Curse

Kendel · Jun 20, 2009, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonofthort

If intensity gets buffed, you wouldn't really need to grind, most ppl easily get r7 without even trying if they just play nf. Plus the rank could influence only the duration, the armor penetration could be set at a constant for every rank, creating less need for grinding.

That still doesn't change the fact you couldn't give different buffs to different attributes like you can with Attunement changes. Ok Intensity is incredibly simple to do whereas changing attunements would require removing them from foes so they don't become 1 hit killing machines, but it allows for more fine tuning.

In reality the root of the problem is in the damage reduction due to levels, you can already inflict Cracked Armour to reduce the armour slightly, but it still doesn't make alot of difference. Adding a global AP wouldn't make a whole lot of difference unless it was very high.

The only problem is you'd essentially make everywhere that isn't against incredibly high level foes very easy.

FengShuiDove · Jun 20, 2009, 05:07 PM // 17:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

I think this is a pretty skewed example - after all properly built you should still have stuff like Liquid Flame, Fireball, 40/40 sets triggering, etc. Compare this one instead, which is probably one of the best Elementalist damage builds around.

Good point. I still don't think the DPS matches, but it would be much better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

12 Air, 12 Deadly Arts, 3 Energy Storage

You Move Like A Dwarf! / Finish Him! / Enervating Charge / Lightning Orb / Glyph of Lesser Energy / Air Attunement / Assassin's Promise / Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support

Assuming you get one trigger of AP every ~8 seconds (pretty reasonable) and that during those 8 seconds you've used one LOrb, one Vanguard Sin, one YMLAD and one Finish Him, then:

The Vanguard Sin does maybe 200 damage
The LOrb might deal ~120 damage
YMLAD does 80 damage
Finish Him does 80 damage (+ Deep Wound)
Total = 480 damage over 8s = 60 DPS.

Well sure, but this is just an Ele variant of a Discord feed PvE heavy bar =P. It's got an Assassin skill for an elite, 3 PvE only skills, and 4 ele skills, 2 of which are an just e-management. I'm sure that's not why most folks picked Ele

.

I still like the idea of the Conjures, and I pick Conjures over Attunements because from what I've seen more monsters use Attunements and, as many people have said, giving HM bosses the +damage or %ap would break them even more. See the typical example of a broken HM Elementalist boss. If someone cares to prove me wrong and count the bosses that use a Conjure vs. those that use an Attunement, please do.

I think that buffing Conjures would do several things:

(1) buff player Eles without buffing too many mobs

(2) create a series of "meta skills" that are nearly essential
-----I say this because having to choose 1 of 4 skills to bring as 1/8 of your bar isn't too bad considering what some professions have (think Assassin with CritAgil), but it forces you to narrow your bar and more skillfully select the other 7 skills for HM. HM should weed out the "BYOB" mentality without killing variety, and I think this would help with that.

(3) give the Conjure skills (and one useless elite) an actual purpose for the Elementalist
-----My Ele was my first character and before I knew exactly what skill descriptions meant, I was really exciting about pumping out more damage with a Conjure on my bar. I was sorely disappointed.

Kendel · Jun 20, 2009, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Conjures do let you run gimmick builds though and i think they were meant for attackers more than for actual eles.

I know my guildy occasionally runs an E/P Conjure Spear for the fun of it with Shell Shock and Chest Thumper to name a few.

However i see your point about simply adding +xx damage to bypass armour/level reduction. Its just that would clearly benefit AoEs and DoTAoEs far more than anything else where they inflict a low amount of damage but do it often. Which again would turn Eles into 1 trick ponies requiring tanks to really cause damage.

sonofthort · Jun 20, 2009, 07:03 PM // 19:03

UnChosen · Jun 20, 2009, 08:51 PM // 20:51

The HM Super Armor monsters are not the only thing screwing PvE Eles over. In high end areas the monsters get an insane boost to their already high dmg thanks to HM. For example, a bladed aataxe in UW hard mode did ~450 dmg to my monk! (I actually went in there and tested). Its pretty much guaranteed someone will die unless if the monk has insane reflex with prot spirit, or there's a shelter rit (and as we all know, rit doesn't do much in PvE).

Say what you want about the scattering, but IMO its badly implemented with all this monster power creep going on. With over 400 dmg per hit people are going to make sure that those things don't scatter, which is part of why CoP/RoJ (and Ursan before that) became so popular.

sonofthort · Jun 20, 2009, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

The HM Super Armor monsters are not the only thing screwing PvE Eles over. In high end areas the monsters get an insane boost to their already high dmg thanks to HM. For example, a bladed aataxe in UW hard mode did ~450 dmg to my monk! (I actually went in there and tested). Its pretty much guaranteed someone will die unless if the monk has insane reflex with prot spirit, or there's a shelter rit (and as we all know, rit doesn't do much in PvE).

Say what you want about the scattering, but IMO its badly implemented with all this monster power creep going on. With over 400 dmg per hit people are going to make sure that those things don't scatter, which is part of why CoP/RoJ (and Ursan before that) became so popular.

The only thing that really concerns me is when a class no longer becomes effective at its fundamental job (ele's are a support/damage class, and only the support option is viable in HM, ANET wouldn't have given them fire magic and tons of aoe and single target damage spells if they were supposed to only be support players in pve). I don't really think HM was implimented poorly, the fact that monsters get boosted everything, including AI, forces us to find ways to deal with it. There are several things that can be done about the insane damage, like you said, prot spirit and spirit spamming (which is now a more viable option after recent update), but there is also "Save Yourself!", which grants all other party members +100 armor, not to mention countless ways to deal with enemy scatter if you just take the time to work with it (grasping eath, deep freeze, aoe cripple, knocklocks, etc). The thing about ele's is that there isn't much that can be done to get around monsters high armor, leaving ele's "powerful" damage spells very unpowerful. The only thing I can think to do is have a support player like a necro use Weaken armor, Ebon battle standard of Honor, Ebon Battle standard of Wisdom (to help ele's recharges), then ele's themselves would have to use "By Ural's Hammer", possibly intensity (poor recharge makes this a weak option), and mindbender (fast casting + halves skill recharge of spells from battle standard of wisdom means ele's can spam like crazy). Necro could also use a battery skill like blood ritual or blood is power to further help ele's spam. I haven't tested these ideas to see how well they work, but something that comes to mind is why invest this much effort just to make ele damage viable when a monk, necro, or mesmer could just nuke with armor ignoring damage without the need for all this coordination? All Anet would have to do to bring eles up to par with these other nukers is buff 1 pve only skill, and after the recent update, with paragons and rits getting huge buffs for pve, I don't think buffing one skill so that ele's can also have a chance in PvE for anything other than support builds is too much to ask for.

enumaelish1 · Jun 20, 2009, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Couldn't resist looking again lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

The HM Super Armor monsters are not the only thing screwing PvE Eles over. In high end areas the monsters get an insane boost to their already high dmg thanks to HM. For example, a bladed aataxe in UW hard mode did ~450 dmg to my monk! (I actually went in there and tested). Its pretty much guaranteed someone will die unless if the monk has insane reflex with prot spirit, or there's a shelter rit (and as we all know, rit doesn't do much in PvE).

Say what you want about the scattering, but IMO its badly implemented with all this monster power creep going on. With over 400 dmg per hit people are going to make sure that those things don't scatter, which is part of why CoP/RoJ (and Ursan before that) became so popular.

For HM dungeons with stuff like aatxes in it, I would suggest pre protting, or staying out of the way of that aatxe lol. My guild and I actually got bored one day and just went in to clear UW with whoever wanted to come, HM took like 4 hours ><. Power creep in my opinion isn't going towards monsters, its towards players. With the new update to rits, spirit spamming becomes more mindless and actually accepted in groups. Otherwise, look at perma sins... invulnerability to almost all forms of damage is pretty badass. 330 eles work just fine for tanking most things as well, maybe not as good as shadow form, but it works.
As a note for the conjures, wouldn't that make your bar really cramped? Most people would bring... Conjure X, X attunement, (insert other skills here) 1/4 of your bar is already gone and I personally wouldn't even bother.
Since I don't want to make the thread more cluttered with my bad quoting skills, I'll just address them here
Yes, I did forget about prophecies, it has been a rather long time after all.. and I really like the spellbreaker idea, didn't really think about that one ^^

To Jeydra's points,
When you were able to keep 3 physicals clean of hexes with a hex removal skill that takes 5 seconds to recharge? I don't quite think you were in a hex heavy area. Also to the point of eles actually outdamaging sins in NM; If a critscythe hits for 300+ in Hm, assuming they hit just as hard in nm, they kill mobs in 3 swipes right? If stuff is balled up anyway, then they can kill 3 mobs in 3 hits. I would assume your ele is taking searing flames since I believe its faster in normal mode(correct me if I'm wrong, thats just what I heard) than the heats. Your one sin is still doing the same damage as the small team of eles spamming Searing, and even then theres an aftercast of 3/4 second etc, so a scythesin should still come out faster by your reasoning, making elementalists redundant in NM as well. As well as this, the average group of mobs is only what 6-9 mobs? Factor that in and the scythe sin wins hands down.

To the point of human teams as well, unfortunately not everyone can get even 4/8 of humans regularly and considering the thread was about buffing eles for all of PvE, isn't it a bit silly to consider what's needed for "optimum efficiency"? Face it, Elementalists aren't optimum damage dealers in HM, nor would giving them armor penetration make them so. The view that they should be huge damage dealers is outdated, and so is the argument that the box said they do big damage. Since I never read any of the manuals or the boxes for that matter, I don't actually know when they said that. But I'm pretty sure it was before HM update. Also note that your listening to the words of the people who decided hamstorm was broken, and if I remember right, someone said that the screenie wasn't even with the right profession.

Also, paragons in the front line is stupid. You have a spears range, so use it. If the scythe sin can kill so fast and has negligible running time, then why make the poor paragon follow it around when it can quite easily stay where it is to avoid being hit. Especially since their the ones using SY and are the most vulnerable in the team, except when theres a war or something using SY as well.

Now I'm bored to continue, we could keep going on quoting eachother's posts
and picking holes in eachother, but why don't we just get along and realise that elementalists are probably one of the weakest professions damage wise. As per their primary, which I think does or at least SHOULD define a characters role, they are a jack of all trades, master of none. Save bring able to out spam other characters.

Edit: Wow I forgot the point of this argument till reading the above post xD. Mayhaps giving them some extra power wouldn't be a bad idea. However I just don't see where its going to come from. Addiotionally, you say give eles a chance at PvE? They already have a chance at PvE. My ele has leg. guardian and vanquished cantha and tyria. I honestly didn't have that much of a problem. Other eles I play with have leg vanquisher and only took a stack of clovers to do it. He uses Savannah heat and battle standard usually and it doesn't seem to work too bad in my opinion...

UnChosen · Jun 21, 2009, 03:16 AM // 03:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by enumaelish1

For HM dungeons with stuff like aatxes in it, I would suggest pre protting, or staying out of the way of that aatxe lol. My guild and I actually got bored one day and just went in to clear UW with whoever wanted to come, HM took like 4 hours ><. Power creep in my opinion isn't going towards monsters, its towards players. With the new update to rits, spirit spamming becomes more mindless and actually accepted in groups. Otherwise, look at perma sins... invulnerability to almost all forms of damage is pretty badass. 330 eles work just fine for tanking most things as well, maybe not as good as shadow form, but it works.

The thing with monsters is that unlike PvP they don't always train on one player and you can't pre-prot all 7 characters (assuming one tank)...not to mention preprot is not a pug vocabulary. With shelter the chance of survival is greater but most of the time the monsters will go for the spirit first and kills it one one hit...the new spirits update mostly improves offensive rits only.

In normal mode it wasn't much of a problem because usually eles just stack like 8 nukes which was enough to wipe out the entire group before they get a chance to escape.

In hard mode, with the super armor even with snare + many many nukes they still barely gets scratched, and once the snares wears off they're free to go on a rampage and wipe the team.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonofthort

...

True that there are ways to avoid the insane dmg (SY! or blindbots), but the main point I was getting at is that the scatter COMBINED with the super armor makes ele unattractive in higher end areas. Why should I bring an ele and take the risk of scattering enemy and requiring extra effort to protect the backline, when the damage I get is so subpar? That's the question. Right now it is by far better to just tank them and use the best single target spells or single hit non elemental AoE to kill, with no risk of the group dying whatsoever.

Jeydra · Jun 21, 2009, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by FengShuiDove

Well sure, but this is just an Ele variant of a Discord feed PvE heavy bar =P. It's got an Assassin skill for an elite, 3 PvE only skills, and 4 ele skills, 2 of which are an just e-management. I'm sure that's not why most folks picked Ele .

Exactly. An Elementalist with pre-nerf Ursan + 7 random skills on his bar might be an effective character, but he's not an Elementalist. The bar I gave above is effective enough in HM, but it's not an Elementalist either, and when there're enough physicals around it's not good enough too.

@enumaelish1 - area in question was DoA Foundry NM. It's normal mode alright but it's the hardest area in the game and harder than most HM areas, so ... if we were in DoA Gloom or something we'd bring more hex removal of course. Hexes in PvE are largely not dangerous too.

In NM there's a good chance you hit more than 3 people, they ball up more. The more people you hit the better Elementalist damage compares. Also the auxiliary advantages are more significant, eg. since you can cast at full range you can hit before the Assassin gets into melee, which gives you a few extra seconds of damage. In HM this isn't too much because you can't deal much damage in these few seconds anyway, but in NM you can - several hundred points even. Finally there's the number of people required. The teambuild we had for Foundry for example had 3 physicals + 2 people dedicated to keeping them clean / buffing their damage (Orders + SoH). That means only 3 people are pumping out the 300+ DPS. This is still larger than what 5 Elementalists would do. But in (an easier area of) NM 5 Elementalists will match 300 DPS x3.

That's not to say physical damage doesn't work. It still does, and works very well. But Elementalist damage can compare, which is the point isn't it?

Paragons should go to the frontlines, or not bother bringing the ward at all. Why bother with the ward if all you're buffing is your own attack + any wanding the backline might do?

Quote:

To the point of human teams as well, unfortunately not everyone can get even 4/8 of humans regularly and considering the thread was about buffing eles for all of PvE, isn't it a bit silly to consider what's needed for "optimum efficiency"? Face it, Elementalists aren't optimum damage dealers in HM, nor would giving them armor penetration make them so. The view that they should be huge damage dealers is outdated, and so is the argument that the box said they do big damage. Since I never read any of the manuals or the boxes for that matter, I don't actually know when they said that. But I'm pretty sure it was before HM update. Also note that your listening to the words of the people who decided hamstorm was broken, and if I remember right, someone said that the screenie wasn't even with the right profession.

Even if you're H/H'ing you aren't an effective damage dealer. Caster damage gets more powerful and, since you have access to PvE skills while heroes do not, your damage gets more powerful as well (relative to H/H). But as I said with the build above, although your damage is superior it is not with Elementalist skills. The primary skills are all PvE because Elementalist skills usually aren't worth it. With optimum efficiency or not Elementalists and damage don't work. Think about it. Would you really run an Elementalist hero for damage? In some select areas maybe but in general?

As for why Elementalists should not be DPS'ers, blame ANet. They're the ones who labelled Elementalists as the profession capable of inflicting the most damage in the game. Ironically, Elementalists are one of the professions least capable of inflicting damage. It may be before the HM update but no matter. At present Elementalist skills simply cannot compare to other professions for damage, and need buffing.

Quote:

Addiotionally, you say give eles a chance at PvE? They already have a chance at PvE. My ele has leg. guardian and vanquished cantha and tyria. I honestly didn't have that much of a problem.

There's this service in the Services Offered section offering to run anyone to 26 max titles while they are AFK. Which means you can get Legendary Guardian, vanquish all three continents, cap all skills, explore all maps, etc, without doing anything. Doesn't make running an empty skillbar attractive though does it?

@killing the Bladed Aatxes - it's off-topic but Elementalists are in my opinion the single best profession to deal with them. That's because there're only two or so Aatxes at a time. An ER Elementalist can easily keep up 8 Protective Bonds on everyone in the party and watch the 400+ damage drop to 30+. Although of course that's got nothing to do with actually killing them ...

FengShuiDove · Jun 21, 2009, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonofthort

Searching http://guildwars.wikia.com for conjure brings up 500 results, I found these monsters that use conjure spells in the first 100 search results:

*Yawn*

http://guildwars.wikia.com/index.php...t=100&offset=0

Posting an unnecessarily long list of links to foes that have a Conjure skill but not an Attunement really doesn't disprove that more creatures use Conjures than Attunements. If you can prove that, then you can have the win.

sonofthort · Jun 21, 2009, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnChosen

True that there are ways to avoid the insane dmg (SY! or blindbots), but the main point I was getting at is that the scatter COMBINED with the super armor makes ele unattractive in higher end areas. Why should I bring an ele and take the risk of scattering enemy and requiring extra effort to protect the backline, when the damage I get is so subpar? That's the question. Right now it is by far better to just tank them and use the best single target spells or single hit non elemental AoE to kill, with no risk of the group dying whatsoever.

Back when ppl used to farm nm, it was looked down upon for an elementalist to bring DoT spells, because of the scatter. The only DoT that was acceptable was meteor shower, because of its amazing utility, but the rest of the bar would be skills like rodgort invocation, liquid flame, fireball, all spells that are single hit aoe, and I believe probably the best elite skill for an ele nuker besides renewal and assasins promise is Searing Flames, also a single aoe attack. The thing about hard more is whether you use DoTs or not, any time a monster/monsters damage drops below a certain percentage (50%-75%ish), monsters flee IF it is adjacent to more than 3 other monsters. Mesmer skills, RoJ, and Necro skills will all cause scatter on groups of 4 or more monsters, the only time monsters don't scatter is if they are in a group of 3 or less, and you are not using DoTs/other skills that cause scatter directly (Mark of Pain, Ignite Arrows, etc). Any time your tank aggros more than 3 monsters to one spot, you can gaurentee that there is gonna be scatter, so you always have to be prepared. You mentioned that it is impossible to pre prot your whole party, true, but it is possible to be fast enough to prot the person the monsters are coming to, and if that person is smart, they will not run, and become the new tank when they see that you are protting them. Something that always makes me mad as a monk is when i throw ps on a squishy who a monster is coming after, is when they continue to run, which means I have to prot somebody else, and i probably won't be able to because of Prot spirits 5 second rechrage, meaning they are for sure going to cause somebody else to die. It is so much more effective for them to just tank, cus good prot can easily keep a person alive, and when they tank it's easier for the rest of the team to kill the monster/monsters. Just tell ppl in the group that if they are getting attacked and ur protting them not to run, that you can keep them alive, and that it is easier if they just become a temporary tank.

And about the attunement vs. conjure arguement. I only provided a list of monsters that use conjure spells because that is what I believe you challenged somebody to do. I would personally like attunement to be buffed over conjure, because conjure would just hamper your bar, but the best solution overall would be to buff a pve only skill, that way absolutely no monsters will benefit from the buff, and there wouldn't need to be a pve/pvp split, and changing of enemies skill bars. The reason I suggested Elemental lord over Intensity is that elemental lord already functions similiarly to aura of restoration, meaning it can replace a skill that is often times already used by elementalists. The other thing is that Anet has designed elemental lord to be an aura of restoration type skill that also boosts your damage, it's just that boosting damage by raising attributes by 1 is extremely ineffective, which is why I suggested changing it to armor penetration. If you ask me, intensities only problem is its duration/recharge. There are many builds, even non elemental builds, that can benefit from it, but usually don't use it because it is unavailable for use the majority of the time. Either reduce its recharge or increase its duration, but give the Armor penetration to Elemental lord.

draxynnic · Jun 22, 2009, 04:15 AM // 04:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

But PvE is retarded at the moment; look at how things are with the professions:

Assassins - Perma or damage + SY.
Warriors - damage + SY.
Dervishes - beaten by Assassins = pretty useless (except for niche roles, eg. Avatar of Melandru, Orders spamming etc).
Necros - in hero teams lots of options. In player teams throw Barbs MoP Orders + maintain SoH.
Mesmers - in hero teams VoR. In player teams pretty useless (niche roles again) unless using CoP.
Elementalists - E/Mo Monking.
Monks - if E/Mo Monking is viable, useless. Otherwise fill in the niches where E/Mo isn't viable (unless you go RoJ + CoP).
Rits - ?
Paragons - spam SY.
Rangers - ?

Dervishes: Orders spamming.
Mesmers: Spamming PvE skills by combining AP with Arcane Echo
Eles: Blindbots
Ritualists: Offensive spirit spam, played properly, could actually prove quite effective even before the recent balance. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I had one in a zquest, and happy to see them since.
Rangers: Dazebots

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

One of the trickier questions though is whether there is any effect like this in the game (armor penetration applied to other spells) - notice most skill changes of late, they haven't bothered adding any truly "new" effects.

Destructive Was Glaive has a similar effect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kendel

It could be worth changing the Attunements or Aura of Restoration (although the latter is used more by foes) to give them enchanced damage or AP or other effects based on your number of points in the attribute. Very few foes run Attunements (if any) and 99.9% of players use them so the benefits stay largely for us without seriously overpowering regular Ele foes.

Actually, in my experience, there are quite a few Ele monsters who use Aura of Restoration...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kendal

Adding Armour penetration to fire doesn't make sense.

It can, actually. Think of it as the target being baked in their own armour (or fur, or whatever). Take it from the motorcyclist's perspective - most forms of protective clothing can get quite uncomfortable in the heat, so it's just a matter of the Ele learning to exploit this.

Of course, the problem with putting it on attunements... it'll come back at us.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kendal

Who cares if Mesmers can use it, if Cry of Pain ever gets kicked out of the realm of being a stupidly overpowered AoE spike skill then Mesmers can use it for some damage aswell.

*cheers*

As long as it only works in PvE.