Curse

DiogoSilva · Mar 05, 2011, 07:38 PM // 19:38

They feel so clunky, slow and weak compared to my mesmer. I was investing on one ele, but now that I think of it, I might as well stop wasting time, get on my mesmer, and have fun aoe rupting and aoe disabling alongside 7 heroes and use him to get all the titles instead.

Now, I love the idea of the elementalists. But at RA, all I do is mostly spam Invoke Lightning, at early PvE, spam Flare, and then later on, have 4+ skills to manage energy or other support stuff.

Then I finally start to cast, and am easily rupted everywhere. Or deal no damage at HM. Or my area-effect spells do not work because either allies or enemies keep moving from them. Or even if they work, after the 2sec casting time (and the attunement before it) most of the enemies are nearly dead, and if they are not, I have to deal with extremely long recharges.

Finally, I try to experiment with alternative builds - I find the pvx ones extremely boring most of the time. But each time I do so, I don't feel rewarded, like, say, the mesmers where almost every skill seems to work.

But regardless I was hoping if the elementalist fans here could convince me of otherwise. What makes this prof fun for you? Or effective? I'm thinking of the idea or going /rit for a SoS build, but is it worth/ fun? And I hate Assassin's Promise...

Edit: Or maybe /me for panic/ etc? Is energy storage equally good for it compared to fast casting?

**Marty Silverblade** · Mar 05, 2011, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Ever since the Mesmer update I've been meaning to mess around with an ER build with Mesmer stuff in it. It's obviously not going to be as powerful as AP but it would be a nice change. The most fun I've had as an Ele was in Pre-searing when using Mesmer spells like Conjure Phantasm was viable. I'm hoping to get a little of that back. Perhaps an EStorage/Air/Domination split. If I get time I might look at some skills later.

Regarding Panic and SoS, you could run them if you liked, and with 7 heroes it doesn't really matter if your build is sub-par. If you really don't like the available builds though, I'd advise you to stop playing Ele, unfortunately. Do you really want to keep playing as a crap version of another profession?

LifeInfusion · Mar 05, 2011, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Most if not all ele skills that are worth using are 2 cast time. Even if a mesmer skills says 2 seconds, it's less since Fast casting reduces that to 1.5 to 1.75seconds. The number of 2 second+ mesmer casts are low (Diversion, Sig of humility, Mistrust, wandering eye, clumsiness come to mind).

Ele:
all attunements
deep freeze/ice spikes
savannah's heat
Rodgort's Invocation
Chain lightning
lightning orb
eruption
fireball
Meteor
Unsteady ground
Churning earth (3)
Meteor shower (5!)

...so play mesmer if you want to be all fast-like. Invoke lightning is an exception since it was recently buffed to be 1 cast rather than 2.

Eles do better in PVP than in PVE because they're balanced around PVP. (see the low amount of skill splits)

FoxBat · Mar 05, 2011, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Eles have some tools for spamming wastrels worry, including ER, or just running aura of resto + elemental lord. Run panic on yourself or a hero and go to town.

DiogoSilva · Mar 05, 2011, 11:06 PM // 23:06

The idea to use ER to use mesmer skills efficiently seems interesting. What other cool things can be done with ER?

**Marty Silverblade** · Mar 05, 2011, 11:21 PM // 23:21

With a few enchants you can spam pretty much any kind of spells you like. Ones with low casting time and recharge work well.

Ele: Not particularly interesting because there are heaps of ways to spam Ele spells and the damage sucks.
Mesmer: Could be fun, though the effectiveness wouldn't be too good.
Monk: The most widely used (compared to the others) and is massively overpowered.
Necromancer: Blood versions are used to spam Order of Pain and Dark Fury and some less useful spells. You could try a Death or Curses version but Necromancers don't tend to have much in the spammable spell category. Perhaps pretend to be a Minion Master if you get bored. You'll be inferior to Necromancers but it would be different.
Ranger: No spells here.
Warrior: No spells here.
Assassin: No spells worth spamming here.
Ritualist: No spells worth spamming here. Keep in mind spirits are not spells, so you'd be looking at the crap direct damage stuff in Channeling and the heals in Resto (though if you wanted to spam heals you'd be better off with /Monk)
Paragon: No spells here.
Dervish: Maybe some kind of freaky lots of enchants + lots of teardowns thing would be good for comedic value. Wouldn't be good for much else though.

FoxBat · Mar 06, 2011, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marty Silverblade

Dervish: Maybe some kind of freaky lots of enchants + lots of teardowns thing would be good for comedic value. Wouldn't be good for much else though.

So you just described every good dervish build?

Edit:

Ether Renewal *
Whirling Charge
Rending Aura
Attacker's Insight
Aura of Holy Might
Pious Assault
Wearying Strike
Drunken Master

This might actually be one of the better ele builds from a damage point of view. Just get strength of honor and splinter and go to town.

Cuilan · Mar 06, 2011, 02:56 AM // 02:56

Dervish have Signet of Mystic Speed for your elementalist enchantments.

DiogoSilva · Mar 06, 2011, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Most if not all ele skills that are worth using are 2 cast time. Even if a mesmer skills says 2 seconds, it's less since Fast casting reduces that to 1.5 to 1.75seconds. The number of 2 second+ mesmer casts are low (Diversion, Sig of humility, Mistrust, wandering eye, clumsiness come to mind).

Ele:
all attunements
deep freeze/ice spikes
savannah's heat
Rodgort's Invocation
Chain lightning
lightning orb
eruption
fireball
Meteor
Unsteady ground
Churning earth (3)
Meteor shower (5!)

...so play mesmer if you want to be all fast-like. Invoke lightning is an exception since it was recently buffed to be 1 cast rather than 2.

Eles do better in PVP than in PVE because they're balanced around PVP. (see the low amount of skill splits)

Maelstrom always seemed quite interesting to me, but I usually don't see anyone running it. Why is that?

Kunder · Mar 06, 2011, 07:11 PM // 19:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiogoSilva

Maelstrom always seemed quite interesting to me, but I usually don't see anyone running it. Why is that?

Its at best a bronze-plated turd floating in an ocean of shit that is PvE water magic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

So you just described every good dervish build?

Edit:

Ether Renewal *
Whirling Charge
Rending Aura
Attacker's Insight
Aura of Holy Might
Pious Assault
Wearying Strike
Drunken Master

This might actually be one of the better ele builds from a damage point of view. Just get strength of honor and splinter and go to town.

To be fair, an empty skill bar and a max damage scythe with SoH + SW vastly outdamages most ele builds in HM. You could use a conjure somewhere though

Qing Guang · Mar 06, 2011, 08:16 PM // 20:16

I lol'ed at that Maelstrom description. It's pretty true, though. The only real use I've found for Maelstrom is capping the caster shrines in AB (actually, it's pretty okay in some of the more crowded Factions mishes, like VS and TT, but only because there are so many monsters milling around). It's just not worth 25e and exhaustion for a tiny AoEDoT, even with an interrupt, especially when you consider you'll have to throw in an Ice Spikes or Deep Freeze or something to keep them in it for more than a couple seconds. 40 or 50 energy + exhaustion to do ~250dmg to maybe 3 enemy caster? Meh.

@topic, though: The joy of the Ele is that you can do ANYTHING. It's what I'll probably miss the most in GW2. Because our PA is so bread you can do pretty much whatever you want. Sure, you'll never be as good as other professions at what they do (for example, Eles are never going to be good at Domination Magic), but you can still try it out. It's why my ele is my Skill Hunter.

So mess around with other classes' skills some. There's a lot you can do. Personally, I like pretending to be a Warrior or an Assassin (my favorite) by mixing Conjures and PBAoE with weapon abilities (I've had lots of good times with my Fiery Blade Axe + Triple Chop [formerly my FDS and Hundred Blades before they changed that skill's functionality... *sigh*] and my Air Magic daggers build).

LifeInfusion · Mar 06, 2011, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Maelstrom is absolutely horrible most of the time, and you don't want to spec high in water if you use it for solely for 10s of interrupts. It's adjacent range, so it was decent back before mobs AI changed to scatter (drop it on a caster group for lols, i.e. FOW with the bunched up Shadow army casters).

Maelstrom is not for the damage. At 250-260 damage for 25 energy (15-16 spec), that's ~10-11 damage per energy and 25 energy spells are bad percentage wise with attunement/Aura of restoration energy return (2/5=40%,4/10=40%,6/15=40%,8/25=32%).

15 spec + attunement

14.7 damage/energy for Maelstrom (after water attunement but before Ele Lord/Aura of Restoration, Glyph)
11.6 damage/energy for Rust
8.9 damage/energy for Ice Spikes (also snares)

33.3 Unsteady Ground (nearby) [Elite]
22.2 Churning Earth (nearby)
11.8 Eruption (nearby)

100 Savannah's Heat (nearby) [Elite]
66.7 Breath of Fire
58.3 Firestorm ... 10s
22.2 Searing Heat/Teinai's Heat (nearby) ; 26.9 if you count 3s of burning
19.8 Meteor Shower ...9s
18.7 Fireball, Liquid Flame (nearby)
11.1 Searing Flames (nearby) , not counting the initial cast for burning
7.06 Rodgort's Invocation (nearby) ; 9.53 if you count 3s burning

Qing Guang · Mar 06, 2011, 09:43 PM // 21:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Maelstrom is absolutely horrible most of the time, and you don't want to spec high in water if you use it for solely for 10s of interrupts. It's adjacent range, so it was decent back before mobs AI changed to scatter (drop it on a caster group for lols, i.e. FOW with the bunched up Shadow army casters).

Maelstrom is not for the damage. At 250-260 damage for 25 energy, that's ~10-11 damage per energy and 25 energy spells are bad percentage wise with attunement/Aura of restoration energy return (2/5=40%,4/10=40%,6/15=40%,8/25=32%).

The point was that neither the damage nor the interrupts were particularly useful. Sure, Maelstrom can pretty much shut down a caster group, but once again you need a snare because otherwise they'll scatter so quickly that you or a hero's using Cry of Frustration would have been more effective. So you have to invest at least 40e and a huge chunk of att points in WM for 10s of interrupts and pathetic damage. As I said, the only time I use it is for my echo chain water/fire AB nuker build to take out the caster shrines (which I can probably replace now - it was just a makeshift thing from back when I only had Factions and was missing out on a lot of the better nukes) and for the really packed mishes (where it's vastly more efficient to just kill the things than try to interrupt them).

TLDR: Maelstrom was a cool concept but at its current cost/cast time/damage/aoe it's crap.

DiogoSilva · Mar 06, 2011, 10:48 PM // 22:48

I see the elementalists are in a much worse situation than I thought of, but I still have a few more questions:

Is a SoS E/ Rt that much worse than a rit primary? And if so, why? Lack of runes? E.Storage or Spawing power?

Is Tryptophan Signet worth over Deep Freeze? And I see from the pvx builds that eles hardly have pve-only skills in their bar, but mindbender and air of superiority seem fine for the casting times and energy management. Is auspicious incantation + Deep Freeze really the best combo for e.management + snare?

FoxBat · Mar 06, 2011, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiogoSilva

Is a SoS E/ Rt that much worse than a rit primary?

Not really. Splinter weapon is the only thing that suffers greatly, but you should be running great dwarf weapon anyway.

LifeInfusion · Mar 07, 2011, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Not really. Splinter weapon is the only thing that suffers greatly, but you should be running great dwarf weapon anyway.

E/Rt Spirits do less damage, have less health, armor. It's a pretty big disadvantage. You also don't get spawning power.

12 Channeling SOS : Level 10 spirits, 21 damage, 62 armor, 200 base HP before spawning
14 Channeling SOS : Level 11 spirits, 24 damage, 68AR, 220HP
15 Channeling SOS : Level 12 spirits, 25 damage, 74AR, 240HP
16 Channeling SOS : Level 13 spirits , 26 damage, 80AR, 260HP

12 Channeling Bloodsong: same as SoS

12 Channeling Painful Bond: 18
14 = 19
15 = 20
16 = 21

it's up to 3x5=15DPS difference on SOS alone, + 3x3=9DPS from Painful Bond. Factoring in Bloodsong (5+3) you get a difference of up to 32DPS, which is more than one whole spirit and close to a warrior wailing on a 60Armor target and more than an Elementalist elite (Glimmering Mark). Even the difference from 12 and 14 channeling is 16DPS, which is not negligible.

Kunder · Mar 07, 2011, 01:12 AM // 01:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Not really. Splinter weapon is the only thing that suffers greatly, but you should be running great dwarf weapon anyway.

Splinter weapon is far better if you only have 1 good physical, which is probably the case in the majority of PvE given bad AI for 90% of physical builds and the lack of good players to group with. GDW only really pulls ahead because you can maintain it on multiple characters. Its also good because it doesn't require /rt and tons of skill points to use, but assuming you are running SoS that isn't a problem obviously.

FoxBat · Mar 07, 2011, 03:26 AM // 03:26

Spirits attack every 2s so cut your numbers in half. Adding in Vamprism We're talking around 100 vs 120 DPS.

Now would you like to bring ele DPS numbers in? It's weaker on an ele, it's still pretty much god. The OP isn't really asking "are rits better", he's asking "can eles play a rit build well," and the answer is yes, and certainly far better than they can play eles.

Spirits are damage. Minion bombs should be tanking.

Quote:

Splinter weapon is far better if you only have 1 good physical

Assuming they aren't running AoE attacks. Not to mention the 0 damage it does vs single targets.

Kunder · Mar 07, 2011, 03:47 AM // 03:47

Quote:

Spirits are damage. Minion bombs should be tanking.

MBs aren't really supposed to be able to tank, they die and do damage. MMs tank and do damage just the same. There should never be a minion build that isn't putting out damage comparable or greater than spirits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Assuming they aren't running AoE attacks. Not to mention the 0 damage it does vs single targets.

If we assume a hero attacks about 5 times within 6 seconds (SW recharge), GDW adds 100 damage. Splinter weapon (@ 12 channeling) adds 160 damage if only 1 enemy is nearby, 320 if 2, 480 if 3. Considering we are talking about PvE where 90% of the time its huge ass mobs that attack, SW is definitely better if you can keep it up. Of course, if there aren't huge mobs then I'm sure that any reasonable player is smart enough to see that and not choose SW.

DiogoSilva · Mar 07, 2011, 01:18 PM // 13:18

I See the SoS E/Rt might not be such a bad idea. So, which skills should be considered to put on a bar, then? I ask this because I don't know ritualist skills much.

SoS, Vampirism, Summon Spirits... What else?