Curse

HigherMinion · Feb 02, 2011, 08:55 AM // 08:55

you have armour penetrating spells already. Be happy and don't expect MASSIVE DOMAGES and you won't be disappointed. Tank and spank is a horrible way to play in a "balanced" team, anyway. So boring.

Cuilan · Feb 02, 2011, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Tank 'n spank isn't even balanced, it forces you to use a single tank in most cases and locks you into your spanking roles. Sure you can run various toys, but most players I've see jam as many nuke spells as possible without a care in the world about energy, synergy, or buffs.

expugnare · Feb 02, 2011, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khomet Si Netjer

I will make the claim that elementalists work very well in hardmode if used properly... you simply have to take their needs into account, and most people don't. Melee damage is not spectacular on its own, but when you add in AoHM, splinter, orders, mark of pain, barbs, strength of honor, asuran scan, etc. it becomes superb. why should we expect elementalist damage to be any different? unbuffed, it is not doing that much in hardmode, but with buffs it can do very well. the advantage of the elementalist buffs is that they apply to the entire team at the same time. this is not true of splinter weapon, asuran scan, AoHM, etc. Having said that, Intensity and Elemental Lord are clearly inferior to PvE skills of other professions, and they could use a boost.

I think that any team intending to deal elemental damage should take the following:
enfeebling blood
weaken armor
ebon battle standard of honor
ebon battle standard of wisdom
SNARING (this one in all caps, because no one brings it)

additional damage/recharge buffs:
assassin's promise
by ural's hammer
intensity
elemental lord
air of superiority

proof that this is not just my wild imagination:
Unwaking Waters hardmode, using elementalists for damage, completed in 1:40. No consumables were used.

If you want to impress me, do Forgewight HM with that setup. Take as long as you want. If you complete it at all without cons, I'll be shocked.

Xenomortis · Feb 02, 2011, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Be fair. Do Selvetarm; Forgewight is full of foes with massive armour bonuses vs Fire Damage.

Life Bringing · Feb 03, 2011, 12:42 AM // 00:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

Forgewight is full of foes with massive armour bonuses vs Fire Damage.

I think that was the point.

Xenomortis · Feb 03, 2011, 01:12 AM // 01:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Life Bringing

I think that was the point.

If I wanted to test how well an elemental build works, I wouldn't test it in a place where there are enemies with specific resistances to my chosen element. That's unreasonable.

That said, I would still be surprised if the setup managed Selvetarm HM with no consumables.

Khomet Si Netjer · Feb 03, 2011, 02:26 AM // 02:26

warning: wall of text inbound.

You guys are missing the point completely; I am not claiming that this is the best team ever, or that these are the most optimal skills for any situation. What I am saying is that you can use various buffs to make elementalists effective in hardmode, and I have proven that with a sample screenshot. You are free to attempt to beat that time if you want. I'm not interested in going through every hardmode mission and dungeon again to satisfy your whims, I've already been through them with every profession. I used fire in this example because fire happens to have a lot of DoTAoE, but Earth can serve just as well with Sandstorm, Unsteady Ground, Churning Earth, and Eruption, not to mention the mass knockdown of Earthquake/Dragonstomp. Also remember that Snowstorm gives you fast-recharging cheap DoTAoE with any element and it is the kind of spell that benefits most from EBSoH and Weaken Armor.

Here is the theory behind making elementalists effective.

Bring Weaken Armor so that your damage is not meaningless; this is a 33 to 50% increase in damage for armor-affected spells which is almost every skill the elementalist has. Remember that +40 armor reduces damage by half, so +20 armor reduces damage by 1/4. If you go the other way, reducing armor by 20 increases damage by 50% if you go from 100 to 80, and by 33% if you go from 80 to 60. Also remember that armor levels can be higher than 100, and in this case weaken armor helps you even more.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: all methods of inflicting cracked armor (other than the necromancer's Weaken Armor spell) are terrible. Single target is useless, and Spirit Rift takes far too long, not to mention being easy to dodge. Weaken Armor is a must-have.
this is best illustrated by example:
damage to 60 armor: 100
damage to 80 armor: 75 (-25% damage)
damage to 100 armor: 50 (-50% damage)

Bring EBSoH to increase damage per packet. At max rank this is +15 armor ignoring damage per damage packet. For a typical DoTAoE spell such as Churning Earth or Fire Storm, this is ~35 armor-affected damage and 15 armor ignoring damage. That is a 43% increase in damage for spells of this type, partywide. It is far better than By Ural's Hammer, Intensity, etc. if you use spells that deliver many damage packets. The downside is that your damage dealers need to stay within the ward. This damage boost is *per packet*, so DoTAoE spells like Fire Storm will get more benefit from it than instantaneous spells like Deep Freeze or Rodgort's Invocation. As a general rule I think that if an elementalist skill does not deal area effect damage it is not worth bringing; physical attackers and spirit spammers can deal far more damage to a single target than you can, so focus on the elementalist's strength: mass damage.

Bring EBSoW to greatly decrease the recharge time of spells. With max rank and a staff that gives 20% HSR this adds up to a 68% chance of HSR partywide. Arcane Echo gives you the equivalent of 100% HSR for one spell; this does almost as well, for every spell from every character. Your damage output is increased because powerful spells like Savannah Heat, RoJ, Energy Surge, Feast of Corruption can be used much more frequently.

Bring snaring to keep the enemy from running away. Earth and Fire have AoE knockdown capability, use it. Water has AoE snaring, use it. Aside from the direct approach, you can also bring Summon Ice Imp to provide AoE damage and snaring, or have an earthshaker warrior do it, or any melee with grasping earth or similar.

As you can see from the theory I am not recommending any particular element, the theory works for all of them. Water is inherently less damage than the others but you can counter that with Mirror of Ice, adding +35 armor ignoring damage to all of your spells if you choose the proper spells. Air is generally the most useless in my opinion... despite having inherent armor penetration, it has no DoTAoE at all, no mass knockdown, and no mass condition spreading other than Blind. It would be very useful if Air Magic could cause mass weakness and mass cracked armor, but it can't... so we need necromancer skills to do it, they are far superior. Air Magic's lack of AoE makes them inferior to the other elements in PvE. To illustrate this point I refer the reader to examine the Glaiveway DoA speedclear team, and realize that the reason why this works so well is the fact that DwG hits all nearby targets, not 2 additional targets like Invoke Lightning or Chain Lightning, and DwG has faster recharge and costs less energy on top of it. Thus DwG is superior despite having less armor penetration than Air Magic. With the mass of PBAoE spells that the elementalist has you'd think that an elementalist could deliver good damage with them... but the ritualist is better. This is something for the balance team to examine.

Other than the above, there are certain other skills that can increase damage further (Intensity, BUH) or decrease recharge time (AP, AoS) and if these fit into your build, then by all means use them.

LifeInfusion · Feb 03, 2011, 04:31 AM // 04:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

That ward skill does not boost armor ignoring damage.

I know. My point is unless it does more than RoJ/Chaos storm with the EBSoH then why bother wasting a PvE skill slot to get subpar damage?

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

you have armour penetrating spells already. Be happy and don't expect MASSIVE DOMAGES and you won't be disappointed. Tank and spank is a horrible way to play in a "balanced" team, anyway. So boring.

I never played tank and spank, opting for air and earth instead, so enlighten me. I ran E/Mo smite and air+ prot most of the time (ether prodigy/prism/renewal) or mind blast. I probably played more tank and spank with an SS necro bar than an ele bar, since there's where the gear trick/book trick came from.

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Mirror of ice only adds damage to one target. It's a waste of 15 energy.

Ice imp is a waste of a PvE slot since it is an adjacent snare. Unless all you are using is Snowstorm or crappy Breath or fire then you might as well RoJ or chaos storm.

I find the best way to incorporate Elemental damage is Churning earth + Eruption at this point, on a bar with AP + Sin support + EBSOH/BuH. Fire AoEs don't have any utility so they are pretty bad. The problem with this is that nonelite Earth AoEs cost 15+ energy so you need glyph + earth attunement if you want to use them regularly or just glyph.

I can rationalize bringing Unsteady ground due to 20 cooldown (15 with Glyph of swiftness) and its low cost but I can't rationalize Sandstorm, which is a pure damage skill (15 energy, 30 recharge).

The non EBSoH option is simply BuH + AP + sin support + FH!+ orb+chain lightning.

I've ran Weaken armor + Fire magic on the same bar before. It wasn't very impressive. Compare Spirit Rift to rodgort's Invocation. Then laugh. 2x energy, 3 more recharge. The only skill in fire magic worth using is Searing Flames, unless you are balling mobs in adjacent range which means you can get mileage out of Meteor + Meteor shower + fireball + firestorm (+15x10 from EBSoH if you manage to snare).

Consider that you can bring Barrage (+15ish)/Incendiary arrows (+10-20ish with a prep) with Great Dwarf Weapon (+20ish)/EbSoH (+15). 40DPS AoEs aren't that great.

ensoriki · Feb 03, 2011, 04:48 AM // 04:48

Could master of magic loose that ends if... clause it's lame.
I think the ele would be fine if you know elements mattered.
Not enough things are elemental weak or their weakness practically doesn't matter.
Elemental Flame should affect nearby foes, more spells should have some kind of benefit to other elements.
Chilling Winds being an AoE hex would be nice for instance, so you could drop a perfectly maintable deep freeze.
Need more AOES then fire. Then again im speaking about more than Hard Mode.

Khomet Si Netjer · Feb 03, 2011, 04:56 AM // 04:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I know. My point is unless it does more than RoJ/Chaos storm with the EBSoH then why bother wasting a PvE skill slot to get subpar damage?

Because RoJ and Chaos Storm are the only DoTAoE spells in their attribute lines, and one spell is not enough. Granted, if you use Arcane Echo and EBSOW together, you can get good usage out of these.

Quote:

Mirror of ice only adds damage to one target. It's a waste of 15 energy.

You don't understand how Mirror of Ice works.

Quote:

Ice imp is a waste of a PvE slot since it is an adjacent snare. Unless all you are using is Snowstorm or crappy Breath or fire then you might as well RoJ or chaos storm.

RoJ and Chaos Storm also have Adjacent range, are you saying that they are crappy spells too?

Quote:

I find the best way to incorporate Elemental damage is Churning earth + Eruption at this point, on a bar with AP + Sin support + EBSOH/BuH. Fire AoEs don't have any utility so they are pretty bad. The problem with this is that nonelite Earth AoEs cost 15+ energy so you need glyph + earth attunement if you want to use them regularly or just glyph.

AP Earth is good but it's not the only way.

Quote:

I can rationalize bringing Unsteady ground due to 20 cooldown (15 with Glyph of swiftness) and its low cost but I can't rationalize Sandstorm, which is a pure damage skill (15 energy, 30 recharge).

I've ran Weaken armor + Fire magic on the same bar before. It wasn't very impressive.

I venture to guess that you did not have Snowstorm or EBSoW or arcane echo in play. Without these the recharge times of the DoTAoE spells are too long.

Quote:

Consider that you can bring Barrage (+15ish)/Incendiary arrows (+10-20ish with a prep) with Great Dwarf Weapon (+20ish)/EbSoH (+15). 40DPS AoEs aren't that great.

Incendiary Arrows only hits a few targets, elementalist can hit many more if the grouping is nice. Against only a few targets physical damage dealers are always going to outdamage the ele.

Chthon · Feb 03, 2011, 06:32 AM // 06:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khomet Si Netjer

Bring Weaken Armor so that your damage is not meaningless; this is a 33 to 50% increase in damage for armor-affected spells which is almost every skill the elementalist has. Remember that +40 armor reduces damage by half, so +20 armor reduces damage by 1/4. If you go the other way, reducing armor by 20 increases damage by 50% if you go from 100 to 80, and by 33% if you go from 80 to 60. Also remember that armor levels can be higher than 100, and in this case weaken armor helps you even more.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: all methods of inflicting cracked armor (other than the necromancer's Weaken Armor spell) are terrible. Single target is useless, and Spirit Rift takes far too long, not to mention being easy to dodge. Weaken Armor is a must-have.
this is best illustrated by example:
damage to 60 armor: 100
damage to 80 armor: 75 (-25% damage)
damage to 100 armor: 50 (-50% damage)

Math fail.
Armor in GW is logarithmic. The damage increase from cracked armor is always 41.42...% unless the target hits the 60AL floor because it did not have 80AL to start with.

Quote:

Bring EBSoH to increase damage per packet. At max rank this is +15 armor ignoring damage per damage packet.

Which is why AP-Earth doesn't completely suck. Well, that combined with all the utility from blind (Eruption), block (WAMelee), and KD (Churning).

All in all, the problem with the buffs available to casters is that they just don't compare with those available to melee. There's only one that adds armor-ignoring damage, and almost all of them are PvE skills, so you're very limited in what you can bring. Compared to melee getting to start with 30-40 armor-ignoring damage from SoH + Orders before even looking at PvE skills, the buffs for eles just aren't competitive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I know. My point is unless it does more than RoJ/Chaos storm with the EBSoH then why bother wasting a PvE skill slot to get subpar damage?

Chaos storm because the recharge is super awful and you need to AP it to make it work. (And, at that point, why aren't you concentrating on sin-spam, unless you've got a great ball?)

RoJ because the recharge is pretty bad, even halved, and you can't AP it, and the rest of the smiting line is not very desirable.

UnChosen · Feb 03, 2011, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khomet Si Netjer

Bring Weaken Armor so that your damage is not meaningless
Bring EBSoH to increase damage per packet.
Bring EBSoW to greatly decrease the recharge time of spells.
Bring snaring to keep the enemy from running away. Earth and Fire have AoE knockdown capability, use it. Water has AoE snaring, use it. Aside from the direct approach, you can also bring Summon Ice Imp to provide AoE damage and snaring, or have an earthshaker warrior do it, or any melee with grasping earth or similar.

Water is inherently less damage than the others but you can counter that with Mirror of Ice, adding +35 armor ignoring damage to all of your spells if you choose the proper spells.

Other than the above, there are certain other skills that can increase damage further (Intensity, BUH) or decrease recharge time (AP, AoS) and if these fit into your build, then by all means use them.

/Facepalm

If I have to bring that many skills to support the Ele I might as well just bring another type of caster. As I had said many many MANY times....there are only 8 skill slots and eles already have 2-3 energy management skills stapled to their bar. There's no room and no time for Eles to carry more prep skills that they would have to cast.

Unloading buff skills onto someone else only make sense when its to supplement damage that is already good (melee), not to make subpar damage on par with everything else.

Mouse at Large · Feb 03, 2011, 08:19 AM // 08:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

Unloading buff skills onto someone else only make sense when its to supplement damage that is already good (melee), not to make subpar damage on par with everything else.

Absolutely

There is a reason why melee buffs are pretty much meta now in any organised group. It's because they are effective.

Contrast that with the occurrance of ele caster buffs as others have suggested. If it was optimal or even close to generally useful, don't you think the community would already be running it????

Then there's the PUG/casual player situation. Giving eles a stronger stand-alone capability will balance them against other professions that have sprinted ahead in the powercreep stakes and make them more attractive in those situations.

Personally speaking, if it means giving up a slot to run a maintainable self buff like Intensity giving extra AP % to spells or added armour ignoring bonus damage based in ranks in ES, I'll settle for that.

Khomet Si Netjer · Feb 03, 2011, 01:00 PM // 13:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

/Facepalm

If I have to bring that many skills to support the Ele I might as well just bring another type of caster. As I had said many many MANY times....there are only 8 skill slots and eles already have 2-3 energy management skills stapled to their bar. There's no room and no time for Eles to carry more prep skills that they would have to cast.

Unloading buff skills onto someone else only make sense when its to supplement damage that is already good (melee), not to make subpar damage on par with everything else.

I don't think you understand. All of the buffs I mentioned help ALL of the elementalists in the group and they help other casters as well, particularly EBSOW and snaring. If your damage is all armor-ignoring then you can drop EBSOH and take another skill, but everything else still applies... you want your enemies snared, and you want your spells to recharge faster, and weaken armor helps your physical damage dealers as well as elementalists.

If you want to use a physical damage team instead, that is great... but then why are you reading the Elementalist forums?

Vallen · Feb 03, 2011, 01:09 PM // 13:09

Not being funny, but an elementalist would be more effective going /Mo and taking SoH for 4 meele chars and going afk than bringing fire damage

Fire is fine in NM, but needs way too many support skills to be effective in HM

Stick to ER prot or re-roll another class

LifeInfusion · Feb 03, 2011, 09:06 PM // 21:06

My point about RoJ and chaos storm is since the attribute lines have utility, there's no reason to bring an entire bar to do the same thing. Since RoJ also doesn't cause WTF scatter you don't need to bring a snare either. If you echo it then you basically have it on 10 recharge rather than 20.

You could argue that they are adjacent, but that doesn't matter as much as the amount of utility you can slot. You can bring Strength of honor, smite hex, smite condition, EBSoW, etc. Balthazar's aura with a melee works too (need something like Auspicious Incantation) = 8*1.2 (enchanting mod) seconds of 22-25DPS.

And RoJ is better than any ele DoT because it does 40+ burning x 5 seconds = 54/sec x5 +2 seconds of burning after last hit= 308 armor ignoring. Glyph of swiftness, Air of superiority, Arcane echo, etc all benefit it more since the skill itself is the one doing the damage. Even if you run EBSoH you only push 275 to 285 with ele AoEs (Fire storm, Savannah's Heat, Sandstorm are the exceptions).

RoJ @14 = 16 Earth/Fire for Teinai's/Searing Heat ; Churning Earth/Eruption even before you count burning.

Chaos storm on its own isn't impressive. But when you can bring all the domination skills along with it without saccing any attribute points...including stuff like Mistrust, overload, two wastrel's skills, and cry of frustration. Plus it's on ~20 recharge with 11 fast cast, which is faster recharge than any Ele DoTs.

So what's so special about Mirror of Ice? armor ignoring +30ish damage? Are you going to spam freezing gust, shard storm? Rust/ice spikes and such are AoEs and all you do is add to one target anyway.

If you bring EBSoW on a bar with Sandstorm or Unsteady ground it doesn't change the fact that you need to wait for it to recharge too. That's why I feel AP is the only option if you want to run EBSoW and DoTs.

Honestly if I didn't have close to 2k hours on my ele (mostly from NM) from before HM, I wouldn't even bother posting in here because healing heroes with ER isn't fun and running AP sins isn't either. If I wanted to spam AP sins I run my necro, who gets barbs +MoP to make imbaness with physicals.

Voodoo Rage · Feb 03, 2011, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Wouldn't the ultimate issue be that the armor bonus scaling system is ultimately broken? Instead of buffing elemental damage spells, maybe they should be addressing that issue. My only concern is that elementalists are already VERY strong in most NM play (which I assure you the vast majority of the GW community plays).

Slowpokeking · Feb 03, 2011, 10:05 PM // 22:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

Wouldn't the ultimate issue be that the armor bonus scaling system is ultimately broken? Instead of buffing elemental damage spells, maybe they should be addressing that issue. My only concern is that elementalists are already VERY strong in most NM play (which I assure you the vast majority of the GW community plays).

Yes, both fire and air works pretty well in NM, not sure about water as a main build but it's nice against the titans and destroyers.
Seriously, we can get most of the stuff from NM.

Khomet Si Netjer · Feb 04, 2011, 12:12 AM // 00:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

Wouldn't the ultimate issue be that the armor bonus scaling system is ultimately broken? Instead of buffing elemental damage spells, maybe they should be addressing that issue. My only concern is that elementalists are already VERY strong in most NM play (which I assure you the vast majority of the GW community plays).

well yes, this is the fundamental issue... higher armor on monsters means less damage from weapons but the the physical attackers really don't care because most of their damage comes from skills and from buffs which are not affected by armor. Necromancers and Ritualists have some armor-affected spells but each of them have plenty of armor-ignoring damage as well, so they can just choose different skills and builds and be fine. Mesmers and smite monks ignore armor completely so they don't care. The Elementalist's skills are almost entirely armor-affected damage so he suffers the most... and there is nothing he can do to fix the problem besides what I have already described.

As far as fixes go... we don't want to buff the power levels of elementalist spells because that would make elementalist foes and especially bosses even more insane than they are now; players already use Imbagons and ST rits to defend from this kind of damage. We could boost PvE skills so that elementalist players gain armor penetration or some other damage boost but this doesn't do anything to help elementalist heroes and henchmen. Another option is to reduce monster armor levels in hardmode. This probably will not have any negative impact on the game because the other professions are dealing mostly armor-ignoring damage, so they don't care, but the elementalist would benefit. However I don't see this actually happening because it would require a lot of work. The PvE skill update is the easiest fix and has the best chance of being implemented but I wouldn't care to bet on when that might happen.

The Baphomet · Feb 05, 2011, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Caster damage was balanced for 8v8 pvp and now there is broken Invoke. I'm assuming with the huge damage and low cooldown of invoke, in pve you can combine BuH/EBSoH etc and make it hit big damage. Pair it with chain lightning.

Not to mention that the potential damage for AoE is a lot higher because of large numbers of dumb AI. So I think the "fix eles" was pointless QQ anyway.