Curse

Arato · May 25, 2010, 01:55 PM // 13:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

Spikers = nukers. They don't have to be single target damage. Eles are part of both metas. Just SC builds involving them aren't pug friendly. Heroes can only use UG and ER well.

Air builds = spiker builds = single target. Okay 3 targets but that hardly qualifies as nuking when you have pulls of 8+ mobs balled up to kill.

maxxfury · May 25, 2010, 02:18 PM // 14:18

the term "spike"is generally used to describe a tactic in which a player or group of players deals a large amount of damage to a target simultaneously. This term is derived from "damage spike", which is an abrupt, sharp increase in damage.

to “nuke” is to deal the most possible damage to the most enemies possible (almost exclusively by means of an AOE skill)

These are the common terminology used in gw.(semantics excluded

)

But there can indeed be an aoe spike..(note: the now defunked cryway)

Myotheraccount · May 25, 2010, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

Air builds = spiker builds = single target. Okay 3 targets but that hardly qualifies as nuking when you have pulls of 8+ mobs balled up to kill.

What does Air have to do with this?

You should be using AoE spikes in SC. So you should be looking at Fire Magic line probably. Air was never supposed to have strong AoE. It seems you don't even know what a spike so have a read through this.

Cuilan · May 25, 2010, 05:03 PM // 17:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

If Eles are so good as damage dealers as you claim, why are they not a part of the meta, except as bonders?

That's speed clear meta a few certain areas. Elementalists are and have been a meta profession for a long time.

ZenRgy · May 25, 2010, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Elementalists in hard mode should not be pure damage, that is what your frontline is for. Give them support damage for melee targets (Lightning Orb is a good candidate) then fit in utility like bflash, weapon spells etc. The PvE title skils are also good utility damage. YMLAD is a great KD.

To try focus a build purely around the highest damage is ridiculous. Not when you have the highest amount of energy and the best energy management that can be better used supporting the team. Warriors and assassins don't have that ability.

JimmyTyme · May 25, 2010, 07:30 PM // 19:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

Elementalists in hard mode should not be pure damage, that is what your frontline is for. Give them support damage for melee targets (Lightning Orb is a good candidate) then fit in utility like bflash, weapon spells etc. The PvE title skils are also good utility damage. YMLAD is a great KD.

To try focus a build purely around the highest damage is ridiculous. Not when you have the highest amount of energy and the best energy management that can be better used supporting the team. Warriors and assassins don't have that ability.

The problem is exactly that the ele is SPECIFICALLY!!!!!!!! made for high damage output and NOT support, if you want support play a rit, or a paragon who are DESIGNED! for that crap, ele's were designed for max damage and what you've just tried to explain is exactly what we don't want.
We want our ele, godly omega damage back instead of being left in the dust doing support.

Arato · May 25, 2010, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

What does Air have to do with this?

You should be using AoE spikes in SC. So you should be looking at Fire Magic line probably. Air was never supposed to have strong AoE. It seems you don't even know what a spike so have a read through this.

because every time I've talked about fire nuking being underwhelming you point out how great spiking with air and pve skills with cracked armor is. You're the one who suggested to use air in high end pve instead of fire.

WarcryOfTruth · May 25, 2010, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by expugnare

Notice, this is buffed. Eighty damage every 2 or 3 seconds factoring aftercast delay isn't good. In fact, its bad. Unbuffed, this damage drops down to probably about 50 a cast.

Well, the lower end of my numbers were unbuffed, unless you count Cracked Armor, and if an Elementalist is doing only 50 damage, it's probably to a Destroyer.

Mashiyu · May 25, 2010, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

Elementalists in hard mode should not be pure damage,

Yes, that's why eles have "damage" attributes (fire, air) and support attributes (earth, water)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

Give them support damage for melee targets (Lightning Orb is a good candidate)

Cracked Armor is a poor support for melees and helps only classes which deal only armor-reduced damage, like ele, and uhm... ele...

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

then fit in utility like bflash,

agree

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

weapon spells etc. The PvE title skils are also good utility damage. YMLAD is a great KD.

Weapon Spells are a speciality of rits and everyone can use YMLaD, EVAS, EBSoH...

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

To try focus a build purely around the highest damage is ridiculous.

the point is that eles are designed as damage dealers, so should we not try to build a ele dmg build USING ELE SKILLS

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

Not when you have the highest amount of energy and the best energy management that can be better used supporting the team.

High Energy != Energy Management
High Energy is a nice buffer if your energy management broke down (attunement stripped, e-denial), but on the long term it is more important how much energy you get back: Soul Reaping, Leadership, Critical Strikes (in descending imbaness)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

Warriors and assassins don't have that ability.

hm... Ward against Harm [E!] or SY! ... hm... the best, brokenest damage reduction skill is a warrior skill and due to adrenaline cost absolute unusable on casters. I mean - even Watch Yourself is better than Ward against Harm, (except for fire dmg). But sure, Warriors have no support....
Sins are more egoistic, but can also go A/W for SY!

Eles just need an armor penetration buff (ideally on a pve skill so that pvp and monsters are not affected) and they will be fine.

@Scatter:
Generally, i think that scatter is a good idea which prevents tank&spank strategies, known from dumb games like WoW. but it seems that scattering is designed to weaken eles only. Why is there no scatter on Mark of Pain, Ray of Judgement, Spiteful Spirit, but on ele skills. Mobs even scatter when an ele does not use AoEoTs: Try Double Dragon, Flame Burst, Phoenix => scatter (phoenix hits adjacent foes twice). or a SF build with Incendiary Bonds => scatter (wenn the bonds trigger between two SFs).
Either scatter for all AoE Skills (especially for the conditional AoEs as they tend to trigger more often) or no scatter at all. (I would prefer scatter for all).

@"Why should eles be buffed in HM - its called HM":
1. Ele is the only class which is nerfed significantly in HM
2. necros & mesmers are buffed in HM - the higher attack rates, faster skill activation let trigger conditional damage more often.

expugnare · May 25, 2010, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Meh, the lines become blurred when referring to Speed Clear: "spiking" is effecitvely "nuking" but in a very, very short time with stacked buffs etc.

I am not saying Ele's can't be meta in certain areas. I am saying (as has been corroborated by many others) that in normal situations in HM the Ele falls behind other classes.

Also, the design factor basically invented Eles as powerful AoE damage dealers with some support capabilities. The fact is that outisde Unsteady Ground, Eles are outdone in all damage/utility hybrid roles, with warding and condition spam being inferior to the options provided by other classes. Eles only shine as Healers/Bonders.

When Arato talks about "meta" I think he means the regular PvE Meta, where Eles as damage dealers or nukers are often overlooked in favor of Necros or Rits. The best option we have is not an overhaul of the whole class, but rather redoing some of the more overlooked moves, like Stone Sheath, Second Wind, Energy Boon and Intensity...

That's not a complete overhaul of the class, and I think its justified--right?

Arato · May 25, 2010, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by WarcryOfTruth

Well, the lower end of my numbers were unbuffed, unless you count Cracked Armor, and if an Elementalist is doing only 50 damage, it's probably to a Destroyer.

No, white mantle warrior and paragon mobs, ranger mobs were even a little lower than that. But you can't expect to always be hitting casters to get your big damage. If I hit a clothie/caster mob with the same spell with cracked armor, it did the normal amount, 106, 130ish buffed (searing flames). Casters have 80 armor in HM so cracked armor reduces them back to their normal mode level of 60.

Warrior and Ranger and Paragon and Dervish however, seem to get more than just +20 armor in hard mode. I know the warriors go from 80 armor to 113 or so. So even with cracked armor, they still have +10 armor over what they have in normal mode, which is why without cracked armor you do about 40% of your normal damage. With cracked armor you do about 60-70%. In normal mode cracked armor puts them at 60 AL and you do full damage. One main issue is that in pve most packs of mobs are very heavy armor oriented, you'll have like 3 casters and 1 ranger and 2 warriors and maybe a dervish and paragon or one of each. Some packs have even fewer squishy casters.

So when it boilds down, you're banging your head against the wall because you're doing a lot less damage than you need to be doing against the majority of the mobs in each pack. Because they're all the heavy armor classes your damage is weak against.

Burning is supposed to help but since there's a cap on degen sometimes it's not adding its full effect if you have necros and mesmers or rangers in your group. Would be nice to get a spell or 2 that caused "burning" that wasn't degen, but an armor ignoring DoT, like glimmering mark is or renewing surge.

Couple other ideas.

Conjure spells. Instead of just adding damage to your attacks, they should add damage to spells too, giving them a reason for ele primaries to use the skills.

Attunement spells. Along with their energy management abilities, they could have faster recharge for spells of that tree. Meteor shower + dual heats (or even triple with savannah heat) wouldn't be so bad if the recharge was reduced. Not sure how the mechanic would work to be fair, it could be a scaling amount, something depending on how many spells of that element you have on your bar, with a cap.

10% faster recharge for every fire spell on your bar, with a cap of 30% (that means a mesmer with high fast casting would still recharge spells faster, don't worry) so if you were running 5 fire spells including the attunement enchantment you'd have 30% faster recharge on fire spells. That'd put MS at 40s recharge, the heats at 20s recharge and Savannah heat at 17s recharge. promise is nice but it doesn't always work out and it sucks putting all your eggs in 1 basket.

FoxBat · May 25, 2010, 11:01 PM // 23:01

It would make alot more sense if they just went back and tweaked broken hard mode mechanics, such as skill activation time was adjusted for mesmers. Armor-adjusted vs armor-ignoring damage is pretty well balanced at level 20 pvp, it would be better to just adjust monster armor values to be around that. What mobs need is a different scaling pattern after 20, say 1 armor per level instead of 3, maybe with a small compensating health boost. That roughly mimics the insignias and shields eles deal with in PvP. There would still be a handful of monsters with special armor properties that would laugh at eles, but that's fair if they can dish out good damage in most situations. As a bonus, people might actually look at scythes again.

Myotheraccount · May 25, 2010, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

because every time I've talked about fire nuking being underwhelming you point out how great spiking with air and pve skills with cracked armor is. You're the one who suggested to use air in high end pve instead of fire.

Don't put words into my mouth. I been talking Fire Magic as far as SCs go. You don't know how Eles are played in SCs and don't know what a spike means, thats why you didn't get anything. A spike doesn't have to be single target, it's simply means a bunch of characters making a quick surge of damage.
Fire "nuking" isn't underwhelming. Fire spells deal good damage so spikes are strong. That's why the most recent FoW record was set with an Ele spiker. The problem with Eles in SC is not damage but the range of their AoE. Most of Ele AoE has abjacent range which means you have to make tighter balls which takes more time. Eles also have a harder time dealing with stray mobs. That's why they are often substituted with Necros or 100b Wars. However as far as damage goes, there is no problem. Oh and it is called spiking, not nuking.
You really are clueless...

Arato · May 26, 2010, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

Don't put words into my mouth. I been talking Fire Magic as far as SCs go. You don't know how Eles are played in SCs and don't know what a spike means, thats why you didn't get anything. A spike doesn't have to be single target, it's simply means a bunch of characters making a quick surge of damage.
Fire "nuking" isn't underwhelming. Fire spells deal good damage so spikes are strong. That's why the most recent FoW record was set with an Ele spiker. The problem with Eles in SC is not damage but the range of their AoE. Most of Ele AoE has abjacent range which means you have to make tighter balls which takes more time. Eles also have a harder time dealing with stray mobs. That's why they are often substituted with Necros or 100b Wars. However as far as damage goes, there is no problem. Oh and it is called spiking, not nuking.
You really are clueless...

You did talk about how good a single target spike build was. 3 PVE skills, 2 ele damage skills and air attunement and gole, and assassin's promise, rememver?

Okay so you're basically blowing your entire bar in 1 area the fact that you can get off multiple 2s casts per pull confirms how much armor affects the damage. Sounds like about 20 damage a pulse from each heat. If assassin's promise doesn't work for whatever reason, ie mob dies before you finish the cast, mob gets healed through it from the brink of death, hex removal, etc. You're waiting 30-90s of downtime between pulls. I don't see how that's meta for a damage dealer.

Arato · May 26, 2010, 03:07 PM // 15:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mashiyu

@Scatter:
Generally, i think that scatter is a good idea which prevents tank&spank strategies, known from dumb games like WoW. but it seems that scattering is designed to weaken eles only. Why is there no scatter on Mark of Pain, Ray of Judgement, Spiteful Spirit, but on ele skills. Mobs even scatter when an ele does not use AoEoTs: Try Double Dragon, Flame Burst, Phoenix => scatter (phoenix hits adjacent foes twice). or a SF build with Incendiary Bonds => scatter (wenn the bonds trigger between two SFs).
Either scatter for all AoE Skills (especially for the conditional AoEs as they tend to trigger more often) or no scatter at all. (I would prefer scatter for all).

Those other skills can cause scatter. I think the only aoe that repeats damage over and over and doesn't cause scatter is Ray of Judgement, and it can still cause scatter in hard mode. Hard mode mobs have 2 scatter behaviors. 1 for repeated damage from the same source in an area (normal scatter behavior) and another for running away to heal when they take too much damage. MoP will generally only cause scatter if the same person keeps triggering it over and over. If different people are triggering it the mob thinks of it as different sources.

Scatter is just most noticable on Eles because our nukes usually involve a smaller area and are pulsing damage aoe's that are stuck on that area. If a mob flees from mark of pain, the mob that has mark of pain on it still has mark of pain on it, and you can follow them and get them balled up again. If a mob flees out of Savannah heat, that's it, you're not going to get them back into the aoe since it's only 5s, so you're just out of that damage for 25s. Scatter for Eles wastes the spell entirely.

fireflyry · May 26, 2010, 04:18 PM // 16:18

At the end of the day you need to adapt more and look/dream for updates less.

It's far more proactive not to mention realistic.

That's coming from a player who has had the same guild leader for 4 years with an Ele main who has never failed to blow stuff up.

Ever.

I guess I trust in-game experience over forum QQ when it comes to any class needing a buff/nerf.

Tweaks maybe.

Buffs no.

Arato · May 26, 2010, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by fireflyry

At the end of the day you need to adapt more and look/dream for updates less.

It's far more proactive not to mention realistic.

That's coming from a player who has had the same guild leader for 4 years with an Ele main who has never failed to blow stuff up.

Ever.

I guess I trust in-game experience over forum QQ when it comes to any class needing a buff/nerf.

Tweaks maybe.

Buffs no.

That, or you just have low standards for damage. 50-70 damage a cast is apparently "blowing stuff up" for some people.

Perhaps searing flames wouldn't be so bad if it was both the condition and the damage in 1 cast maybe. Mark of Rodgort helps in organized groups but with H/H and minions running all over the place it usually means half of your SF casts just put burning on the enemy, which if you have no other degen causers in your group and they don't remove the condition, 98 damage, but that's 2 big ifs. The other half hit a squishy hard, and barely make a dent in heavies.

fireflyry · May 26, 2010, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

That, or you just have low standards for damage. 50-70 damage a cast is apparently "blowing stuff up" for some people.

Fair call.

Maybe playing an ele is more than DPS output as opposed to contribution to a team.Or maybe....just maybe...team synergy can put the DPS through the roof.

Each to their own.

Still /not signed for a buff.

Myotheraccount · May 26, 2010, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

You did talk about how good a single target spike build was. 3 PVE skills, 2 ele damage skills and air attunement and gole, and assassin's promise, rememver?

I was talking about general HM PvE. Then the topic shifted to SC. For some reason you think spike can only be involving AP, single target damage and one character.

Quote:

Okay so you're basically blowing your entire bar in 1 area the fact that you can get off multiple 2s casts per pull confirms how much armor affects the damage. Sounds like about 20 damage a pulse from each heat. If assassin's promise doesn't work for whatever reason, ie mob dies before you finish the cast, mob gets healed through it from the brink of death, hex removal, etc. You're waiting 30-90s of downtime between pulls. I don't see how that's meta for a damage dealer.

L2p. With cons and red rock candies it's no longer 2s cast. With personal cons, EBSoH and BUH! it's way beyond 70 damage. I dunno why you are using Assassin's Promise when there is Air of Superiority which will always trigger full skill recharge on spikes. Lol'd at 90s pulls. Your posts just show how little you know.

It's sad that people like yourself will rather QQ than get a clue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fireflyry

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

That, or you just have low standards for damage. 50-70 damage a cast is apparently "blowing stuff up" for some people.

Fair call.

It wasn't. He is just terrible to believe that Ele spikes deal 50-70 damage.

expugnare · May 26, 2010, 09:29 PM // 21:29

I agree... people are conflating Speed Clears and normal HM PvE.

Eles are fine in speed clears with Cons and stacked buffs: we are primary spikers in many builds.

However, in normal non organized guild/speed clear PvE we compete badly vs other classes that offer both armor ignoring damage and utility.

Not much more to it.