Curse

Klance · Aug 02, 2010, 12:18 AM // 00:18

And that is what this thread attempts to explain and demonstrate.

Though originally (prophecies only, no HM) elementalists were perceived to be a class capable of outputting strong damage, subsequent changes (HM, introduction of pve skills) have rendered them comparatively much weaker than virtually all other classes at doing damage.

Of course the easiest comparison is with physicals since they all generally do armor ignoring damage but even compared to other casters (minion bomber, SS, AP-MoP, spirit spam, RoJ) elementalists fall short.

Though many would still perceive elementalists as being a good DPS class (and obviously with sufficient effort - weaken armor+EBSoH+BuH, they are capable of outputting decent DPS) it is arguable that the perception falls far short of reality.

Again we're not calling for a complete change to the class, but a slight buff in some form is warranted.

Desert Rose · Aug 02, 2010, 12:12 PM // 12:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klance

Though originally (prophecies only, no HM) elementalists were perceived to be a class capable of outputting strong damage, subsequent changes (HM, introduction of pve skills) have rendered them comparatively much weaker than virtually all other classes at doing damage.

And that's where you are wrong.
Prior to the powercreep due to Nightfall and especially after the AI started to avoid AoEs Eles sucked at dealing damage. We used them as damage dealers because we were used from other games that mage-type classes are the damage dealers and we were too bad to realise that GW works differently.
The speciality of Eles is spike damage and support.

Klance · Aug 02, 2010, 12:39 PM // 12:39

Spike damage - AP-YMLaD-EVAS-FH is probably the best spike an elementalist can output, and that is not very impressive. Otherwise a physical (daggerson, ZV derv, Turret ranger, WE scythe/axe, HB/WW) does better due to asuran scan and armor ignoring damage. It is sort of hard to spike anything when your damage is all armor sensitive.

Support - I acknowledge the sheer power of ER to fuel prots or orders, but that's basically all that's left to the elementalist. Snares are quite weak in pve, which removes a whole line, prots are so much more effective than earth wards and if you really want to spam conditions, then a FD mesmer is so much more efficient at it while doing damage with fragility at the same time.

Nechrond · Aug 02, 2010, 02:21 PM // 14:21

I didn't read the whole thread because it's, you know, long, but... Has anyone said yet that it's not the Ele that needs changing, but the monsters? Some of them should just have much more HP and much lower AR. This would allow far more build diversity and/or creativity in HM.

Mashiyu · Aug 02, 2010, 09:27 PM // 21:27

@Dessert Rose: Nobody claimed that eles are a pure dd class - thats why they have a spike, a nuke and two support lines where none of them is really effective. (How you can double the dmg of Savannah Heat? EBSoH -.-)

@Nechrond: yes was also suggested. There was also the suggestion to make elemantal weaknesses of monsters stronger so that it really makes sense to bring the element which is supposed to be strong against a certain monster type. (whew, i ALMOST mentioned the infamous monster type which was new in EotN)

Xenomortis · Aug 02, 2010, 09:57 PM // 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nechrond

I didn't read the whole thread because it's, you know, long, but... Has anyone said yet that it's not the Ele that needs changing, but the monsters? Some of them should just have much more HP and much lower AR. This would allow far more build diversity and/or creativity in HM.

Read the thread.
This has been discussed and it has been explained why your proposition won't really change anything.

Laziness is not a justification for ignorance.

Cuilan · Aug 02, 2010, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nechrond

This would allow far more build diversity and/or creativity in HM.

No it won't. Most players stick with the same builds.

Klance · Aug 03, 2010, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

No it won't. Most players stick with the same builds.

Doesn't change the fact that elementalist's are generally underpowered in HM.

And after the change in mesmer skills recently and ritualist skills earlier, there was a burst of creativity and the creation and experimentation with a large number of new builds.

Desert Rose · Aug 03, 2010, 02:50 PM // 14:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klance

Spike damage - AP-YMLaD-EVAS-FH is probably the best spike an elementalist can output, and that is not very impressive. Otherwise a physical (daggerson, ZV derv, Turret ranger, WE scythe/axe, HB/WW) does better due to asuran scan and armor ignoring damage. It is sort of hard to spike anything when your damage is all armor sensitive.

Support - I acknowledge the sheer power of ER to fuel prots or orders, but that's basically all that's left to the elementalist. Snares are quite weak in pve, which removes a whole line, prots are so much more effective than earth wards and if you really want to spam conditions, then a FD mesmer is so much more efficient at it while doing damage with fragility at the same time.

I mostly agree that neither the spike nor support abilites of an Ele are overwhelming, though you give Earth too little credit; it's good for less organised teams (PUGs, H/H).
But the solution here is to make those abilites more useful in PvE again, not giving Eles suddenly some insane damage buffs and thereby destroying their orginal design.

Klance · Aug 03, 2010, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Well the term original design is debatable (especially when applied to elementalists - I personally would argue that at they were designed to be a DPS class) ... but ultimately regardless of what you think the original design of the class its clear that regardless of what role you give an elementalist they are vastly outclassed (with the exception of ER).

They cannot do damage well, they cannot mitigate damage well (bar ER, a communing rit, prot nec/monk, and imbagon all do better) and the support spells in the earth line result in stationary wards that have too long a CD.

I think we can both agree that elementalists require a buff, but simply put, most elementalist spells are geared towards damage and that would be the easiest way of buffing them. No-one is suggesting giving them insane damage, but rather merely giving them something such that they actually can do damage in HM.

Lillium · Aug 03, 2010, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Er, the middle of this thread was a bit tldr, but...
Energy/Spell cost has never really seemed to be a problem with eles. Elite missions tend to bring a BiP, and anywhere else its not too hard to sneak a blood rit. on someone else. That or you really can manage your energy just fine with a couple management spells during missions/vq'ing/etc. Play a monk or mesmer for a little bit and you get very good at it.

What I really wanted to say though; Why change the elementalist's skills that will make the bosses even worse? I don't know anybody that didn't nearly crap themselves on their first encounter with Borguus Blisterbark. In NM.
There's no need to make ele mobs everywhere more of a hell. What I'd rather see is a cap on NPC armor over lvl 20 or at least a drastic change in formula from lvl 21 onward. Not the added Armor Bonuses, just the base creature "AR = 3 * Level" part of the formula. This is a much easier change for Anet than rebalancing a ton of skills since it takes half an hour with a calculator instead of months rebalancing a few dozen skills. Changing all the creatures is really as easy as setting a bot script to do it overnight and checking it for errors in the morning. There are definitely some crap skills (wtf second wind?), but for the most part skills are not the elementalist's problem, the armor formula is.
I don't think this would cause a problem with other classes, as majority of the current damage dealers are relying on damage that is already armor ignoring. Since armor penetration works on a %, damage dealers relying on those would not suddenly become vastly overpowered, and cracked armor would only be slightly more useful than it is in NM.

I do love the idea of pronouncing the elemental strengths/weaknesses, which they should have thought about more and done from the beginning, but there is only so much of it that can be done since they did not. The primary foe in a lot of areas are vaguely humanoid which could not plausibly have elemental properties, so most of the elemental targets are a bit out of the main focus and elementalists are unlikely to really shine in that neglected respect.

Mouse at Large · Aug 04, 2010, 10:42 AM // 10:42

The problem with announcing the elemental strengths/weakness of foes in an area is the mix of foes in an area.

You might get one bunch weak against fire, another bunch weak against earth etc. The choice will then be to go with a build that is less fail against one sort of mob and even more fail against the rest or some sort of general meh

Desert Rose · Aug 05, 2010, 02:56 PM // 14:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mouse at Large

The problem with announcing the elemental strengths/weakness of foes in an area is the mix of foes in an area.

You might get one bunch weak against fire, another bunch weak against earth etc. The choice will then be to go with a build that is less fail against one sort of mob and even more fail against the rest or some sort of general meh

Even if all foes in an area would have the same weakness to a specific element it's a bad idea. In GW the different magic schools of an Ele does not exsist to be able to deal a different kind of elementary damage, but for different purposes; even if i.e. all mobs in an area have -20 armor against cold damage you would be still deal more damage with i.e. Fire Magic than with Water Magic.
Also physicals would profit from such weaknesses properly more than Eles because of elementary weapons.

windy · Oct 10, 2010, 04:54 PM // 16:54

I do not understand how people can say eles are OK like this!!!
In HM mode people just do not want you in their team. And if you finally find a team - you are kicked immediately after a necro/monk/assa/etc. shows. I played quite a lot with heroes where possible but that is not much fun, is it...so I stopped playing at all.

AndroBubbles · Oct 12, 2010, 09:19 AM // 09:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mouse at Large

The problem with announcing the elemental strengths/weakness of foes in an area is the mix of foes in an area.

You might get one bunch weak against fire, another bunch weak against earth etc. The choice will then be to go with a build that is less fail against one sort of mob and even more fail against the rest or some sort of general meh

I think a possibility here is to introduce elemental advantages by region/monster type in the game. For instance, if you are vanquishing the Ring of Fire, the enemies there will clearly be strong against fire magic, similar to destroyers, because the heat there is constant; however, if you go to the Shiverpeaks, where monsters are used to the bitter cold, water magic will lose its efficacy. Monsters that "float", such as harpies, would be weak against earth magic AND air magic, for the reason that if something is in the air, a rock will knock it off course, as will a bolt of lightning/gust of wind. On top of that, monsters such as these are not quite as common, so you can somewhat excuse the dual weakness. Employing the need for versatility somewhat encourages varied strategies and styles of play, while rewarding player creativity with better spell efficacy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desert Rose

Even if all foes in an area would have the same weakness to a specific element it's a bad idea. In GW the different magic schools of an Ele does not exsist to be able to deal a different kind of elementary damage, but for different purposes; even if i.e. all mobs in an area have -20 armor against cold damage you would be still deal more damage with i.e. Fire Magic than with Water Magic.
Also physicals would profit from such weaknesses properly more than Eles because of elementary weapons.

Considering the fact that most physically based professions require *physical* damage to trigger the most damaging spell effects, and most of their damage is armor ignoring when they are actually using their best builds, I don't think this would be a huge problem.

Cuilan · Oct 12, 2010, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Would be nice if Master of Magic would include runes with the attributes. Energy Storage with 10-15% armor penetration to keep air meaningful, a couple more air skills with 2-3 target like abilities to keep fire/earth useful, and maybe make water like smite in where it's great with other attributes with if like things. Preferably not "if foe is alive"... Maybe allow multiple glyph use.

Stairc · Jan 13, 2011, 10:47 AM // 10:47

One thing I will say for the design of Elementalists... They's FUN. I'm usually as power-gamy as they come, and prize efficient and delicate management of resources - but even I have been swept away by the delight of casting massive spells with huge energy pools and endlessly throwing geysers of flame, rushes of chilling ice, erruptions of earth and magma and gale-force winds incessently across the battlefield - with 4 or more enchantments/glyphs upon me to make the damage even more ridiculous and regain the energy I expend so that I can keep the horrifyingly huge blasts coming.

Here's to the Elementalists! They might not be the most damage dealing class, but they sure are fun to play!

Shadowlion · Jan 13, 2011, 06:39 PM // 18:39

Mesmer, necro and rit can do a lot of things beside deal direct damage(MM), but elementalists are not, they are a "pure" DPS class compare to the others. Once they got overshadowed by other classes on damage, that make them almost worthless. I think the biggest problem is lack of armor penetration.

I am a mesmer, once sucks in PVE and like what mesmer can do now, but I really hope my ele hero can do more rather than being laughed or criticized when I tell people I still use them as major DPS source.

Voodoo Rage · Jan 13, 2011, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowlion

Mesmer, necro and rit can do a lot of things beside deal direct damage(MM), but elementalists are not, they are a "pure" DPS class compare to the others. Once they got overshadowed by other classes on damage, that make them almost worthless. I think the biggest problem is lack of armor penetration.

I am a mesmer, once sucks in PVE and like what mesmer can do now, but I really hope my ele hero can do more rather than being laughed or criticized when I tell people I still use them as major DPS source.

Not sure I agree with that. Obviously the class offers a lot of support ability via knockdowns, blind, interrupt, etc... and with AoE no less. But I agree that the elemental damage in general becomes really pathetic as you progress in the game so it kind of sucks if you are used to blowing stuff up to have to drastically assume a different role later in the game.

As I mentioned earlier and I'm sure others have too, a tweak to the PvE skill, Intensity could offer a pretty quick fix to the problem without blowing monster difficulty out of proportion.

LifeInfusion · Jan 13, 2011, 10:27 PM // 22:27

The punchline is the insanity of elemental damage against players.
Lvl 30 Ele bosses do 1.68x damage (see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Level) and so do Ritualists with spirit rift. Since attributes are capped at 20, let's assume fireball or Rodgort's Invocation at 20 (147 and 155 respectively). They will do ~250-260 damage with AoE before double damage from being a boss (500-520), Spirit rift will push 290 (double because it's a boss=580). This means wearing one superior rune (~450-530 HP) will get you instagib without prots. It's worse with stuff like Invoke Lightning since it treats you as 40 armor if you have 60 (i.e. 130% damage on top of double and 1.68x).

That's why Lushivahr the Invoker, General Tirraj, Curator Kali hit so ridiculously hard.

The reason why Save Yourselves is so powerful is you will take -82% from this insane damage making it a manageable 90 or 100 damage at best.

If we get crazy elemental damage from bosses in Winds of Change I will be disappointed. I remember so many people complaining about Tin Dao Kaineng in Cantha because it was a killer for newbies.

Intensity buff would only cure ele mains, it wouldn't cure how crappy elementalist heroes are in HM. The only reason to run them is ER, which they use poorly.