Curse

Master Fuhon · May 30, 2006, 12:59 AM // 00:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mandy Memory

Like an alter? I remember seeing these somewhere....

I'm not refering to an NPC doing the tanking for you. I'm refering to the reason why warriors aren't played even close to the way they are played in PvE. You should have to do your own tanking.

There is a reason why warriors will always come up in every discussion on dealing damage. Are they not among the top self defense classes too?

Phades · May 30, 2006, 01:23 AM // 01:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

I'm not refering to an NPC doing the tanking for you. I'm refering to the reason why warriors aren't played even close to the way they are played in PvE. You should have to do your own tanking.

This will never come to pass as players will circumvent the tank whenever possible. Its just common sense.

The closest thing to "needing tanks" are the alliance battles, where proximity of force between two sides represented is the factor deciding control. This is a similar mechanic to the one found in the battle front series. Even so, the area of influence is far greater than any player based aoe found within the game. You are talking about spaces covering almost the entire aggro circle in some instances.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

There is a reason why warriors will always come up in every discussion on dealing damage. Are they not among the top self defense classes too?

Yes, warriors and rangers have the best overal innate defenses. They also both happen to be good damage dealers. I really don't see your point.

Ensign · May 30, 2006, 01:57 AM // 01:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trylo

but comparing warriors and ele? mhmm, thats two close classes there arent they?

Not really, no. They're radically different classes both in playstyle and what the job of each character is. Granted they probably *should* be comparable on at least one basis (damage) but as things stand they really aren't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trylo

From my experience, only inexperienced RA warriors attack different targets as that minimizes damage and a monk can heal easier...

Attacking different targets in no way minimizes damage. Actually I don't see a realistic scenario where attacking different targets doesn't increase the damage you put on a team. If you have two warriors, splitting them up onto two different soft targets minimizes the effects of kiting, minimizes protection being spread around, minimizes AoE hate...no, for maximizing damage you definitely want to split up and attack whatever target makes himself most appealing. Now to force a kill on a single target, yes, you converge for that and unload adrenaline - but both warriors go their own ways afterwards.

If each of your warriors is attacking a different target, then their monk has to make a choice when he uses his protection skills of who to put it on. It forces two different targets to kite if they don't want to get their faces frenzied. Good warriors don't just get on different targets, they *threaten* multiple targets by themselves. If they get kited by a different enemy they'll switch onto the new one until they're kiting as well. When he sees a Guardian come up on his target he quickly switches off onto someone else (want to know why you don't see Guardian very often in high-end GvG? Because the best warriors switch targets immediately, wasting the effect of the Guardian). His play causes as much chaos and forces as much disruption as possible, while also maximizing his own damage output.

The criticism of this sort of play is that the damage they're dealing is relatively easy to heal, time wise. If you just focus one target they'll have to put all their healing into that one target to keep him alive. However, the raw amount of damage being dealt when it's spread around is significantly higher, and it's damage that still needs to be healed. If you're trying to beat the energy out of them, damage is damage no matter who it's on.

I'm reminded of playing against iWay several months ago. Some of them thought they were clever and called a target, which all of their warriors would train mercilessly. That was an ideal situation, since we could just have that monk (it was always a monk) run in circles and effectively neutralize all four of their warriors. If they did ever catch up, that kiting monk would already have defensive prots in place and a monk ready to heal him. However, the iWay teams that weren't clever were the dangerous ones. They'd stick a warrior on each monk, making all of them kite, making each heal be paid for in damage. If you didn't break them quickly, you would be overwhelmed by the pressure of having to heal everyone, while simultaneously kiting the warrior in your face.

The point of pressure is not to kill individuals, but entire teams. When someone dies to a spike, their defenses are usually intact and they can keep going (until they run out of res, of course). But when a team breaks to pressure, they end up wiping as their defenses crumble.

Quote:

Originally Posted by artay

Ensign in your other thread you explain how warrios have a higher dps over a period of time. The whole basis of your argument is based on the untrue fact that warrs will attack the same target whithout disruption, blind, weakness, knockdown etc for a minute or more!

Incorrect. You understood only the basis of the argument, damage in a vacuum. My argument itself is not that warriors are going to deal the most damage in any given battle (because, due to all the hate against them, they very well may not). The argument is that a warrior has the highest damage potential of anything on the battlefield, and because of that he will consume the most resources of any offensive character.

On paper, a warrior can deal over 3000 unmitigated damage in a minute without any trouble. In a real match, he might be lucky to actually deal 1000. Does that mean that a warrior is balanced with a theoretical caster that deals 1000 unstoppable damage per minute? Of course not. Because while that theoretical caster will require 1000 damage worth of healing to take care of, the warrior is going to require blinds, snares, hexes, prot, and kiting to keep that damage in check, *on top* of the 1000 damage in raw healing he'll beat out of a team.

The measure of an offensive character is not in the amount of damage he deals, but in the amount of resources he forces the other team to commit to stopping him. It's winning that resource battle that eventually wins you games. In the case of a warrior, not only does he represent a significant enough threat to the other team that he'll often consume more than a character's worth of resources just in trying to stop him, but he's so efficient at posing that threat that he's winning the resource war the whole time. The elementalist, on the other hand, not only fails to pose nearly the threat that a warrior does - he deals less damage, requiring less energy spent healing, less energy spent protecting targets, less time and energy spent shutting him down - but he's downright inefficient at dealing that damage, so while the warrior gradually wears down the other team's defenses with his efficient damage, the *elementalist* is the one who gets worn down when he tries to do the same thing.

In short, it's not about damage dealt, it's about the resource war, with damage being a rather visible aspect of that resource war. As a warrior, I'm rather indifferent to whether a monk spends his energy on healing or protection. One shows more damage numbers, the other makes me change targets more, but as long as the net result is the same - a monk without energy that can't stop the damage - the differences are entirely superficial.

Quote:

Originally Posted by artay

If you have had any experience in PvP you would know that a warriors dps is easily shutdown, alot of the time, by a ele.

I've played a lot of different eles in a lot of different builds at a pretty high level of PvP. I've kept a lot of warriors blind in my day. I know you can shut down their damage pretty effectively if you devote yourself to it.

I also know that if you try and fight a warrior with an air ele, straight up, you will lose. With an Ether Prodigy guy, you have roughly 2-3 minutes to live. The hits that land through blind add up, they can get a knockdown in as a blind expires, you need to work the Prodigy to stay alive and it ending adds up. With dual attunements, you're more efficient but eventually work down to zero, and unlike a prodigy guy you can't run self heals. Eventually you run out of gas, and the warrior kills you.

That's the difference between a warrior and an elementalist. The warrior has inevitibility. When you both run out of gas, he has an axe. The fact that he hits harder the whole wind down is flat out insulting to the elementalist 'damage' skills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by artay

they are meant to have the highest hits in the game with SINGLE attacks.

Which they do not. Anything that deep wounds is a stronger single attack than anything an elementalist can put out. Rangers, with their stacked buffs, deal more damage in a single strike than any caster. Hell, even ritualists can hit harder with a single strike than an elementalist can, thanks to (the ludicrous) Gaze from Beyond. In other words the elementalist is nothing special in the 'single strike' department.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

I would rather see some GvG tasks relegated to mandatory tanking

Um, the flag stand? Ever tried to push a flag against a good team? GvG is a game of map control as much as anything else. If you can't hold your ground or make a push you're going to become intimately familiar with your boat, and that's not very conductive to winning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

I'm refering to the reason why warriors aren't played even close to the way they are played in PvE.

Players can make more informed decisions about target selection than (purposefully?) atrocious AI?

Peace,
-CxE

lishi · May 30, 2006, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatalieD

You just accused Ensign of lacking PVP experience.

Do you really have no idea how ridiculous you look right now?

you look more ridicolus imo

he is from iQ and so?

we have to take his word as for grated just for that?

did you really have your opinion on this?

or you just read the thread and say omfzor ele sux!

i know he have a good pvp experience but from if you have real pvp experience you will notice this statement is true .

Quote:

If you have had any experience in PvP you would know that a warriors dps is easily shutdown, alot of the time, by a ele

this dont mean elementalist can do more damage then warrior , this mean the thing are mostly balaced.

Symbol · May 30, 2006, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Quote:

Yet he managed to prove it by posting those numbers, which were higher than what an ele could reach. Aparently he proved a point without making it...That Ensign is some guy, no wonder a large portion of the GW population worships him as their source of truth.

No he didn't. He proved that warrior autoattack dps + IAS > ele dps using strike/orb or flarespam. That's all. An ele's bar is crowded, but it's not THAT crowded. You can fit in more than two attack skills. For example air spam elementalist using strike + javelin + orb will outdo an autoattacking warrior, just not by enough to make it worthwhile.

Let's not exaggerate. It's NOT true that an autoattacking warrior will outperform any elementalist build, and that's not what Ensign showed.

lishi · May 30, 2006, 02:37 AM // 02:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

There are some issues that are simply built into the game and can't be addressed in any reasonable fashion. Those simply have to be written off as a quirk of the game system and worked around.

You of course have to address each skill individually and figure out why it's underperforming. The changes that make the most sense, to me, follow a couple of themes though:

1) Lower recharges. Most ele skills are restricted sufficiently by cost and cast time, long recharges just introduce a lot of downtime and crush utility.

2) Increase the armor-ignoring component of many damage spells. For fire spells, this means more and longer burning effects. For air, higher levels of armor penetration (at the cost of base damage in many cases).

3) Larger AoEs for your expensive spells that need to hit a lot of guys to be efficient. It's ridiculous that Energy Surge has a bigger AoE than anything from the fire line.

Some spells need to have their effects adjusted or whatnot, but those 3 would fix a nice majority of the spells.

-CxE

1) Lets examine the elementalist skill for line
Fire

Most used skill(from my HA experience)

Fireball 7 second 10 mana.
Rodgard 15 second 25 mana.
Flame burst 5 second 15 mana.
Meteor shower 60 25 mana.
Immolate 5 second.

those reacharge look pretty fine for me meteor shower may look a little long but is the only one.

Air

Orb 5 second
Lightling strike 5 second
Blinding flash 4 second
Enervating charge 8 second

Earth

Wards all of them outlast their recharge at max earth.

Obsidian flame 5 second(balaced with exaustion)
Earthquake 15 second
aftershock 10 second

water

im pretty lazy and i dont know the line well

Most of them are fine as recharge.

As mana with a correctly energy management will able to spam them without probrem(maybe we can discuss of the fact a elementalist to be decent have to take a elite for energy management)

2)

Mhhh that maybe tricky. imo 3 second buring are fine , but only some spell should cast buring , not all.

3)

well i think most of fire line aoe are fine ,
Fireball -> cheap spell fast recharge small area.
Rodgard -> less cheap spell good area.

Before you will notice me i just posted 10% of elementalist skill ,

i know , but that is a common probrem of gw skills , mostly of them suck hard.

Arenanet should balace then , but at end they wont overpower the "top skill"

Thom · May 30, 2006, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Ensign has more PvP experience than most everyone on this board. This point is hardly debatable. He is not stupid. He basically figured out the damage formula before basically everyone (with Son of Rah). The guild which he leads has been consistantly top 15 despite personnel issues. They have run pressure, spike and balance all relatively efficiently.

Elementalist damage isn't very efficient. That is the argument and it is very difficult to argue with the numbers. Elementalists are laughably easy to shut down: take whatever you planned to shut down the monk and put it on the elementalist until they are have energy issues. As stated, the only place were elementalists have an argument is spiking and ranger spike has been proven more powerful time and time again (although it doesn't hold up well in tournement play). A-net should keep elementalists as an offensive utility class and not to try to play catch up on damage, since any damage increases will only lead to more mindless spiking.

Loch · May 30, 2006, 03:18 AM // 03:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

There is a reason why warriors will always come up in every discussion on dealing damage. Are they not among the top self defense classes too?

Don't get things backwards. Warriors get that self-defense because they have to put themselves right into enemy lines to get their job done. Most people have the MMO mindset where Warriors get decent melee attacks because they're standing up front anyway, so they might as well swing something heavy. In Guild Wars, this is not the case, even in PvE - if your Warrior is standing there just to take damage, he is a complete waste of a character on your team.

After all, the Warrior has the highest damage potential in the game. You might as well spec 16 in a weapon and swing away - he's not gonna die that easily, so why not do something useful?

Ensign · May 30, 2006, 03:28 AM // 03:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

1) Lets examine the elementalist skill for line

Congratulations, you went through all of the skill lines and picked out the skills that did *not* have atrocious recharges. You mean the skills that people commonly use tend to not have godawful recharges? No way.

Here's a list of fire spells of the same length that would be made playable by lowering their recharges to something reasonable:

Breath of Fire
Fire Storm
Inferno
Meteor
Phoenix

I would hope we wouldn't have to repeat this for every line. Yes, some skills have recharges that are fine. A lot of them do not. It's a generic problem with a lot of skills from all the lines, and the fact that some of them are not broken does not change that fact.

I was hoping that we weren't going to be so silly as to believe that the exceptions disprove the rules.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

2) Mhhh that maybe tricky. imo 3 second buring are fine , but only some spell should cast buring , not all.

Burning is a great way of adding armor-ignoring damage to fire spells without increasing their spike potential. On some spells, such as Rodgort's Invocation, three seconds of burning is fine. On others, like Immolate, three seconds is grossly insufficient.

Hence the general objective of working more burning into the fire line. It's one of the stronger mechanics it has, and one of the few that translates well into endgame PvE. Given the tools we have to work with, burning is one of the best for balancing out the line without making drastic changes to the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

well i think most of fire line aoe are fine...Before you will notice me i just posted 10% of elementalist skill

These two contradict each other. If most of the fire line AoE is fine, why are you only talking bout 10% of it? If you can only mention 10% of it as balanced, then isn't most of the line not fine? The fact of the matter is that a few fire skills, particularly Fireball, are fine. Hell, if I could multislot skills I'd run three copies of Fireball on every fire elementalist. That's not an indication that the fire line is good, though.

If you go down the list of fire skills, you'll find two 'good' fire spells, Fireball and Flame Burst. Both spells are flexible in application and have multiple good points about them. After those two, you have a few skills that are ok and have attractive aspects, but aren't the kinds of spells that you're excited to run - spells like Rodgort's Invocation, Incendiary Bonds, and Meteor Shower. Then you have a few skills that would be good except for a killer problem or two, like Immolate (the damage just doesn't cut it for the investment) or Meteor (terrible recharge). After that? You have a dozen or so skills that are so bad that you probably have to look at a list to name them.

The net result is that while there are a few skills that you want to put on your bar, you're usually coming up short. You have more skill slots than skills that you want, and you get to dredge through the mediocre to flesh things out. Sure you have Fireball, and probably Meteor Shower for PvE. Then what? Flame Burst is good but can you support the playstyle needed to make it work? Is Rodgort's Invocation really worth 15 more energy just for a couple damage and some burning? Is Incendiary Bonds going to get removed before it even does anything? It's not a fun process, and even when you're done you're going to end up wanding an awful lot due to long recharges.

Contrast that with a typical warrior build. When I'm making a warrior I'm usually overflowing with skills that I'd like to have on my bar. Pre-expansion, the only axe skills that had never been on a serious axe warrior's bar were Axe Twist and Cleave. Eviscerate was a given, but Executioner's vs. Axe Rake really came down to the build and how the guy was played - Executioner's for spiking with a second warrior, Rake for split squad or arena work. As the only warrior in the build I've run Eviscerate + Dismember for faster adrenal spiking, and if I ever wanted a non-Eviscerate elite on an axe warrior Dismember would be automatic. The other four skills were all good third attacks for various situations - Penetrating and Disrupting Chop are good, spammable adrenals if you don't want anything special, Cyclone Axe is clearly king in PvE and is good in HoH as well, while Swift Chop has performed admirably in heavy Block/Evade environments. They might not always make the cut, but I can see running all of those skills at some point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

Arenanet should balace then , but at end they wont overpower the "top skill"

Nor do I think anyone expects them to. Skills that are fine should be left alone. But those skills need supporting skills if they're going to be played with any frequency. I like Fireball, but you can't play the skill when the rest of the fire line is so awful. There just isn't enough for a character there.

Peace,
-CxE

dreamhunk · May 30, 2006, 04:01 AM // 04:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom

Ensign has more PvP experience than most everyone on this board. This point is hardly debatable. He is not stupid. He basically figured out the damage formula before basically everyone (with Son of Rah). The guild which he leads has been consistantly top 15 despite personnel issues. They have run pressure, spike and balance all relatively efficiently.

Elementalist damage isn't very efficient. That is the argument and it is very difficult to argue with the numbers. Elementalists are laughably easy to shut down: take whatever you planned to shut down the monk and put it on the elementalist until they are have energy issues. As stated, the only place were elementalists have an argument is spiking and ranger spike has been proven more powerful time and time again (although it doesn't hold up well in tournement play). A-net should keep elementalists as an offensive utility class and not to try to play catch up on damage, since any damage increases will only lead to more mindless spiking.

tom i would strongly agree with you. i beleave someone in anet really hates elementals.

Phades · May 30, 2006, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom

A-net should keep elementalists as an offensive utility class and not to try to play catch up on damage, since any damage increases will only lead to more mindless spiking.

They would need to start adding utility to every ele skill that isnt dual function in nature, or push a fair amount of new skills of pure utility to really have that come to pass. So far, ANET still seems to think that ele's are there for damage, or at least damage support by the nature of skills added in factions.

The fear of ele based spike teams still seems like a molehill considering 1-2 rits largely end that fear when comming from an elementalist. Although, when its comming from a necro, those spirits just mean more energy and ends up being a double edged instance. Even if the damage was upped, the recast times limit the majority of harder hitting skills.

Since harder spikes exist in other methods, it really doesnt make sense to avoid pushing up the elementalist damage to at least match it and then re-evaluate.

Master Fuhon · May 30, 2006, 06:03 AM // 06:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

This will never come to pass as players will circumvent the tank whenever possible. Its just common sense.

It's human nature to seek the easiest option while striving towards efficiency. If it was common sense I wouldn't have to be the only one coming up with ways to prevent people from circumventing the tank or nuker. As long as its "click on a flag stand" and retreat, or sneak the Thief to the door there's no need for a tank. But if it was carry the battering ram to the front door at 80% reduced speed in order to kill the NPCs for Victory or Death there would be no sneaking on anybody for the first 30 minutes. The enemy has the option to focus on this guy to prevent his base from getting infiltrated, or he can sneak off to used ranged attacks to eliminate outposts to cut down on the mayhem at the flagstand. You can build your team to split, but you're just playing on the fact that this game isn't properly balanced with all classes and attribute lines for 4v4. And my suggested improvement wouldn't be balanced against single class spike, which I think is another problem that limits the elementalist skill choices. Now add in an interesting twist like an NPC spawn attack on the enemies base that leaves only a small window of opportunity ripe for battering the front door. But them I'm just turning this into seige turtle wars, so tell me how you circumvent the tank?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Yes, warriors and rangers have the best overal innate defenses. They also both happen to be good damage dealers. I really don't see your point.

Yes, I didn't make one. 1v1 is the weakness of the nuker. The defense skills of a warrior and ranger make them well suited for surviving in 1v1 duels, and the game is not balanced for 1v1. It's painfully obvious that fire Elementalist skills are only going to be efficient against NPCs, but will the only option to balance the class be to replicate the effective 1v1 Air skills, Water snares, and Earth defenses? That sounds better to me than balancing them with bow attacks.

You're not going to see too many warriors who love their tanking skills cry about not getting to use them in pvp because they get to slaughter everyone instead.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Um, the flag stand? Ever tried to push a flag against a good team? GvG is a game of map control as much as anything else. If you can't hold your ground or make a push you're going to become intimately familiar with your boat, and that's not very conductive to winning.

Players can make more informed decisions about target selection than (purposefully?) atrocious AI?

There are some high level mesmer mobs which are currently capable of interrupting OoB, RoF, and CoP at times despite the fact that they won't shatter the protective spirit on a caster with 60 dp who is being pounded by melee. If you're looking for a challenge, it will only be offered by human competition and there's no question about that. What about the fact that it probably only takes a few tries to figure the patterns for attack and healing that the NPCs are using? The nuke spells require carelessness to be effective, or the knowledge that a target needs to be stationary for an amount of time. And the NPCs are there so the minion master can have a chance to have his day.

The other way of making area of effect spells useful is to impose limitations on the teams build by making it perform tasks over the course of a match; aka the Hall of Heroes mentality. It isn't perfect to compare the modes of pvp to each other, but it should be fair to point out an inadequacy that any mode has.

And the idea of the barbarian with the axe sneaking off with the guild thief and slaughtering the base from within without getting swarmed is ludacris. The ranger or caster picking people off on the outside would be more capable of getting the action, or even the assassins who would need to retreat after dropping someone. There is at the very least an intelligence flaw in the coordination of NPCs that warriors and rangers have been taking advantage of it.

I'm accepting that the true nuker does not have a place in GvG. There could be a certain fear in the skill designers mind when making the elementalist skills that any of them could become very good at killing characters. Then that makes this a problem with death hurting a caster (energy and health) more than it hurts a warrior (health). Ressurection skills do not favor the caster when he must regen. You could spend your whole day wracking your brain to fix elementalists until you realize that there are other things constraining the power that this class could be capable of.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

Warriors get that self-defense because they have to put themselves right into enemy lines to get their job done.

I agree that throughout PvE and PvP this is the consistent role of the warrior. But PvP warriors are using the self-defense built into their class: the highest armor protection, shields, and damage reduction runes and armor. I'm talking about a whole chain of defense skills that aren't being used, which is very similar to the argument present about elementalists. I think the whole frenzy/heal sig conditionals that were supposed to limit the class were dealt with along time ago.

Where is the condition that a warrior healing himself puts himself out of the heat of the battle and loses all adrenaline? Imagine there being an innate armor penalty while attacking to the warrior similar to how melee damage increases on a caster hit from behind. Imagine not getting a reduced shield bonus as well while attacking because you certainly cannot be blocking at the same time. If all of these were true, then you have your scenario where the warrior deserves his armor protection.

artay · May 30, 2006, 06:13 AM // 06:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

You rate ability in a vaccume in order to compare properly. Also, if the ele is blinding a warrior, its dps is going through the floor with each casting every 10s or so. This is also ignoring the obvious energy requirement issues as well.
How about attunements?

Eles also do not have the single highest damage hit in the game, warriors do. If you actually read the thread you claimed to have read, you would have noticed that the calculations were made without any attack skills for the warrior compared to using every skill available with an elementalist while using impossible to maintain energy managment.
Notice how i used the word "MEANT", if you were actually competent in the language that you speak you would know what that means.

lol this is gettin off topic btw the bold bits are my replies.

Dr Strangelove · May 30, 2006, 10:11 AM // 10:11

I see tremendous potential in the DoT AoE spells, despite their lack of favor right now. As it stands they all have atrocious recharge times, making them near worthless in a serious match. However, DoT spells could have a similar "punishing" effect on a player that warrior damage does, as soon as you stop kiting, you pay the price in damage. With current skills, this is only sustainable with pure AoE skillbars and massive energy management.

Water is a joke in PvE, please stop using it. The skills are plenty effective in PvP and are balanced for it, but if you can show me any need for advanced kiting in PvE, you get a cookie.

Air damage is too low and is only sustainable with a dual attunement build, which is very conditional and fragile. Up the damage or AP, lower the cost on some of the spells.

Earth is ok, but fails to shine in any category. You get good defensive skills, and a tiny handful of useful offensive skills. Warders are nice in PvP, but why not just bring another prot monk or ritualist?

It comes down to this: eles do not do what they are advertised to do (damage). How do I know they are meant to do damage? Look at the entire fire line. Find me one utility spell in there. Look at most of the air line and a few laughable skills in the water line (vapor blade anyone). In a serious build, there's hardly any point in using them. It is possible to build a workable elementalist build, but disheartening to try to put them in a role that other classes can do better.

Undivine · May 30, 2006, 10:20 AM // 10:20

I think perhaps we should get past the arguing part of this discussion and move to the suggestion part. It seems that the majority of us think the ele needs some kind of improvement. The rest is a debate between two extremes of "they're just right" and "they're worthless."

But I hope you are all here because you like the ele in concept at the very least, and are not just here to bash the class you don't like. So... suggestions? What kind of improvements can they make that isn't too overpowered or too inconsequential?

Phades · May 30, 2006, 12:25 PM // 12:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by artay

lol this is gettin off topic btw the bold bits are my replies.

Given how the game actually works, it would appear that elementalists weren't meant to do that in the first place. Many people have been arguing as such. Many of them are handicapped from the moment you press the button to cast. If they were meant to do that, they would cause roughly double the damage with every skill, because they are in direct competition for damage windows that exceede 250~300 damage in a narrow timeframe that it takes to cast many spells. This is ignoring the individual comparisons where there is around a 40-50pt difference as well. Please, just stop already. If it was how it was meant to be, it wouldnt be so painfully obvious that they are not meant to do so.

At least think about the implications of a damage up front spell that does that range of damage and how it would impact the game for pvp.

Dingo Dave · May 30, 2006, 02:05 PM // 14:05

I agree that they aren't teribly efficient, but why all this ridiculous arguing - why not something totally radical

Each of the Elementalist skills has a little added

Fire Magic - For every 4 levels every fire spell you cast does an extra 1 second of burning on target.

Air Magic - For every 4 levels every air spell you cast does an extra 1 second of weakness on target.

Earth Magic - For every 4 levels every earth spell you cast does an extra 1 second of poison on target.

Water Magic - For every 4 levels every water spell you cast does an extra 1 second of 33% speed reduction on target.

Energy Storage - For every 4 levels you gain 1 extra pip of energy regen.

Evilsod · May 30, 2006, 02:14 PM // 14:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dingo Dave

I agree that they aren't teribly efficient, but why all this ridiculous arguing - why not something totally radical

Each of the Elementalist skills has a little added

Fire Magic - For every 4 levels every fire spell you cast does an extra 1 second of burning on target.

Air Magic - For every 4 levels every air spell you cast does an extra 1 second of weakness on target.

Earth Magic - For every 4 levels every earth spell you cast does an extra 1 second of poison on target.

Water Magic - For every 4 levels every water spell you cast does an extra 1 second of 33% speed reduction on target.

Energy Storage - For every 4 levels you gain 1 extra pip of energy regen.

I can understand the Fire and Air bonus'. But it would make Mind Burn ridiculous at an 11 second burning on lvl16 Fire. Water, would just negate the use of Ice Spikes/Prison really, also Deep Freeze would be utterly insane. Earth? Was that just a filler? Poison doesn't really make sense.
As for the Energy Storage... just no, its primary bonus is extra energy, its main elite is Ether Prodigy (to give +6). If you could get eles with +8 natural regen (+14 w/ Prodigy), you'd bring 1 instead of a bonder.

Loch · May 30, 2006, 04:36 PM // 16:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dingo Dave

...

You've got the right idea, at least for the Fire line. Moar burning = higher damage without that nasty spike crap.

I don't think the other attributes need those passive effects though, because they already hold their own weight with all the included utility.

Ensign · May 30, 2006, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

There could be a certain fear in the skill designers mind when making the elementalist skills that any of them could become very good at killing characters.

There is clearly a fear in place that elementalist skills might be good at killing people. Or, more to the point, there is (was?) a fear that AoE spells will blow out really bad teams very quickly. Overpowering defenses with ele damage would be a viable strategy in a balanced game, but concerns about how new players lose seem to trump that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Then that makes this a problem with death hurting a caster (energy and health) more than it hurts a warrior (health).

Other way around. DP on a melee character is crippling, as he needs to expose himself to be effective. On the other hand many casters can maintain a respectable level of effectiveness at 60% DP while playing defensively. The reduction of max energy isn't trivial, but isn't terribly important, as energy regeneration is orders of magnitude more valuable than max energy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

I'm talking about a whole chain of defense skills that aren't being used, which is very similar to the argument present about elementalists. I think the whole frenzy/heal sig conditionals that were supposed to limit the class were dealt with along time ago.

The arguments are actually rather different. Warrior's defensive skills are largely unused because warrior defenses are inherently *so good* that adding more defensive skills to the mix is largely unneccessary. Most of those skills shore up areas where the warrior is already ridiculously strong - block and evade chance isn't really huge when normal attacks don't damage you in the first place, and more armor doesn't help a ton when you already have 100 at no cost. You do see some defensive skills used, but those specifically shore up areas that the warrior is weak against - for instance, you'll see warriors using Endure Pain against spike builds to buffer themselves against the armor-ignoring components of those spikes. But for most builds, an opposing warrior is such a pain to kill that you just forget about trying and aim for the squishies instead.

I don't think that a similar parallel exists for elementalists - they certainly aren't neglecting offensive skills because their offensive prowess are already sufficient. It is perhaps an opposite problem - an offense so anemic that no one even bothers to try and make it work. Not when there are better professions for that job that you could be playing instead.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Given how the game actually works, it would appear that elementalists weren't meant to do that in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that elementalists were meant to be damage dealers, but they basically got left behind by all of the new features slipped into the game. Elementalist damage doesn't get fancy or change, you get what's listed in the skill descriptions, while physical damage gets to benefit from min-maxed equipment as well as skill synergies and damage buffs.

I would not be surprised at all if simple fire spells were roughly balanced with a warrior with a sword at implementation. The warrior probably had something like power attack, the elementalist had flare, and the damage was very comparable. But then the game got more features. Weapons started to pick up modifiers, first a customization bonus, then inherent damage mods. Buffs start to work into the game and be refined. It's likely that people don't really understand how to play warrior and in general testing they get kited while Flare does damage, tilting the equation further.

So here we sit, a couple years later, and while warriors keep becoming more effective, as buffs get refined, as the inherent mods become more carefully chosen and stacked, as *playstyle* makes warriors increasingly effective and hard to stop, the elementalist has not changed - because he can't change. What his spells do are dictated very clearly by the descriptions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undivine

So... suggestions? What kind of improvements can they make that isn't too overpowered or too inconsequential?

You can go through the skill lists, skill by skill, and suggest changes. But what's more important than individual changes is understanding what you're looking at.

You're looking at skills that aren't going to have their effectiveness augmented. There's no buff stacking or metamagic involved. Each one needs to be evaluated in comparison to what other *characters* are realistically going to output, not other skills. Because those other characters *do* get to augment their skills.

You're looking at a list of skills that the profession has to live and die by. They aren't warriors who can fall back on autoattacking, or rangers who can put up a preparation and cause chaos. An effect that can only be used every minute on a warrior is fine because he can keep busy in the meantime - an elementalist skill that can only be used once a minute needs to be devastating because he's not going to be doing anything in the meantime.

There needs to be an understanding that energy storage just lets you frontload the character more, it is not energy management. There is absolutely no reason for an elementalist skill to cost more just because it is an elementalist skill. If you wouldn't make a mesmer or necromancer pay 25 for a spell than an elementalist isn't either. At the same time, elementalists need some non-elite emanagement options badly. Mesmers can run a wide variety of elite spells for different purposes because they are so naturally efficient and have the Inspiration line to take care of their energy needs. Elementalists need a similar, if not greater set of options as the class is so energy hungry. Ether Prodigy should be an option for the most energy hungry of elementalists, not a requirement of running the class.

You're looking at a profession that is naturally hosed by armor more than any other in the game. Any effects that you can give the class to inflict the damage they say they do are treasured like gold. Any effects that are productive without dealing damage similarly get around that problem. Changes to game mechanics that make elementalists less hosed by armor go a long way.

We're talking about a game that has progressed a long way in the last year. Warriors are killing machines, but players have learned to adapt and mitigate the effectiveness of a warrior. There's no reason to believe that elementalists are special and somehow unstoppable. Every team has caster shutdown that breaks monks and elementalists alike, rangers destroy elementalists something fierce, protection is better and more popular than healing, and the increasingly-common ritualists destroy caster damage something fierce. In other words, the counters are already structurally in place. The game can handle it. The 140 on Lightning Orb shouldn't be a holy grail of balance concerns when Rangers are spiking for 250.

I don't want to bore people with specific changes. But understand that elementalists, or caster damage in general, could be made good if A.Net so desired. They simply have to make that decision, and the results would follow. The details of specific changes are honestly largely irrelevant if the larger issues are grasped.

Peace,
-CxE