Curse

Eet GnomeSmasher · Mar 14, 2006, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mysterial

I didn't say Rangers didn't need to manage energy, I said they don't need to put energy management on their skill bar. Go through Ranger skill sets, what do you see? Attacks. Preparations. Spirits. Not energy management.

Now look at an Elementalist. What do you see? Ether Prodigy. Some take Attunements instead, because they like being screwed by enchantment removal, but it's still energy management. If you want to be casting even most of the time, you take energy management. Why? Because unlike Expertise, Energy Storage doesn't increase your effective regeneration. Once you blow through that initial rush of energy at the beginning of the game, it's the same as if you had a zero in Energy Storage for purposes of your energy levels.

Ah but there are a couple of energy management skills for the Ranger, MSecorsky mentioned the spirits and there's also ferocious strike that gives back energy.

But your logic was flawed anyway. Just because a profession lacks a certain type of skill (rangers supposedly not having energy management skills for example) doesnt mean that the profession doesn't need it.

Mandy Memory · Mar 14, 2006, 11:27 PM // 23:27

Expertise is overpowered. Energy storage does suck. Not many people run even 1 attunement, let alone 2.

Ignoring that...you find out that the ranger does damage as well and the elementalist does not.

Leddy · Mar 14, 2006, 11:29 PM // 23:29

Well. I resorted to bringing both Ele Attune and Fire Attune to keep my energy usage down. It sort of works- I can keep my nuking up for a few minutes.

Levian Lain · Mar 14, 2006, 11:31 PM // 23:31

I think energy storage is fine as it is now. I think it's the fact that the player has to really look at what their method of conserving or gaining energy is. (see my above post)

Levian Lain · Mar 14, 2006, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leddy

Well. I resorted to bringing both Ele Attune and Fire Attune to keep my energy usage down. It sort of works- I can keep my nuking up for a few minutes.

Try Ether Renewal and Flares to get your energy back up when it's low.

dreamhunk · Mar 14, 2006, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Levian Lain

I think energy storage is fine as it is now. I think it's the fact that the player has to really look at what their method of conserving or gaining energy is. (see my above post)

it is more than energy that is broken, it is all the skills. plus exustion. I wish anet would take good look at the elemental class.

Renegade ++RIP++ · Mar 14, 2006, 11:40 PM // 23:40

balanced stance on warriors is a possibility, although i have nearly never seen them getting targetted with knockdowns, although 1 stance reduces the chance of getting knockdowned with a considerable amount.

rangers you are right, but in most cases the rangers cripple and run before they get knockdowned, same as above again a stance to counter knockdowns is easy to use.

exhaustion is self inflicted ay and shouldn't be a big problem, but in any case it is a factor, especially if you get interrupted in one of your big casttimes.

I was mostly talking about dazed seeing that that is exactly the same as a blind (effectivewise). It just isn't used as much because a regular interrupt is much easier to use and less conditional then a daze. But with the introduction of the assasin, you will see the usage of being dazed shoot up into the wazzoo...

eles can be diversioned, powerblocked,blackoutted, guilted (or was it shamed, i always mix those 2 up...)etc,... we can go on and list all the other options. It still doesn't disprove that for dps warriors are still the best option closely followed by rangers. No skills and the damage an ele does or the utility an ele gives is all gone. While a warrior can still go on its merry way.

Eet GnomeSmasher · Mar 14, 2006, 11:53 PM // 23:53

*sigh* Just because energy storage isnt "on par" (but not entirely useless as some of you keep crying on about) doesnt mean Expertise is overpowered. Throwing around such words like that without giving a reason why, makes you sound ignorant.

Cherno · Mar 15, 2006, 12:00 AM // 00:00

There is more to life than GvG, and ether prodigy is not the definition of an elementalist.

tomcruisejr · Mar 15, 2006, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Energy Storage is underpowered if you "spam obsidian flame on a target".

M3lk0r · Mar 15, 2006, 12:06 AM // 00:06

Expertise needs atleast 13/14 points to be really effective. Thats the "energy management" the ranger has to sacrifice.

No other class is bounded to its primary attribute like the ranger, a smiting monk has not much usefor df, but any type of ranger, be that spike/degen/interrupt is dependent on expertise to maximise his role.

TideSwayer · Mar 15, 2006, 12:11 AM // 00:11

In PvE the Elementalist has more than enough power to hold its own. (How much do you really need, honestly?) The main problem with the Elementalist (and it's common knowledge seemingly to everyone but the people handling the skill balancing), is that ONE Necro skill - Spiteful Spirit - is more damaging than anything Eles have in their repertoire atm. ONE SPELL from all the other classes is keeping the Eles out of groups right now. The PvE solution (at least, the short-term one) to making the Eles prominent again is pretty obvious. All they have to do is kick back the effectiveness (and in turn, the overwhelming desirability) of Spiteful Spirit in PvE parties, and Elementalists will regain their place. They brought on the AOE update late last year to combat overuse of Ele damage spells. Is it yet time for some sort of rebalancing to the current overused damage spell ???

Maybe the Elementalist class as a whole needs some more serious tinkering though. Overall, it's not entirely a bad thing to have a large energy pool and as many energy regen ticks as any other class. It really adds a lot of versatility options for the primary (and a 12 attribute in pretty much anything but Death Magic and Healing - save for HP spam - is still pretty effective so Eles can run wild with secondaries.)

Bob of Maple Ave · Mar 15, 2006, 12:19 AM // 00:19

I think it's important to point out again that Expertise has an inherent ability to reduce skill costs, whereas you can strip an elementalist of almost any ability to reduce the cost of theirs.

It's almost (if not completely) necessary for elementalists to have their elite skill slot taken up by either ether renewal or ether prodigy for them to be as effective as rangers at energy management.

Furthermore, what's the point of being able to stream one spell after another if they don't do as much damage or are otherwise less effective than the spells of other classes? If you look at all of the builds that are focused on energy management for Ele's (double attunement, ether renewal, various enchantments+flare, for example), you'll notice that they have a rather large drawback in that they're really only good at one thing--conserving energy.

It's vexing to me that my spells cost more and do less. It completely nullifies the benefit of having a huge energy pool in the first place.

If the spells are going to cost more and cause exhaustion, they should do more. Period.

On a side note, I think the game is balanced in that there is a counter to almost everything. Like dreamhunk, I think a lot of people cried (as I do now) and complained that elementalists were overpowered, and they were given a wide-ranging nerf that made them, at best, comical sidekicks.

PS: I did find a way to outdamage an SS necro, with rather sizeable drawbacks. Going off of a suggestion in my bitchfest post "So Ele's are useless...", I tried an Echo (or Arcane Echo)-MS-Glyph of Sacrifice-Echo combination, and can now cast 2 simultaneous Meteor Showers. The drawback is a cost of 60 or 70 energy, 7-8 second cast time, 20 exhaustion, and 60 seconds of recharge time (for both echo/arcane echo and MS). But it certainly drops those monk bosses pretty quickly.

Edit The abovementioned, while possibly true in some scenarios, is completely untrue in UW (and most likely any other place with a lot of lvl 24+ mobs). Please read the my other post in this thread regarding the results.

PPS:
The skill listing on this forum is either wrong or not current for glyph of sacrifice. The listing here says it adds 90 seconds to recharge time, when it is in fact 30 seconds. The misprint alone was enough for me to not even consider it until I'd gotten so desperate (and tired of henching) that I decided to see how bad it was. Turns out it wasn't.

Eclair · Mar 15, 2006, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Isn't the OP trying to get Energy Storage to do what Expertise does, except maybe only for elementalist spells?

That's be sweet^^

Rhys ap Llysgwr · Mar 15, 2006, 12:26 AM // 00:26

The ELementalist is still a great class, even post-ether renewal nerf:

1.In PVE, good fire nuking (with careful choice of spells and cast order now that monsters run from aoe) is still extremely powerful. Typical fow runs or even sorrows furnace runs are much better off with an ele than an SS pre- book/gear. Post-book/gear, a good glyph nuker will still kill a monster ball in comparable time. In addition, many missions benefit from the careful use of certain elemental damage types (the last mission comes to mind). Emo Healers can also substitue for a monk if necessary, I just did this the other day to complete the oro quest - certainly not as efficient but still worked just fine.

2.In PVP, water eles to control movement is a highly under-utilized tactic but very effective, esp in GVG. Air ele spike may be back now that iway is less dominant, and spamming blinding flash is highly effective against balanced groups that use shock warriors as their primary damage source. For Earth, obsidian spike is killer, and balanced teams often run with a warder. Even the much maligned fire ele has made its way into pvp, with rodgerts now doing up to 127 fire damge to foes IN THE AREA (with burning) - coupled with fireball, meteor, flameburst, etc, 1-2 fire eles can add huge pressure damage and be a component of an ad hoc spike (everybody on the altar =D).

3.Ele fissure armor is the coolest ever.

dreamhunk · Mar 15, 2006, 12:28 AM // 00:28

I love mine too

Warcheif_Jonval · Mar 15, 2006, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Renewal+Flare isnt that great, it costs 30 energy to cast (Attunement, aura and renewal). The whole thing lasts only long enough to get 3 flares off ,getting a net gain of 8 energy per shot, so you acctualy LOSE energy for it.

Mercury Angel · Mar 15, 2006, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Note: Attunements rebate energy, they don't reduce costs, and the round down comes on the rebate, reducing their effectiveness slightly. On a 5 energy spell, you really only get a 20% reduction (rebate of 1.5 energy, rounded down to 1 after completion of a spell); On a 15 cost spell, you get a 27% reduction (rebate of 4.5 energy, rounded down to 4 after the completion of a spell); On a 25 cost spell, you get a 28% reduction (rebate of 7.5 energy, rounded down to 1 after completion of a spell.)

But their effectiveness reduction doesn't stop there -
-Upon the failure of a spell, whether through interruption, cancelling the spell, or the target dying before completion of a targeted spell, you get NO rebate
-Under conditions that raise the cost of spells, the rebates are not affected similarly; A 33 (base 25) cost spell during QZ only returns 7 energy. [Conversely, this is actually a boon when Energizing Wind is up, and you have energy returned on the higher price, rather than the reduced]
-They cost energy to use
-They're prone to removal, death, or interruption, and have horrendously long recharges

But those're problems with the spells, and not Energy Storage itself.

Energy Storage as an attribute is not very interesting at this time. An increase in maximum energy is a front-loaded bonus that, upon use, is simply gone. It takes just as long to recover the energy for an elementalist as any other caster. What it does do is serve as a buffer against exhaustion, and that it does fairly well.
The problem is that many of the exhaustion causing spells had exhaustion tacked on to them for no apparent reason. Spells like Searing Heat (altered), Earthquake, Meteor Shower, Mind Spells, and the like, that already have other balancing measures on them.
Spells like Gale, Obsidian Flame, Ether Prodigy, and Meteor are the ideal to use with Exhaustion; Their energy cost is cheap, but they exhaust to prevent you from over-using them.
Spells like Meteor Shower already have obscene cast, recharge, AND costs. Maelstrom is the same way.
If skills with exhaustion actually used the exhaustion mechanic to make the skill more usable, such as vastly reduced costs, then the Energy Storage buffer would be better. In that manner, it would be an indirect energy management source. Hence why Ether Prodigy is so popular on high-end Elementalists.

Thy Shadow Wolf · Mar 15, 2006, 12:32 AM // 00:32

I still love my Ele. Sure, he may not be such a huge damage output source as he was pre-AOE nerf -.-; But it's still quite nice with certain skills. Everyone may be like "ZOMG Nooo I'm useless with my ele now!" You just have to be a bit smarter in making your builds instead of just quickly taking a random skillset.

Rhys ap Llysgwr · Mar 15, 2006, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Spells like firestorm and searing heat make the monsters run, and are now more limited in their kill potential. However I rarely see monster run from ms. My pve fire nuke cast order is glyph of renewal, ms, fireball, rodgerts. Now rodgerts WILL make them run typically, but by then your third meteor has hit = 119(x3) +119 + 127 +burn = 603 plus burning = dead monster ball. Run in and flamburst or fireball again if u need to. Or cast the whole sequence again. Sometimes ill doublecast ms immediately, but this is usually unecessary.

God they look pretty on fire