Curse

Kool Kirby · Feb 14, 2008, 03:19 AM // 03:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by RavagerOfDreams

/unsigned

bleh....just bleh

Nice 12 character spam.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crippie its Tom

double dragon would need a 60 second recharge at least...

they'd never turn it into that and have it still avalable in pvp...

Functionality changed to be similar to that of ritualist spirits. Only one pair of spirits active at a single time.

Tyla · Feb 14, 2008, 03:45 AM // 03:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

Read more carefully--it's saying if you are in a high energy set, you suffer from even more exhaustion.

Quote:

If you have less than +4 energy regeneration when activating this skill

I get what your trying to say, but the huge energy pool of an Elementalist should supply the entire party with full energy through one use - without an high energy set.
Switch to high energy set and then start casting again.

Kool Kirby · Feb 14, 2008, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyla salanari

I get what your trying to say, but the huge energy pool of an Elementalist should supply the entire party with full energy through one use - without an high energy set.
Switch to high energy set and then start casting again.

ONLY with a good investment in energy storage--which is never usually the TOP priority on elementalists. Therein lies the paradox of the new configuration of the skill--how much will you dedicate to your teammates? Will you sacrifice vitae runs and survivor insignias for energy? Will you function for a quite a few seconds under +2 energy regeneration after casting this spell so your teammates can reap the extra energy? This is a very well-thought out change to the skill, its the skill I put the most effort into changing.

LouAl · Feb 14, 2008, 11:09 PM // 23:09

My first thought is to add /lame to all of them...

Here's what I really think:

Gust: It is really an elite/combined version of Gale and Slippery Ground
It has the same recharge/cast time/cost as slippery ground and has similar conditions but is elite because it causes 3 sec KD and a little dmg. If you are going to change it, why not just make it so the only condition is weakness? Make it so it causes exhaustion as well if you want. It still isn't that great compared to Slippery ground (since slippery isn't really attribute dependent and it is very easy as an air ele to apply blind). I don't see the added damage and extra KD time worth making it elite.

My proposed change for gust-

Gust 10e 1c 7-10r
Elite Spell. Knock down target foe for 3 seconds (maybe only 2). (50% failure chance with Air magic 4 or less)

Second Wind: Why are you trying to making it so complex? Also, Elementalists have never been a energy engine for a team. There are already skills that do that in other professions. I personally think that 10 seconds of no energy is MUCH better to suffer for giving your team 8 energy (see: "The Power Is Yours!") than 25 points of exhaustion.

My proposed change for second wind-

delete and redo (maybe give it in a new form to mesmers since they still have the least total number of skills and ele's still have the most). Here is the best I can come up with for now...

Second Wind 5e 2c 30r (Energy Storage)
Elite Spell. Gain 5...40...55% of your spent energy. (the % gain I just made up...probably something like that would be ok where you get approx 50% at the top end)

Stone Sheath: Again, why are you trying to make this so complex/uber? They deal earth, can't get crits, take dmg on attack, take extra dmg with lighting dmg...wow, that could be exploited. What I am picturing is Water Hex then Stone Sheath, Shock, Lightning Touch, and Arc Lightning. If a warrior did the lightning dmg, it would still do 226 lightning dmg PLUS an extra 155 earth dmg...that is brutal (that also assumes that the person who applied the stone sheath was just sitting there -- they would probably be shooting stone daggers out like crazy to rack up the extra 31's from sheath). If they did, you'd be looking at another 198 from daggers and 186 from sheath. Just wow. That doesn't even factor in any energy they lost or damage they took while under this and weakness.

My proposal for stone sheath-

Stone Sheath 5e 1c 15r
Elite Hex Spell. For 10..30..37 seconds, target foe and all adjacent foes move 50% slower, deal earth damage with attacks, and cannot cause a critical hit.

Mirror of Ice: Again...why all the extra crap? You are changing it to target ally instead of self, why not just make that change and then call it good? It would still be crap, but making it hit all adjacent foes is a bit much even before you add in the extra damage.

My proposed change for mirror of ice-

Mirror of Ice 5e .25c 15r
Elite Enchantment Spell. For 0..15..18 seconds. The next time a foe casts a spell on you, that foe suffers from the spell instead. (again, I just made up the attribute distribution, but something like that so it is worthless without investing in water).

Double Dragon: Why such a huge change? Admittedly it is crap, but compared to Shock Wave, for example, it only really needs to have it's recharge shortened. IMO, there is an even easier fix. Change it so it is essentially a double Fireball.

My proposed change for double dragon-

Double Dragon 15e 2c 10r
Elite Spell. Invoke a Double Dragon at target foe's location. For 2 seconds, foes adjacent to that location take 7...91...112 fire damage each second.

Sir Pandra Pierva · Feb 15, 2008, 01:40 AM // 01:40

meh i still the like the hex best and it can have some cool animation to go with it of 2 dragons coming down on the guys head

Taken · Feb 15, 2008, 07:17 AM // 07:17

/signed

anything to change things up

Yichi · Feb 15, 2008, 07:24 AM // 07:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taken

/signed

anything to change things up

changing things up is not always the best solution. Look at the current situation with the ViO shout for example. An idea to try and shake things up that went HORRIBLY wrong in many directions.

The problem with half of the suggestions to "shake things up" as it has been put, is there is no real justification for the changes. The elites you mentioned have no real purpose or drive for a player to use them, and thus will still be one of two things if these changes were made. Either a.) they will still be bad which is 99% of the outcome of these skills, ob b.) in the case of say the change you want to second wind, with weapon swapping, would make this incredibly overpowered. with weapon swapping one could easily refil the entire team's energy outside of another elementalist by using this skill twice. From a PvP standpoint this would be way too overpowered. Even in PvE this would completely allow one person to negate any effects of any type of pressure on the monks energy, thus even further removing any challenge whatsoever as your monks would always have perma energy as long as the second wind guy wasn't a complete retard and knew how to weapon swap efficiently.

Valindria Salias · Feb 15, 2008, 08:25 PM // 20:25

The changes for the most part are too powerful.

/not signed

Kool Kirby · Feb 15, 2008, 08:55 PM // 20:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yichi

b.) in the case of say the change you want to second wind, with weapon swapping, would make this incredibly overpowered. with weapon swapping one could easily refil the entire team's energy outside of another elementalist by using this skill twice. From a PvP standpoint this would be way too overpowered. Even in PvE this would completely allow one person to negate any effects of any type of pressure on the monks energy, thus even further removing any challenge whatsoever as your monks would always have perma energy as long as the second wind guy wasn't a complete retard and knew how to weapon swap efficiently.

READ IT MORE CAREFULLY. Weapon swapping means you WILL HAVE LESS ENERGY REGENERATION. The last sentence says, FOR EACH PIP OF ENERGY REGENERATION YOU ARE MISSING, YOU GAIN DOUBLE EXHAUSTION. A -2 energy set = quadruple exhaustion, added to the normal double exhaustion it already causes you. You will become useless for 2-3 minutes...not overpowered.

At LouAI: I'll reply as to why I made each skill change one by one.

GUST: Lol? Useless elite with exhaustion, remember, you are sacrificing permanent blind for this (bsurge), or HEAVY fire damage (SH or SF). It also has half the recharge time, and slippery ground requires at least 5 water magic, even though it does not say that in its description. it requires weakness (enervating charge) OR an elemental hex...EITHER ONE will fulfill its condition. If slippery ground was great, we'd be seeing it ran in PvP normally. So far, I haven't seen the skill once anywhere.

SECOND WIND: You pointed it out yourself.

Quote:

Also, Elementalists have never been a energy engine for a team. There are already skills that do that in other professions.

Why not have them be an energy engine? They already have many other e-management elites that are decent. Mind blast is better than all of them combined.

STONE SHEATH: Maybe you are a little right on this skill, but your change is still useless (why run it instead of SF or SH or necrohex?)...I am changing it so that they only take extra damage if its a spell effect and they have weakness.

MIRROR OF ICE: You can't spike with it. You deal shit damage even if its armor ignoring (80-90 damage is NOTHING in PvP. An orison of healing can heal most of that with DF bonus). Adjacent range is VERY SMALL (punishes clustering, and its as the same as e-surge right now damagewise, even though that is nearby...). Why take this over Water Trident or Icy Shackles? That's the theme here...not to make these skill a little better---to make them a part of people's builds.

DOUBLE DRAGON: Now it's an SF or SH clone. I specifically didn't want to do that because we already have 2 elite skills like that, which are overused elites, and numerous non-elites that do the same thing...I wanted something different. This skill could be very good on a split in GvG...something new.

In general---the extra, complicated skill descriptions are NOT MORE COMPLICATED THAN THE PVE SKILLS OF EOTN. I personally could do the coding for all of these skills in one day, and I only know VB (and GW is probably based off of a C++ engine like 90% of the games out there, and C++ has the same difficulty as VB, just reading it is harder at first).

Seven Flames · Feb 15, 2008, 09:42 PM // 21:42

/unsigned for Double Dragon
/halfsigned for the others

elementalists Are an energy engine for other elementalists, at least if they're fire eles running glowing gaze, that's a pretty creative idea for double dragon, but i think it's powerful/useful enough, you just have to be a little bit more creative with what else you're running with it.

LouAl · Feb 15, 2008, 09:44 PM // 21:44

I guess my point, and I should have been more clear on this, was that making the next uber-skill seems kinda pointless to me. If you make them viable, but not overpowered, you make them so that they could be run as opposed to now when they won't, ever. Also, the changes that I made were just things that I pulled out of my ass in the 5 minutes it took me to reply to your post...they weren't meant to be absolute. I also should have been more clear on that.

As far as complication, I don't mean complex coding. What I mean is that they have complex functions in the game - you have to satisfy x for y to happen, but if you satisfy z and x, then b happens with 9 later and f as a follow up (btw, that was meant to not make any sense).

I don't want to respond to all the individual skill critiques because I don't think that they, for the most part, matters. I do want to point out something about Second Wind. I made reference to the Paragon skill "The Power is Yours!" to point out that someone can already do essentially the same thing as what you are proposing and they can do it with far fewer negative consequences. You are proposing a TON of exhaustion compared to -10 regen for 10 seconds - essentially no energy for 10 seconds. No energy for 10 seconds doesn't have to be a big deal for a paragon if the rest of the bar is constructed properly (ie mostly adrenal).

With Gust, all I was really trying to point out is that it is worthless as is because it has a bizarre requirement for KD. It doesn't even let you use an Air hex. Why not simplify it and make it an unconditional KD or make the KD very easy to get (weakness only) within the Air line. And, to make it so it doesn't get the nerf bat all wound up, drop the extra damage since that isn't why people would run it anyway. Seems like a pretty easy fix to me.

For stone sheath, if it slowed people and made it so they couldn't crit, I would run it. Seriously, if you (or your monk) is about to get sandbagged, drop it and get the hell out. It will take the other side enough time to remove it from everyone that you can be long gone, and alive.

Mirror of Ice is a crap spell as it is now. It's almost like an elite version of reveral of damage (elite because it does ~100 dmg regardless of how much dmg the spell would have done to you). Here again, there is likely a very easy fix rather than giving it all sorts of extra damage or adjacent-ness. If you don't like what I proposed, great. What about just make it so it functions the same as reversal of damage -- have it be when target ally would take damage, the attacker takes ~100 instead, regardless of how much damage would have been taken. Play with the recharge to make it workable.

For double dragon, whatever. I think that summoning a djinn is a cool idea, but I figured that changing how it targets is a much easier fix. Admittedly, having it target a foe would make it f-ing powerful. Probably more so than SF or SH since you would only need two people running it to do mad damage over two seconds (400+). If you ran three people, it would almost kill in the first second.

Elementalists aren't supposed, according to the general design that Anet has created, to have all sorts of conditions to be effective. That would be a mesmer.

Anyway, I wasn't meaning to flame you too much in y first post (or this one for that matter). Often there are just such easy fixes to things that get missed by adding extra complexity (again, not coding, but usage complexity). Do you think VoD would be a fair example of that? GL trying to get some of those fixed.

/signed (about fixing them, not about specifics)

Ensign · Feb 15, 2008, 11:03 PM // 23:03

I don't understand why you would take a marginal but still somewhat useful elite skill with a cool, elegant mechanic, and replace it with a horrendous, unplayable elite that is also an unparalleled disaster mechanically.

Terraban · Feb 15, 2008, 11:18 PM // 23:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I don't understand why you would take a marginal but still somewhat useful elite skill with a cool, elegant mechanic, and replace it with a horrendous, unplayable elite that is also an unparalleled disaster mechanically.

[skill]Second Wind[/skill]?

Winterclaw · Feb 16, 2008, 06:00 AM // 06:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celestial Beaver

A complete change of functionality of some skills could bring them back into play, and make them useable without being overpowered.

This idea I'll /sign or whatever.

Tyla · Feb 16, 2008, 06:05 AM // 06:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

ONLY with a good investment in energy storage--which is never usually the TOP priority on elementalists.

Last time I checked the majority of ele's run atleast 8 EStorage.

Quote:

Therein lies the paradox of the new configuration of the skill--how much will you dedicate to your teammates? Will you sacrifice vitae runs and survivor insignias for energy?

No. The energy of an elementalist at that point should still supply the entire party at full energy.

Quote:

Will you function for a quite a few seconds under +2 energy regeneration after casting this spell so your teammates can reap the extra energy? This is a very well-thought out change to the skill, its the skill I put the most effort into changing.

Switch set, cast, switch back to normal set.

LightningHell · Feb 16, 2008, 07:07 AM // 07:07

Most of the skill mechanics you're proposing add no strategic depth to the game, and possibly detract from it. Skill balances shouldn't be made because 'oh that skill wasn't used', it should be more about making more interesting gameplay.

The only one I remotely like is Gust, because it's pretty similar to the original.

Kool Kirby · Feb 16, 2008, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyla salanari

Last time I checked the majority of ele's run atleast 8 EStorage.

No. The energy of an elementalist at that point should still supply the entire party at full energy.

Switch set, cast, switch back to normal set.

8 Energy storage means you won't get the +2 energy regen for your teammaates...I said TOP priority...you never run 12 energy storage in pvp usually.

And you still don't understand...if you lose all your energy, you will have to switch to a high energy set to cast otherwise you will be useless for a while...you get more exhaustion if you use the skill with a high energy set...please read the description more carefully...

@ Ensign and Lightning Hell - Please explain how they add no strategic depth, and could be an "unparalleled disaster mechanically." Unplayable elite? It's called a high energy team...its going to be used in only specific builds...

LightningHell · Feb 16, 2008, 04:52 PM // 16:52

They have clunky and conditional mechanics, which means that either they're too conditional/etc and not used except in gimmicks (not wanted), or are exploited and becomes the center of a one-dimensional build (also not wanted). I reference stuff like Discord, etc.

Granted, this is simplified.

Ensign · Feb 16, 2008, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

"unparalleled disaster mechanically."

Read the skill description. Read it again. Tease can barely hold a candle to that thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

Unplayable elite?

Let's say you really wanted to maximize the usage of this thing. To do that you use it as often as the exhaustion wears off. That's also a convenient time-frame because at 14 ES, this thing has an effective energy cost of 69. Using GLE for 10 energy a minute lets you cast 4 other spells while leaving you with 70 energy to power this thing; those 4 spells per minute will represent the entire output of this character otherwise.

So you can cast this thing once per minute, every time you hit 70 energy. You cast it for 25 energy, leaving you with 45, which is just enough to get both triggers. Let's say you want to hit your entire team with this. You cast it and redistribute 140% of 45 energy, which is 63 energy, amongst 7 people which comes out cleanly to distribute 9 energy per person. Since you got the secondary trigger, they all also get +2 energy regeneration for 15 seconds, which translates into another 10 energy per person.

So, running at full power, this proposed elite gives your entire team just shy of 1 pip of energy regeneration - at a cost of what is essentially an entire character. What could you possibly be doing with +1 energy regeneration on your whole team that is worth sacrificing an entire character slot for? If you just want to get +1 on a few characters, a single casting of 8 spec Blood is Power is worth 20 energy to the target; Peace and Harmony can give +1 energy regeneration to your Monks. Neither of which, I might add, cost you an entire character.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

It's called a high energy team...its going to be used in only specific builds...

The only builds that would even think about using something like this are horribly degenerate 'combo' builds (not that I can imagine one that would sacrifice a character for +1 regen to the team but work with me here). Nothing resembling an interactive team build with remotely engaging gameplay would use this; it is a skill with aspirations to appear in a healing ball or equivalent. Those builds, to put it kindly, are awful for the game, and taking a functional skill and turning it into a needlessly complicated gimmick engine is mind-blowingly bad.

Here is a much more reasonable change to Second Wind to make it playable:

Second Wind: 2c -> 1c.

Tyla · Feb 17, 2008, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kool Kirby

8 Energy storage means you won't get the +2 energy regen for your teammaates...I said TOP priority...you never run 12 energy storage in pvp usually.

The huge energy gain of the teammates will be good enough.

Quote:

And you still don't understand...if you lose all your energy, you will have to switch to a high energy set to cast otherwise you will be useless for a while...you get more exhaustion if you use the skill with a high energy set...please read the description more carefully...

...Normal/Low Energy Set, cast the spell, switch to high, cast your next spell, switch to low energy set to regen. Rinse and repeat number 3, 4 and 5.