep Freeze? Those would be optional depending on the build and none of which I'd bring on an AP build on any profession. Nonsense.
Seriously just make elemental weakness count for something.
Give more monsters elemental weaknesses and shit will be fine, Elementalists will just change builds based on the general weakness of their enemies. If more enemies gain elemental weaknesses Eles will be fine.
This.
Give monsters a serious armor penalty versus elements they're weak against
something like "Ice golems have 25% less armor vs fire."
Even if you started making enemies exceptionally vulnerable to (for example) cold damage , water magic will still not be an effective damage dealing method (and if it did, well, then everyone would just use cold damage weapons to do the same thing, only better).
You know what else? Energy Storage needs a rework.
Now that we can split prime attributes, it would be in the general interest to take a good, long look over the special elements of each class, and find the ones that are currently coming up lacking. They did it for Fast Casting, they can do it for others.
Energy Storage is basically useless after the first few seconds of battle. Any situation which calls for an extended firefight, the things you need to be paying attention to, will require the ele to have energy management enchantments and glyphs just to compensate for their high cost skills, which are currently underpowered (which means more skills to beef them up, etc). The first step, therefore, is to condense the amount of utility an elementalist needs to function.
Make Energy Storage work like Attunements. Then, make Attunements help with the Armor Penetration problem. Add a few Glyphs that punch through armor completely, and you're golden.
Give monsters a serious armor penalty versus elements they're weak against
something like "Ice golems have 25% less armor vs fire."
That would take more time to do, but it would be the best solution.
Destroyers, Titans, fire and Ice elementals already have elemental weakneses, some phantoms vs lighning, and a few more monsters.
But they are A FEW.
There should be way more.
Insects and spiders weak vs fire and cold, but way stronger vs arth and lightning, water-related creatures such as the EotN frogs and wisps weak vs earth, dragons weak vs cold and strong vs fire and lightning, giants weak vs earth, ghost weak vs proton beams, I mean lightning but strong vs earth... ...
It's as if they started with the idea and then forgot about it, and mostly used the plain 'ol fire&ice stuff for the most obvious enemies
I've recently gotten into playing ele on a regular basis, and beside the fact that I feel my damage capability is lacking in power compared to most other professions, I find it excruciatingly annoying to stop every 80 seconds to recast my attunement(s). Would it be really game breaking to change their mechanic to become enchantments of indefinite duration, like illusion of weakness for example? Increase the cast time and/or recharge, no prob, but this 2-3 second forced stop and go after every other battle begins to piss me off in the long run, and when I think back always has since I realized it's the reason why my ele hero/hench were constantly falling behind. Why does this matter for HM? Battles take longer in HM, so it's not every 2 or three mobs you need to recast your tune, but a good portion of the time your attunement runs out after every single encounter you have.
Just an ele novice's pov.
Last edited by asb; Jan 28, 2011 at 02:11 PM // 14:11..
1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6. Deep Freeze
7.
8. Rez
See? Problem solved, eles don't need a buff. Also if you want to protect your 2s cast time Deep Freeze from interrupts, just put Mantra of Concentration in the optional slot 7.
Now your ele has no energy problem (like other caster classes), no recharge problem (like the other classes), have damage that match up to the ranger, no problem with scatter (like the other classes), and no interrupt problem (like other classes with their 0.25s-1s cast time spells). You even have the option to bring Mindbender instead of rez so that you can cast normally.
Learn to play people, this is how its done.
Lol, is that bar serious? You now have 1 spot for a damage skill, and 7 prep skills.. Either you're being very sarcastic and I'm not getting it, or you're being pants on head retarded..
You say "Yes, eles can use BuH and EBSoH and they'll do the same damage" but you're relying on PvE skills here.. Also, saying "they can take 2 extra skills and they'll do the same damage as the other professions that need neither of these to get it done" is just agreeing with us you know.. You're admitting that other professions are way stronger..
Eles suck, stop denying it. High energy, bad management, low damage, high recharge.. As opposed to a mesmer for example: low energy costs = good management, immense armor ignoring damage, and low recharges..
Make Energy Storage work like Attunements. Then, make Attunements help with the Armor Penetration problem. Add a few Glyphs that punch through armor completely, and you're golden.
I like that idea ... it's more work than a quick-and-dirty Intensity buff, but I think it would be worth it. Only problem may be elementalist bosses which have access to armor penetration and deal even more insane (insaner?) damage.
btw: Sry to those who got it, but
Quote:
Energy Storage [PVE]. Functunality added: For every 3 Points in Energy Storage you gain an additional skill slot which can hold an Energy Storage skill, a Glyph or an Attunement.
and
Quote:
1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6. Deep Freeze
7.
8. Rez
The idea of give a lot of elemental weakness to all GW mob isn't that great(put a elemental mod and your warrior is even more overpowered..), and it was discussed before also.
Imo eles requires a huge rework of mechanics, skills effects and damage and overall ES. The idea to give to ES the function of a perma attunement isn't bad, maybe if coupled with a rework of attunements as damage boost(but make them somehow more usable, for cast time and recharge, like mantras...). Then you could have some problem with HM eles, but this is another (and already discussed) story...and is always possible to remove attunements from mob's builds(....no ignore this last thing).
Other mechanics could be changed imo...more utily or real damage, glyphs can surely be improved, and i'd like to have wards moving with you, centered on the caster and affecting all allies that stands around you, like the protective ward from fire darts of the golem in the elusive golemancer mission in eye for example(but this shouldn't work on pve wards too imho, they're enough overpowerd now...)
And about the previous "sarcasm"...the problem is that it isn't so far from true. Running a "full" ele bar requires at LEAST 3 slot for your e-management(gole, attunement,aor or ele lord...), trow in a res or utility skill and you have 4 slot for damage skills. Then you have to face interrupts(long cooldown are a real issue) scatter(another slot gone for a snare...) damage ( and another gone for Buh or EbsoH...)...do you see some problems?
P.S: obviously this is all referred to PvE. I'm not a PvPer, but from wath i've seen in PvP the ele does(thanks to completely different armor parameter) what tehy are built for: kill everything moves in their aggro bubble.
More PvE/PvP splits are necessaries imo.
Last edited by AndrewSX; Jan 28, 2011 at 04:20 PM // 16:20..
Eles in PvP doesn't use rely on attunements as much because enchant strips are so common and stuff like Invoke isn't exact energy heavy (10 energy can be had in 8 recharge so you don't need attunement). If they run attunement and no other energy management it usually is covered with Aura of Restoration.
Lately you don't see that many eles outside of water ones and most recently Invoke (after the 1 second cast buff).
Old school Ether Prodigy, Ether Renewal --> new Ether Prism (which is out of favor now), Mind Blast, GoLE.
I've recently gotten into playing ele on a regular basis, and beside the fact that I feel my damage capability is lacking in power compared to most other professions, I find it excruciatingly annoying to stop every 80 seconds to recast my attunement(s). Would it be really game breaking to change their mechanic to become enchantments of indefinite duration, like illusion of weakness for example? Increase the cast time and/or recharge, no prob, but this 2-3 second forced stop and go after every other battle begins to piss me off in the long run, and when I think back always has since I realized it's the reason why my ele hero/hench were constantly falling behind. Why does this matter for HM? Battles take longer in HM, so it's not every 2 or three mobs you need to recast your tune, but a good portion of the time your attunement runs out after every single encounter you have.
Just an ele novice's pov.
Compared to a rangers every 12-24 seconds prep?
But yes maybe decrease the duration, recharge and make it 1 sec cast in pve.
But yes maybe decrease the duration, recharge and make it 1 sec cast in pve.
Recharge is the big thing here. You can't strip preparations by the way.
1 cast does matter but not as much as anywhere from 35% to 50% energy reduction return gone from one enchant strip and then having to wait 45 seconds to recast it and eating a d-shot/p-spike/p-block to the face in the process.
Having Aura of Restoration as a cover enchant doesn't work in elite areas where Strip enchantment, chillblains, Assault enchantments (rare), Expunge enchantments, well of the profane, disenchantment (spirit), rend enchantments, etc. are active since enchant strips are 15-20 cooldown and the attunements are on 45 cooldown.
If a ranger loses his/her prep it's no big deal most of the time and much less severe than losing the equivalent of 9 to 12 ranks of expertise. Okay you lose 3-4 pips of degen (barbed/apply), +10-20ish armor ignoring damage (Read the Wind/ Glass), +10-20ish armor-reduced damage (Kindle/ignite). The exception is Choking Gas, which is rarely used these days seeing how things with >1 cast time are few in HM, Expert Focus (basically an attunement for 5 energy ranger skills), Disrupting Accuracy, and Seeking Arrows.
Last edited by LifeInfusion; Jan 30, 2011 at 05:09 PM // 17:09..
Recharge is the big thing here. You can't strip preparations by the way.
1 cast does matter but not as much as anywhere from 35% to 50% energy reduction return gone from one enchant strip and then having to wait 45 seconds to recast it and eating a d-shot/p-spike/p-block to the face in the process.
Having Aura of Restoration as a cover enchant doesn't work in elite areas where Strip enchantment, chillblains, Assault enchantments (rare), Expunge enchantments, well of the profane, disenchantment (spirit), rend enchantments, etc. are active since enchant strips are 15-20 cooldown and the attunements are on 45 cooldown.
If a ranger loses his/her prep it's no big deal most of the time and much less severe than losing the equivalent of 9 to 12 ranks of expertise. Okay you lose 3-4 pips of degen (barbed/apply), +10-20ish armor ignoring damage (Read the Wind/ Glass), +10-20ish armor-reduced damage (Kindle/ignite). The exception is Choking Gas, which is rarely used these days seeing how things with >1 cast time are few in HM, Expert Focus (basically an attunement for 5 energy ranger skills), Disrupting Accuracy, and Seeking Arrows.
Yes but that is what i'm getting at, the recharge is the problem and not the duration, no mater the effect both preparations and atunements are supposed to be maintained and my quoting was that he/she though it was much of a pain to stop to recast the atunement every minute, which frankly is quite a generous duration. In pvp the recharge of atunements needs to remain since they are some of the of the few enchantments left worth stripping. In pve though a 20 sec recharge along with 1 sec cast would protect against random mob stripping.
Last edited by miriforst; Feb 01, 2011 at 01:47 PM // 13:47..
Yes but that is what i'm getting at, the recharge is the problem and not the duration, no mater the effect both preparations and atunements are supposed to be maintained and my quoting was that he/she though it was much of a pain to stop to recast the atunement every minute, which frankly is quite a generous duration. In pvp the recharge of atunements needs to remain since they are some of the of the few enchantments left worth stripping. In pve though a 20 sec recharge along with 1 sec cast would protect against random mob stripping.
Attunements being recast every 20 seconds would cut 10 energy/20 seconds or 6e/20sec if precast before the end, 5en/20sec with aura of restoration up. That's a 0.25 to 0.5 energy/second investment, which unlike for Rangers...isn't reduced. In comparison, that's 1 pip or 2 pips of regen (1energy/3sec is a pip or 0.333 energy/sec).
Also it wouldn't matter in areas with bulk removal or multiple mesmers and/or necros.
Lastly, preparations don't have aftercast and they do something even if you autoattack. Attunements need to pay themselves off by letting you subsidize energy equal to the cost of the attunement (at the least). So to break even with a cost of 10 energy in 20 seconds you need to successfully (cancel cast, interrupt, fail lead to energy loss with no return unlike expertise) cast a combination of these adding to 10:
25 energy = 8 return
15 energy = 6 return
10 energy = 4 return
5 energy = 2 return
However, 30 energy normally takes 22.5 seconds of 4 pip regen so if one gets interrupted you've already lost more than you invested.
i.e. 25 energy-8= 17 + 5-2=20 energy --> 15 seconds of energy regen, not counting aftercast and attunement cast time. Tack on 3 seconds of aftercast and you cut it really close for recasting the attunement if you don't run +20% enchanting.
That's why having a 24 second duration like a prep would be catastrophic.
Last edited by LifeInfusion; Feb 01, 2011 at 03:06 PM // 15:06..
^
The thing i was talking about was not (as i said) about the effect of the autunements (gah how do you spell it? ) themselves but rather the one i was adresing originaly was about the forced time on recasting it because having the duration upped much more and it could as well be a maintainable enchantments without energy degen, i wasn't talking about the specific mechanics at an active and a passive buff. I didn't say either that we should nerf the duration to a drastic 20-30 seconds (and you gain 33% + 1 energy gain back on recast of the autunement (4 energy) so the cost isn't that major compared to it's effect. As for the stripping i mean situations where for example an anoying dying nightmare would have rendered you you would be able to reapply it faster or already have it recharged when it is removed. Ofcourse if you leeroyed into a mob entirely consisting of mesmers or necros with enchantment hate i would feel sorry for you. And a cast time of 1 second would remove some of the annoyance of staggering behind the team and be late because of maintaining or applying. That was the issue i was trying to adress .
As for its effect i cant see how autunments are bad, its like a expertise thrown in along with the really potent energy storage related skills i have nearly never run out of energy as an elementalist and thats while spamming deep freeze and other heavy costing water skills in pvp as a shatter stone ganker where enchantment stripping is quite common.
The bad thing with it is that you need to sacrifice a skill slot for it where ranger don't have to, but then rangers are in general pretty "meh" and are in the same rowboat trailing after HMS-Powercreep.
Well Attunements seem like awesome energy management because most elementalist skills are limited by recharge. i.e. 15 energy every 30 seconds for churning earth is doable with no attunements. You could even cast Eruption AND churning earth on recharge.
Plus, ele skills are priced with attunements in mind.
Anyone that plays ele knows that Glyph of lesser energy is the real energy management (unless you need hard core stuff like Mind blast or ER) unless you spam 10+energy skills every 2-10 seconds like Searing Flames,Stoning, Blinding flash, or Rodgort's Invocation.
You don't need to leeroy a mob if there's a group of 4+ mesmer/necros. They will hit you with enchant removal eventually. I noticed this on my UA monk (UA is on 10 recharge so it's no big deal). If the area has well of the profane or something of that sort like Chilblains you're SOL.
Last edited by LifeInfusion; Feb 03, 2011 at 08:36 PM // 20:36..
I like the idea of reworking attunements, but as said above they're vulnerable.
And just a note about making monster weaknesses more prevalent: it would buff more than the ele. Ranger, dervish (as it exists today), ritualist and necro can all deal elements (not to mention an obvious boon to weapon mods). It would be nice to bring in more traditional RPG strategy.