Curse

art_ · May 04, 2006, 12:50 AM // 00:50

Eles are still not bad dmg dealers in pve because you get to rest and regen each time you destroy a mob.

EDIT: Mandy Memory - that many quotes hurts my eyes :/

HawkofStorms · May 04, 2006, 12:58 AM // 00:58

The thing is, good eles will not run out of energy anytime soon. Half my skill bar is dedicated to energy management and a res (I use inspiration magic, I don't like the stripability of attunements and e-denial is way more uncommon in PvE). However, the other 4 spells attack all have under 1 second cast time, and due to timing of the recharge times (and maybe some luck with the 20/20 items kicking in) can be spammed non-stop.

What my PvE E/Me can use to keep his energy up

15+/1- regen items. With energy recovering skills, the lost regen doesn't hinder you too much.

Mantra of Recall. Nuff said.

Ether signet. Need an energy boost for that 25 energy spell, switch to a -5 energy weapon set, cast this, then switch back to your wand and get a free 17 energy.

Energy Tap.

Ether lord.

Mandy Memory · May 04, 2006, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by sinisters chaos

eles dont do as much as a warrior, they can do A LOT more, you probably dont play with good eles, also their numerous knockdowns alow them to get away form danger while still dealing mass damage.... i see them to be UNDERrated atm

No...they dont do more...they dont even do the same amount, not even close. I am not just grouping with good eles, Im grouping with good warriors. I am sorry you dont believe me, there are a ton of threads that prove that an ele with a constant 8 energy regen barely matches up with a warrior with no skills. (And I believe no 15% damage bonus)

Go find them, read them. Then come back and support your weakling eles.

Rand Drannor · May 04, 2006, 01:02 AM // 01:02

It all depends on who is playing the ele or the warrior. A good ele is really hard to find these days. but thankfully to the new buffs and mob scenarios....well this is a class that just has to be played right. Same with a warrior. If that warrior is overextending his healing well hes not going to tank for too long cause they will gang up on him and take hime down real fast.

BahamutKaiser · May 04, 2006, 02:04 AM // 02:04

I still have alot of problems with Elementist myself, the damage isn't the worst thing, the spells have AoE and effects to make up for lack of damage, and it is quite a lack when you hit anything with high armor or elemental armor, I think the worst thing is how easily he is countered. Elementist have long cast times making them the easiest to interrupt, as well has the highest spell costs making interrupts the most determental, they don't even have to disable the skills because interrupting is enough to set you back 15 or 25 energy, and the recasts are already going to be long. On top of that, powerful elementist skills have their own built in anti spamming feature, disabling the elementist to use his powerful skills continouslly, and spending vast amounts of time recovering if he is using more than one exhaustion skill per half minute.

Then you add on the problem that most of the elementist defensive and regeneration skills are enchantments which can be stripped, with very long recast times, these skills make elementist dual prime for mesmer and necro stripping. Alot of these enchantments are neccessary additions to allow the elementist defensive capability to survive, expecially since he has the weakest armor defense.

There are plenty of things an Elementist can do, but being compared to Monk for AoE damage efficiency, and Rangers and necros for spike efficiency, and Warrior for sheer defense rather then easily stripped enchantments, and then note the fact that they are easy to interrupt, and the easiest to shutdown, it realy should be more effective, or at least harder to shut down.

Some of the skills like Attunements, Aura of Restoration, and certain double edged defensive buffs, should realy be skills buffs or stances like troll urgent and Critical Eyes. If a defensive buff has a built in negative, like armor of earth, then it would be better if it was a stance, making it less vulnerable to breaking, wile Aura of Restoration and Attunements are simply neccessary parts of surviving and output as an Elementist, they should be Skills like Critical Eyes, which can't be stripped, expecially Aura of Restoration. It is enough that Elementist is a ridiculously easy target to interrupt, and counter with hexes, it shouldn't be so vulnerable to enchantment stripping. Enchantment stripping is a tool to fight Monks and Ritualists, Elementist are in the buisiness of constructing unbreakable effects, like DoT on an Area, or Wards. Probably the best option would be to make all Attunements into stances, and boost the effectiveness to 50%, wile elemental Attunment could be 75%, make Aura of Restoration a skill effect, and leave Armor of earth as an enchantment. This way attuenments would have a less common counter, but restrain elementist from using other stances.

The kind of enchantments people should be stripping from Elementist are DoT spells which follow him, like Balthazars Aura, it is sad that monk gets a single DoT spell that outstrips all of Elementist DoT skills for damage, wile being even more effective by attaching to a moblie target. Or deal damage on targets around an allie by healing him and keeping him alive, knowing that melee enemies are focused around that target for maximum AoE effect. Yet Elementist pays more energy then Monk to shoot projectiles which are dodged, and DoT which is easy to escape, he spends much more energy per skill, when chances are, your only going to hit 3 targets.

It is one thing if an Elementist can actually use his skills, compared to a blinded warrior, it is much easier to remedy, and a warrior can last on sheer defense til it wears off. There are so many ways to avoid DoT attacks, AoE damage, avoid Wards, and buff up against elementist damage, or shave off the overall damage to a minimum, without skill use, an Elementist is nothing, the least that can be done is to make it so elementist management and survival skills arn't easy to break.

Trying to compare Warriors ability to be shutdown totaly works against a balanced argument, to take down a Warrior, it nearly requires a gang up, expecially if you haven't taken out his support first, wile an elementist can easily be soloed killed by nearly any class combination in the game, a little enchantmens stripping and interruption and they were good as dead before they started. Using hexes to harm a foe can easily be countered by hex removal, wile enchantment stripping can easily rend an elementist of neccessary function skills, there is no comparison there, elementist is way easier to shutdown, just as easy to survive compared to any other attacker if not easier, and his DoT skills are even evaded by NPCs now.....

And energy management is great, except you spend at least 2 skills to maintain enough energy to cast you attack skills regularly, and wile they cost so much, to cast, and so many skill slots to continoue, they still don't match many other classes for damage. It takes at least 2 skills to keep an enemy in a DoT effect too, one to slow them, and another to execute the Dot, and then.... the vast majority of the damage is resisted, and for what cost? 15-25 energy, and perhaps exhaustion, which only one energy management skill can address. Then top it with the fact that energy management skills get royal blown by stirpping, as if determental effects to skills like Ether Prodigy arn't enough, an enemy might strip it and cause the enchantment to deal massive damage on you before you even have a chance to ditch your energy. 80 energy means jack when all of your skills cost 2X or 2.5X more to cast, and or cause exhaustion, along with the fact that your 80 energy being used on spells that cost twice as much is naturally returning half as fast as other classes who spend half as much energy on skills with 40 energy, then you add the fact that your using extra skill slots to manage energy better, but they get stripped and you go without for up to a minute, and that doesn't even address Exhaustion.

It is bad enough that you can kill the elementist faster then any class, you shouldn't be able to break his neccessary energy management just as quickly, if a warrior is the heavy physical job who can preserve his health best, then Elementist should be the heavy energy job, who can perserve his energy best.... not get busted by any counter, and his own limitations (exhaustion).

BTW, I think a pretty cool Elementist skill would be an Elite hex which transfered all of your exhaustion onto an enemy... or trade it, either way it would kick ass even if you could only use it once a minute.

d3kst3r · May 04, 2006, 02:16 AM // 02:16

Eles suck compared to other classes but as a support build in a group of 8 they're extremely useful. I never go into HA without a warder with earthquake aftershock and obsidian flame spike.

shardfenix · May 04, 2006, 02:43 AM // 02:43

It seems like every 3 months or so (every big skill update) the damage/effects for the ele change and a different tree becomes strong. There was earth and fire in the beginning, then air spike, then water got a buff, and now with the new factions skills, earth does tons of damage. Would the skill balances have anything to do with the seasons!?

In any case, try earth and water eles. I find earth to be especially powerful right now. I use it in 12v12 and I can solo a group of 3 necromancers without healing myself.

Weezer_Blue · May 04, 2006, 02:58 AM // 02:58

I view eles as a utility class. They have Wards, Snares, and Conditions, not to mention some energy management that allows for spammability of it all. On the side, they have some good spike damage. If you're going for damage, warriors are far superior. If you want damage as well as wards, the ability to stop a flag runner dead in his tracks, and some other nice abilities like ally-castable run buffs, then you get an elementalist. Finally, they have the widest array of Area of Effect spells for pressure builds and causing general terror on Alter maps.

zoozoc · May 04, 2006, 03:06 AM // 03:06

Eles don't suck, they just suck at doing dmg. They are hands down one of the best utility classes around, which is why everyone brings 1, if not 2 ele's for GvG.

Chilly Ress · May 04, 2006, 03:06 AM // 03:06

I have been playing ele since release, have all skills unlocked, 4 mil + exp, I personally say I am one of the better PvE eles, IGN Fire I Fly if you wanna catch up with me sometime anyone.

By the way, a single SS necro/war with frenzy, evis, exec, and whatever else does NOT outdamage me...

Ira Blinks · May 04, 2006, 04:02 AM // 04:02

BahamutKaiser
you proposed attunement buff scares me... really that would be too much. But otherwise very good points, especially about ele enchants.
offtop: dude, it should be spelled "while"

The whole anti-enchant alignment of the game really pisses me off. I mean my armor of earth being stripped even before casting animation ends - this is seriously fubared. It like o...k I've just spent 10 energy just to deal 100+ damage to myself... so why am I doing this again?

Other things that worth mentioning:
- PBAoE is still broken. Delay after cast makes it pretty useless.
- If AoE spells were meant to dominate/control area then they should be castable on any given area (and not just on foes).
- For the same reason AoE spells should LAST DAMNIT! 5 seconds of "control" is a freakin joke. All ele AoE spell should have their duration tripled! Also upgrade from adjacent to nearby would be nice to - leaves some space to work with snares/knockdown.

pah01 · May 04, 2006, 05:31 AM // 05:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mandy Memory

No...they dont do more...they dont even do the same amount, not even close. I am not just grouping with good eles, Im grouping with good warriors. I am sorry you dont believe me, there are a ton of threads that prove that an ele with a constant 8 energy regen barely matches up with a warrior with no skills. (And I believe no 15% damage bonus)

Go find them, read them. Then come back and support your weakling eles.

This is true. JR mentioned a thread by Ensign It is called why NUKING SUCKS.

Now stop talking rubbish and understand that elementalists absolutely are crap at doing damage outside of spike.

Sam

Dr Strangelove · May 04, 2006, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Some more added notes because it gives me a headache when people point out that a warrior has higher dps than an ele

1. A warrior must be in melee range to do his damage, running around like an idiot drastically lowers warrior damage. A warrior spike is kind of a joke, are they just going to run towards the enemy and hope no one notices?
2. A warrior must charge adrenaline to use many of his skills, many skills exist to remove adrenaline/slow it down.
3. A warrior has high DPS on ONE AND ONLY ONE target. An ele is far superior for softening up a mob so a warrior can kill each individual thing that much faster. (Just try and outdamage an ele with AoE with your triple chop or yeti smash. Let me know how it works out.)
4. Warriors are very easy to shutdown and possess few counter skills. In that respect, they're a sort of basic class that all other classes can shutdown, which makes sense, a warrior is just raw damage in a tin can, the simplest character in the game.
5. Your much lauded frenzy sure sucks when an obsidian flame catches you with your pants down eh?
6. An elementalist does not depend on attunements, stop saying they do. They're the easiest to use, but are fragile. Glyph of energy is a good choice, there's a boatload of new ones to use, ether prodigy as always a favorite. Just because enchantments can be removed doesn't mean they're worthless, especially when there are so many other options.
7. I NEVER run out of energy as an ele unless the shiyat really hits the fan i.e. everything I do is interrupted, I catch heavy edenial, or I'm living-impaired.

To be fair, elementalists do have their negatives:

1. Most AoE spells with only adjacent range are worthless, stop using them. (Some exceptions to this, like fireball). With adjacent you will rarely hit more than one or two things, making you little more than a ranger with energy problems.
2.PBAoE is difficult to do properly. I've played around with them, the fire nukes work kinda-sorta ok on a telebomb in 12v12 if you don't mind dying every 10 seconds. Earth PBAoE works well, but you're vulnerable to losing your precious armor of earth.
3. Stop using triple echoed meteor shower. Seriously, just stop it. It sucks. Die in a fire if you're the one doing this and begging for BR all the time.
4. Why are you using spells with 30 and 60 second recharges? Why? You just end up standing there for 28 seconds. You should have AT MOST one attack skill with 30 sec recharge or more on your bar. Ideally, you have none and run serpent's quickness or somesuch to attack even faster.
5. You're not a tank, stupid. Get behind your friendly local warrior and let things bonk him in the head. Interestingly enough, damage doesn't seem to go towards ele's in PVP, they're not high priority targets.

Iskrah · May 04, 2006, 06:00 AM // 06:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mandy Memory

They are decent support with earth and water, which I now run and do fine. Of course neither of those do any damage.

Earthquake -> Aftershock -> Obsidian flame?

TheLordOfBlah · May 04, 2006, 06:21 AM // 06:21

Warrior + Blind = no damage. Theres an elementalist skill that does that OMG NO WEI :0

Formina · May 04, 2006, 06:23 AM // 06:23

As someone who plays Ele extensively, I can say that us Eles do indeed stink at doing what they were advertised as - that is, "nuking".

Eles suffer in both PvP and PvE - Our AoE skills are laughable and they are heavily affected by armour, so they do less than half of their listed damage against many Level 28 mobs!

Eles ARE good as a utility class - the problem is they're not good as a damage dealing class, which again, is what they were advertised as.

Although, with that said, I still love my Ele to death and will continue to play as one in both PvE and PvP. ^^

PicardSunstar · May 04, 2006, 06:23 AM // 06:23

yeah eles suck in these tight corridoors of cantha...i mean those aoe spells do nothing in the close area where the enimies cant scatter...i mean come on you'd have to be some sort of a noob to try...

/end sarcasam

Winterclaw · May 04, 2006, 07:03 AM // 07:03

I agree that El's can work out as a utility class, but not everyone wants to be utility only. They got a little better with the icespear/flare buff but not by a lot.

Here's a pair of suggestions:
1. Get rid of exaustion. No other class has to worry about it. Warriors don't face a ade slowdown after using certain skills do they?
2. Change some of the AoEDoT spells into moderate damage AoE spells. Let's say a firestorm does 10 DPS for 10 seconds. Well make it a spell that does 50 damage to everyone in the area all at once or does 33 DPS for 3 seconds. Or on the other hand, since firestorm rechages in about 25-30 seconds (forget which), make it last 25-30 seconds at 12 fire.

However I would suggest keeping the longer recharge times on some of the spells. Having one really good spell that I can only use now or then is a good idea. Just make sure they are A. Worth Casting and B. Not too overpowered.

pah01 · May 04, 2006, 05:35 PM // 17:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Some more added notes because it gives me a headache when people point out that a warrior has higher dps than an ele

1. A warrior must be in melee range to do his damage, running around like an idiot drastically lowers warrior damage. A warrior spike is kind of a joke, are they just going to run towards the enemy and hope no one notices?
2. A warrior must charge adrenaline to use many of his skills, many skills exist to remove adrenaline/slow it down.
3. A warrior has high DPS on ONE AND ONLY ONE target. An ele is far superior for softening up a mob so a warrior can kill each individual thing that much faster. (Just try and outdamage an ele with AoE with your triple chop or yeti smash. Let me know how it works out.)
4. Warriors are very easy to shutdown and possess few counter skills. In that respect, they're a sort of basic class that all other classes can shutdown, which makes sense, a warrior is just raw damage in a tin can, the simplest character in the game.
5. Your much lauded frenzy sure sucks when an obsidian flame catches you with your pants down eh?
6. An elementalist does not depend on attunements, stop saying they do. They're the easiest to use, but are fragile. Glyph of energy is a good choice, there's a boatload of new ones to use, ether prodigy as always a favorite. Just because enchantments can be removed doesn't mean they're worthless, especially when there are so many other options.
7. I NEVER run out of energy as an ele unless the shiyat really hits the fan i.e. everything I do is interrupted, I catch heavy edenial, or I'm living-impaired.

It gives me a headache when people who simply dont understand the simple fact that in high end GVG/PVP it is warriors who do damage and the other classes who support.

1. Dont talk rubbish - Warrior spike on top of pressure is the most dangerous thing in the game. Why do you think top guilds use their elementlaists as Blind Bots rather than as damage dealers. Warriors are always going to be hitting targets and so it is hard to predict when its going to be a spike. I dont think you have the slightest idea what you are talking about.

2. I simply dont understand why you cant get it into your head that even when a warrior cant use his skills he will do more DAMAGE than an elementalist using his skills at FULL efficiency.

3. PVE DOESNT COUNT. High End GVG is what matters and they all run warriors for killing when they are not playing a pure spike build.

4. Doesn't matter. I will always take warriors in my build and use the other classes to keep my warriors clean. Elementalists can clean the warriors boots with draw conditions and Mesmers can remove the hexes bothering our warriors. In the end warriors are the killers and the other classes are there for support.

5. This is totally irrelevent to the discussion. Warriors do damage - elementalists dont.

6. You dont have an idea do you?

7. Then you are not even going to hope to do even close to the same damage as a warrior.

In the end PVE doesnt count. Go watch Last Pride and war machine kill using warriors and not elementalists.

Sam

Dougal Kronik · May 04, 2006, 06:09 PM // 18:09

The eles in my guild play there roles - and let the rest of the party know what they will be using so we can help them get max efficiency from their spells.

If they're using AoE - I'll bring Muddy Terrain or some other skills to slow the mobs down and keep them in the AoE.

No profession of combo of professions if better or worse. Depends on your style of play.