Curse

Desert Rose · Jun 14, 2010, 10:09 AM // 10:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

Care to think of more skills to cover the eles' huge list of weaknesses?

Physicals can deal enormous amounts of damage because other characters support them, why should eles be able to deal enormous amounts of damage all by themselves?

Jeydra · Jun 14, 2010, 12:28 PM // 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desert Rose

Physicals can deal enormous amounts of damage because other characters support them, why should eles be able to deal enormous amounts of damage all by themselves?

If ANet makes it possible for other characters to support Elementalists and let Elementalists deal enormous amounts of damage, I'd be happy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Countess Marie

MoP is an amazing skill now with all things considered. Especially with the increased attack speed from consumables and summons. I could see nerfing that skill pretty hard (to barbs level, even.) SoS isn't that overpowered. The overpowered part is painful bond. Could also be controlled in some way... maybe made so it's not nearby or made so it has a hit limit.

I'll say it again for people who weren't listening: ele dmg output is not bad it's just that they have to build for dmg and then they have no other real use. The second part is the main issue. Melee can 'tank' and then you throw mop on someone and nuke everything. There's no way to fix that, tbh.

SoS is overpowered because it simply does too much damage. Damage over 4 seconds is not very important - so you can kill one target in 4s, not really important if you can't kill the rest of the team. You need to be able to sustain the damage long enough for the mob to die, or using Glyph of Sacrifice on every spell will be the best option. Meteor Shower without AP is not a good build in my opinion.

You can build Elementalists for damage and they'll still be outdamaged by other professions. Why don't you try? Go hit the Master of Damage and see what your best DPS over 3 minutes is. I've not seriously tried but I think I can hit ~70 DPS at best, which is so much less than other professions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

Water Magic, Air Magic and Earth Magic revolve mainly around debuffing the opponent or self-defense. They were never supposed to deal heavy damage or it would be too imba. They aren't a pure damage class, you are clueless.

http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/pr.../elementalist/

Read it carefully:

Quote:

Air magic is driven by the power of storms and lightning, granting allies greater speed or targeting specific foes with a focused, high-damage attack.

Having been proven wrong the last time you tried to play the "but they were never meant to be that way" card, you still pretend you can read the developers' minds. You're clueless. You're also going on ignore. Sorry.

Myotheraccount · Jun 14, 2010, 01:06 PM // 13:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Having been proven wrong the last time you tried to play the "but they were never meant to be that way" card, you still pretend you can read the developers' minds.

Nope. You just said NO but haven't proven me wrong.

Your nitpicking is useless, great deal of Air Magic revolves around support through Weakness, Blind, Cracked Armor and KD. That's how things are, only idiots deny that.

Quote:

You're clueless. You're also going on ignore. Sorry.

What a loss! No more cute butthurt rebuttals.

Cuilan · Jun 14, 2010, 08:08 PM // 20:08

Quoting a line form a profession description doesn't fully tell what everything a profession can and should do.

Jeydra · Jun 14, 2010, 11:57 PM // 23:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

Quoting a line form a profession description doesn't fully tell what everything a profession can and should do.

Neither does just saying "they were never supposed to deal heavy damage" prove that they were indeed never supposed to deal heavy damage.

Ensign · Jun 15, 2010, 05:03 AM // 05:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxxfury

I want Elementalists to be comparable to other CASTER professions at dealing damage.

Well they really won't do that without radically altering how the class works, because the highest damage casters aren't throwing nukes.

The most damage you'll get out of a caster comes purely from force multipliers. Order of the Vampire plus Strength of Honor and some cleaning with 4 melees? Done. The numbers get crazy when everything stacks multiplicatively with everything else, which is where the sick numbers eventually come from. The Ele isn't about to turn into a buffbot, so that doesn't really apply.

The next best performance comes from characters that are built to invest their resources into long lasting sources of damage; I'm looking at Minion Masters and Communing Rits here. Basically they generate a giant wall of garbage that they slam into mobs, and gives a lot of damage from the sheer mass of crap they can put on the field. Toss in a few buffs for good measure. Minions have always been silly, and the new spirits come up fast and keep hitting until the mob is finished. These are outstanding, mindless henchmen.

After that you're left with raw DD, which by all accounts is unimpressive since there are no multipliers involved. The advantage of DD is that it's on demand and easy to use; yes, armor sucks and it was a terrible decision etc, but that's how it works.

The best tools available for surgical damage are the Norn shouts. Those play nice with Assassin's Promise to let you burst things down. I'm still on the fence on whether I like the Elementalist version (with Glyph of Lesser Energy) or the Necromancer version (Soul Reaping and force multipliers) better. It doesn't outperform another physical with a full combo going, but it's not a throwaway character like a Fireball spammer.

But really, the wall in PvE is that mobs pose only a minimal disruptive threat. If you're playing against an opponent who can take apart what you're doing, reliable, on demand damage has a place. But in PvE you're playing against a goldfish - and against a goldfish, there's no reason not to play the most intricate, explosive combo you can think of.

Arato · Jun 15, 2010, 05:31 AM // 05:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

That actually wouldn't effect everyone equally.

how would it not?

Currently going from normal mode to hard mode affects physical and elemental damage (reduced), however armor ignoring damage does the same amount in normal and hard modes.

Going from normal to hard mode can in fact, benefit many sources of armor ignoring damage, mainly punishing hexes like spiteful spirit and empathy, as mobs attack faster and therefore are hit by the armor ignoring damage of the hex more frequently.

Going to hard mode has little negative effect on armor ignoring damage dps. It cripples non armor ignoring damage however.

How is that equal?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

SoS is overpowered because it simply does too much damage. Damage over 4 seconds is not very important - so you can kill one target in 4s, not really important if you can't kill the rest of the team. You need to be able to sustain the damage long enough for the mob to die, or using Glyph of Sacrifice on every spell will be the best option. Meteor Shower without AP is not a good build in my opinion.

SoS or any spirit spamming build is overpowered because it is armor ignoring damage. I don't find it signifigantly overpowered however in a group setting in high end pve because it is single target and you can't even choose what target to focus fire very effectively. You can try shifting your spirits around to get your desired target so that it is the only target in range for them, which will make the spirits target it, but otherwise, they'll target whatever the heck they want, sometimes they'll split dps between them. It's basically useful for providing extra expendeble targets for mobs to attack and sponge damage, and mopping up what aoe nuking doesn't kill off, most SoS builds in high end content fullfill a support role on top of their spirits, because they're not useful enough to bring for damage alone. However in doing smaller group content and for soloing it's pretty overpowered.

Seriously though, they need to buff the passive effect of spawning power and drastically reduce the health of spirits (meaning for the buffed spawning power to compensate). Having ritualists be able to run spirit spamming builds in 1 attribute or the other (an SoS channeling build, or communing build) while having to keep a decent amount of spawning power is fine. However I think it's stretching it that ritualist secondaries can and often do run SoS builds, in fact in PuGs it is quite frustrating to have a secondary ritualist claiming that he should run the SoS build and my primary ritualist should do something else. I also find it stretching what is reasonable to not need much spawning power in order to have hardy spirits that can take some incoming fire, allowing you to have 12(16) channeling and 12(13) communing so that you can run SoS, Vampirism, Bloodsong, Pain, and either shadowsong or anguish.. that's 7 spirits, and then you use painful bond. That's where the overpowered comes in. If you HAD to boost your spawning power or your spirits got wasted in a few hits, you'd only be able to run 1 attribute or the other, maybe enough communing to keep up armor of unfeeling, but not enough communing to have effective spirits from that line. It'd reduce your number of spirits to 5, which would considerably reduce the dps on a single target.

Myotheraccount · Jun 15, 2010, 10:32 AM // 10:32

SoS is OP because it provides an epic bar compression without any trade-offs. Thats how it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

Quoting a line form a profession description doesn't fully tell what everything a profession can and should do.

QFT

Though Ele discription is quite accurate in reflecting what the class does. They are indeed good at damage bursts but lack the same long term DPS as physicals because of long recharges and casting times. Only narrow-minded nitpickers who can't read will say otherwise.

Mashiyu · Jun 15, 2010, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Yeah, casting 2seks for a 100dmg lightning orb is surely a burst compared to a scythe-derv/sin/war/whatever who strikes in that time twice for the same dmg on up to three targets (self-buffed).

If the burst dmg with looooooooooooooooooong cast time was significally higher than the dmg dealt by spammed attack skills, I would have no problem with that.

Sad but true - for high dmg builds the ele should go AP/PvE-Spammer, SoS or DwG. Yes, none of them are ele builds, but they can use them.

maxxfury · Jun 15, 2010, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Well they really won't do that without radically altering how the class works, because the highest damage casters aren't throwing nukes.

..snips

I was really only fixing Jeydra's comment so the usual crowd didnt jump all over it

as per the "but sins do millions times more damage! elems would be over powered if they could do that!" crew.

And it was merely a nice little "hmm wouldnt it be nice if...." comment :P tho i never really expected it to happen

for pretty much the reasons you posted, tho it served as a nice jumping off point for ya

so we will go with that

as usual, epic post Mr Ensign sir!

Celestina · Jun 16, 2010, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

If ANet makes it possible for other characters to support Elementalists and let Elementalists deal enormous amounts of damage, I'd be happy.

Stolen Speed from mesmers.

Sure it's not a boost in damage, but constant 50% reduction in casting speed is bound to help Eles no matter how you look at it.

Cuilan · Jun 16, 2010, 08:00 AM // 08:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

How is that equal?

Because many skills have risk, require waiting, reward for not happening often, and many other things that apparently you don't seem to understand. You're pretty much proven you want Anet to shit on all the other professions except yours.

UnChosen · Jun 17, 2010, 08:56 AM // 08:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

Because many skills have risk, require waiting, reward for not happening often, and many other things that apparently you don't seem to understand. You're pretty much proven you want Anet to shit on all the other professions except yours.

Except elementalist skills also have risk, require waiting, reward for not happening often.

Risk:

High cast time = frequent interrupts, as well as locking down the ele and prevents kiting (unless you decide to cancel cast and lose all the energy as well as the return from attunements).

Waiting requirement:

Having 2-5s cast time spells with many having 20+ second recharge is not waiting enough? -.- This is especially true if the eles get their spells interrupted or their key enchants stripped.

Reward for not happening often:

Scatter = Hitting empty ground, rendering DoTAoE useless....casting a snare before hand just contributes to the "having to wait" problem, but at the end the damage is reduced to utter worthlessness thanks to armor.

If you don't have a dedicated tank N' spank team, eles would rarely get an ideal situation where they can actually use their AoE effectively. If there isn't a tank holding aggro, eles would have to WAIT for melee monsters to STOP MOVING before they can use any DoTAoE, basically contribute to MORE WAIT. If the other members of the party actually kites, then the only thing the ele can do is to just cast and hope that the monster runs back into the AoE or the other members deliberately stops in the AoE for you.

How is this not far worse than the other classes "weaknesses"?

WhiteAsIce · Jun 17, 2010, 09:42 AM // 09:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by expugnare

1) Easily Acessible Armor Penetration: For example, give Intensity the following effects: Enchantment spell: Every time you use a spell that deals damage to a foe, that spell has 25% armor penetration and inflicts Cracked Armor (before damage).
Before people start crying OP, make sure it scales only with Energy Storage so that it can't be abused by other classes. This will solve a large chunk of Elementalist damage problems, upping their damage in HM significantly.

2) Up Energy Management:Up energy management so that two or three skills are not totally necessary in an Ele build.

3) Rework underused skills: No one has found a purpose for Stone Sheath or Second Wind yet, lets change that. Perhaps adding spells that exploit resistances to make damage dealing a bit more friendly in armor heavy areas.

I see what you did there. However, it's not just Eles. Addressing the latter two points...
2) Eles aren't the only professions that need 2-3 skills for energy. Mesmers need 2-3 Inspiration spells too.
3) Underused? Look at Rangers. Rangers are horrible in PvE. Don't give me the Barrage argument - go to the Ranger forum, and the majority of posts there bash Rangers in PvE.

I like that you addressed changing Intensity though. This gives me an idea:

Enchantment: For 3 seconds plus 1 second for each rank of Energy Storage, your Elementalist skills deal 15..23..25% more damage. Whenever you cast a spell that targets a foe, this enchantment reapplies itself.

The change in duration means that non-Eles can only really maintain this with Flare, Icicle Spear, or Stone Daggers. This is meant to be used mainly for Eles, as Critical Agility is mainly for Sins. I didn't want to give all spells AP since it would make Air spells insanely strong. Cracked Armor isn't as great as it seems if all your Ele spells are dealing more damage anyways.

Cuilan · Jun 17, 2010, 10:53 AM // 10:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

How is this not far worse than the other classes "weaknesses"?

They aren't far worse because many of those can be solved by party synergy or playing well. At least elementalist damage is sure to happen and don't often have much requirements. That requirement part makes up for the casting time to some extent.

Mashiyu · Jun 17, 2010, 08:45 PM // 20:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by WhiteAsIce

Cracked Armor isn't as great as it seems if all your Ele spells are dealing more damage anyways.

+40 AR = -50%dmg
+30 AR = -41%dmg
+20 AR = -29%dmg
+10 AR = -15%dmg
-10 AR = +18%dmg
-20 AR = +41%dmg <<< yes cracked armor is so weak ...
-30 AR = +68%dmg
-40 AR =+100%dmg

Sure, other classes don't realize how powerful Cracked Armor is, because they either deal fully (casters) or partially (physicals) armor-ignoring damage.

/vote for 20%dmg + cracked armor on target

UnChosen · Jun 17, 2010, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

They aren't far worse because many of those can be solved by party synergy or playing well. At least elementalist damage is sure to happen and don't often have much requirements. That requirement part makes up for the casting time to some extent.

Playing well or party synergy does NOT reduce the long cast time and recharge. The most that it can do is that ele can actually hit enough enemies. But as people already stated, if a team is actually willing to ball up 5+ enemies with a tank, then there are far better options that does not cause scatter. (Ya, it takes a BIT more work buffing physicals and coordinating hexes, but if a team spent all that time balling, its far better to put in that extra effort than to use an ele and risk scatter).

Its not like the other caster classes problems can't be solved by party synergy and playing well. So why do those classes gets extra benefit is beyond me.

Midnight Sands · Jun 17, 2010, 09:44 PM // 21:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mashiyu

+40 AR = -50%dmg
+30 AR = -41%dmg
+20 AR = -29%dmg
+10 AR = -15%dmg
-10 AR = +18%dmg
-20 AR = +41%dmg <<< yes cracked armor is so weak ...
-30 AR = +68%dmg
-40 AR =+100%dmg

Sure, other classes don't realize how powerful Cracked Armor is, because they either deal fully (casters) or partially (physicals) armor-ignoring damage.

/vote for 20%dmg + cracked armor on target

Inaccurate. Thats based on 0 armor being 60, and therefore will not work in PvE. As the HM mobs already have waaay above base armor the gain from cracked armor in HM is minimal.

Xenomortis · Jun 17, 2010, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midnight Sands

Inaccurate. Thats based on 0 armor being 60, and therefore will not work in PvE. As the HM mobs already have waaay above base armor the gain from cracked armor in HM is minimal.

No, they represent universal shifts in armour.
An increase in 20 armour will reduce damage taken by 41%. Similarly a reduction of 20 armour will increase damage taken by 41%.

Midnight Sands · Jun 17, 2010, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

No, they represent universal shifts in armour.
An increase in 20 armour will reduce damage taken by 41%. Similarly a reduction of 20 armour will increase damage taken by 41%.

No it doesnt... Gain from armor is depreciating both ways.

If target AL is 60 they receive 100% damage.
If target AL is 60 and they re affected by cracked armor they now suffer 141% damage (41% increase).

If target AL is 100 they receive 50% damage.
If target AL is 100 and they are affected by cracked armor they now suffer 71% damage (21% increase).

If it worked the way you think it did it would be ridiculously imba in PvP, though shell shock/ca is alr v. strong...