Curse

Page Down Warhammer · Jan 02, 2010, 10:24 AM // 10:24

I have been playing an ele since day 1. My ele is my main character, he isn't awesome, but he has 2 elite armors and some nice weapons and of course every ele skill and a lot of the monk/mesmer ones. Now most of my ele experience is dealt in Fire magic. Then as I rushed through all 4 campaigns with my fire nuker, 3 decent heroes, and 4 hencmen I though.. wow.. this is dull. And decided to branch out.

Fire Magic:
Strong, Popular, fast (Well mostly lol) Who wouldn't love it? Actually.. a lot of people. Fire Magic is the most upfront magic. With its strong base damages straight forward skills and decent degen output, but it lacks finesse, fire magic is mostly 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 maitain 7,8 use 5,6 for specific situations or emanage.

Water Magic: When I first branched into water magic I fell in love. Shatterstone was my favorite elite. I was solo nuking healers in mobs almost before my melees engaged, and with the introduction of glowing ice it made a great spike. Mistform was probably the dumbest water elite I could think of, so of course, I got it first lol. But I didn't really enjoy water magic until I discovered the magic of MoI. MoI; Deep Freeze; Ice spikes; Shard storm, what great AoE hexes, and it looked nice, It wasn't all 1,2,3,4 sure mirror of ice was maitained along with AoR and Water Attunement, but since mirror of ice does damage when monsters were hexed I got some things to play with. Frozen burst for when I was being attacked, Deep Freeze for AoE slow, Rust against warriors and mesmers, blurred vision for melee and ranged, it took thought, and knowledge of mob classes.

Earth Magic: Aka farmers gift. Ob Flesh, kinetic armor, armor of earth, ward against melee, ward against elements, Stoneflesh aura, just to name a few. I found myself not really using this in Pve as much, but for farms it was amazing. I wasn't even doing real farms. I was having so much fun, for like a week I would just go to a random place, put it in HM, and run out to see if I could managed to live and kill them, even if it wasn't profitable or fast. But Earth magic quickly became boring. (Don't worry I picked it back up later on and now use it pretty regularly as a support element for various builds.)

Air Magic: Two words, Double Attunement. Thats right, Air magic amazed me, I could do so much with double attunement and a 40/40 set spamming all the air spells I could find. And when I wasn't using DA, there are so many useful elites. Lightning surge followed that same principle for spiking as shatterstone, warrior bosses went down like well.. Eles! With cracked armor and then LS Lightning hammer spike and blinding flash to effectively eliminate their ability to do anything but healing signet.

Energy storage: Still discovering amazing uses for this. with so many unique elites (Some of which I find completely useless lol) and trying to combine each elite effectively with each separate magic. E-storage is responsible for my revitalization of fire magic use (That and Searing flames lol) Because E-Storage's elites are so unique it made everything take finesse, but the good thing is that most of the time, if something takes finesse, it works well!

So that has been my experiences as an ele, but that all leads up to my one true love.

Ether Renewal (Anet please no touchy with the next nerf! no touchy Obby flesh either!!!): With infinite energy, I could do so much! Ether Renewal was like AoR and Elemental Attunement shoved together! I found great uses for ER (now I know that most of my great uses are in a lot of peoples builds) things being able to maintain more than 4 enchantments, Hoo prot bond for all my melee fighters, no more worrying about them needing defy pain and a sheild for damage reduction. I found ER does amazing things as a monk to, I was replacing my monk hero with a Channeling/resto rit which added in my damage with weapon spells and my healing with uber cheap condition removal (IE:Mend Body and Soul)

So before you write your ele off as some cheap fire nuker whenever you need extra damage, remember there are 3 other elemental magics all with unique advantages and disadvantages and with the right builds they can be even more effective than fire magic, but they can be fun to, they aren't just face roll bars. My 4 year old sister can use arcane echo and spam searing flames, probably better than I can, but give her MoI with glyph of immolation; steam; rust; deep freeze; winter's embrace; and water attunement and we;ll see how well she face rolls

tichi · Jan 02, 2010, 11:12 AM // 11:12

sup!
i've also been playing ele for 37 months now (thats from day 1 for me) and i still have the feeling that there is so much to discover here. i was in love with fire magic at first (who isn't?) but halfway through my second campaign i started thinking "how about i stop nuking and i try something else". so i started experimenting and i was amazed actually. i played as HB in vanquishes, i was playing glimmering light spammer in RA once and got to 17 cons wins (other team was like "where are they getting heals from?" ^^, i finished tombs with B/P team as one of the barragers, i even designed a build to lay SY spammer with ele.

that's my experience with ele so far i also use all 4 elements in general pve (finished gate of madness HM using mainly air magic spells combined with some pve skills) and note i haven't even started using some of the builds on wiki (the build with resto healing and stuff might be pretty fun

).

so...yeah i agree that there is still much potential to be discovered in eles. maybe we get another shot after SF nerf

Winry Sagara · Jan 02, 2010, 12:52 PM // 12:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Page Down Warhammer

I found myself not really using this in Pve as much

I usually play, in PvE, an Earth Elementalist, and I could say that is so efficient.

Eruption gives blind
Churning Earth and Unsteady Ground gives knock-down
Ebon Hawk gives weakness

Before playing Earth I play Fire. My conclusion is this:

Earth vs Fire 10 - 0

BrettM · Jan 02, 2010, 01:13 PM // 13:13

I'm with Winry. I've been playing an ele since day 1 as well, and have always focused on earth because I was impressed with the versatility of the line. I went out of my way to build up my collection of earth skills as early as possible, long before I knew anything about farming.

Earth has two of the greatest ele elites in the game -- Sandstorm and Unsteady Ground -- for general PvE use. (Try an E/Rt with Unsteady Ground and Earthbind. Very sweet, and makes a monkey out of Shiro in Gate of Madness, especially when coupled with a hammer war hero.)

Even early on, coming through Prophecies with a limited set of skills available, I found earth worthwhile. ER was my first elite, capped in the Crystal Desert just after the buff in August 2008. An ER build with Kinetic Armor and Stone Daggers as a spammable skill made a darned good build for getting me through the last half of Prophecies.

Frozen Ele · Jan 03, 2010, 04:17 AM // 04:17

Here's my 53 months of ele experience:

Fell in love with water magic first thing and now use it almost non-stop. I enjoy the easy snare + interupt combo of Maelstorm and Deepfreeze, Ice Spikes, etc. The elite I normally run with is MoI, running a MoI AoE build. If I throw in Steam, I normally use Elemental Hex along with it since the hexes will trigger burning. Throw in Soul Barbs and it can be even more fun. (Page Down Warhammer summed it up pretty well, only thing is that MoI doesn't trigger w/ Frozen Burst since Frozen Burst doesn't target an enemy)

I also enjoy the nice cold damage + Spinal Shivers/Shivers of Dread use of water magic. Using ER plus Spinal Shivers and the all-spammable Ice Spear, one can end the effectiveness of any caster (or meele-er). Use with a few water heroes (and making use of both Spinal Shivers and Shivers of Dread) a group of foes can be interupted to death. (Also love spinal shivers + glimmering mark + winter, making for an interupt every second)

Finally, I like the PvP uses of water magic, especially in Jade Quarry where I slow down the haulers by 90%, taking them out in not too much longer.

MasterSasori · Jan 03, 2010, 05:20 AM // 05:20

K thread will go like this:

Water snares, supports, and damages!
Air KD, blinds, supports and damages!
Earth KD, blinds, weakens, supports and damages!

Fire sucks since damage is marginally more than other elements (or maybe not even) and supports like wet tissue.

But in the end ER Infuser ownz all.

I've played all element classes extensively and this is the general trend.

Page Down Warhammer · Jan 05, 2010, 06:10 AM // 06:10

Lol at ER infuser, Its so repetitive its almost boring. Throw a whole bunch of enchants up and spam infuse on everything.

maxxfury · Jan 05, 2010, 07:02 AM // 07:02

Repetitive and boring doesnt stop it been stupidly powerful at stopping people from blowing up!

The Josip · Jan 06, 2010, 05:38 PM // 17:38

So this is a thread about how great ele is, especially with super-overpowered ER which OP requests devs should not touch?

Let's switch the situation. Let's make ele as 'useful' as mesmer in PvE; let's give Mesmer a ridiculously OP skill in fast casting, and then let me see OP stating that it should remain like that forever.

(No, I don't like selfish people, neither do I like super-uber-OP skills in PvE like ER and SF and spirit-spam)

Milennin · Jan 07, 2010, 09:22 AM // 09:22

I've always loved Air Magic, because of its cheap spells, short recharge times, fast casting times, armour penetration and being able to easily blind and weaken enemies. Also because it doesn't deal AoE damage, enemies won't scatter everytime you've cast a spell.

khezial tahr · Jan 07, 2010, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Josip

So this is a thread about how great ele is, especially with super-overpowered ER which OP requests devs should not touch?

Let's switch the situation. Let's make ele as 'useful' as mesmer in PvE; let's give Mesmer a ridiculously OP skill in fast casting, and then let me see OP stating that it should remain like that forever.

(No, I don't like selfish people, neither do I like super-uber-OP skills in PvE like ER and SF and spirit-spam)

How great the Ele is? According to this thread the only thing they're good for is ER. How is that great?

And let me agree with you on the super-uber-OP skills.

Cebe · Jan 08, 2010, 08:59 AM // 08:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winry Sagara

Eruption gives blind
Churning Earth and Unsteady Ground gives knock-down
Ebon Hawk gives weakness

Enfeebling Blood is far more useful than Ebon Hawk with just 6 points in Curses. Of course, you need to be "/N", but it's often not a hard problem to overcome.

Bonuses of Enfeebling Blood vs. Ebon Hawk:

Cheaper Energy Cost.
Good duration even at low investment
AoE

It has a longer recharge, but it outlasts it's recharge anyway.

Enfeebling could also potentially be stuck on a hero freeing up your slot for something entirely different.

Winry Sagara · Jan 12, 2010, 12:19 PM // 12:19

Very interesting. I'll try this modify.

Usually, my skiil bars are:

EARTH:

Sometimes I play some variants instead of EBON HAWK. Most common are WARD AGAINST MELEE / WARD AGAINST ELEMENTS or EARTHBIND (Ritualist skill) to let enemies strucked for 3 seconds.

WATER:

Water is very funny but a little bit difficult to use.