Curse

Warskull · Sep 05, 2005, 06:44 AM // 06:44

In the elementalist line there are a few elites that severely outshine the rest and then a number of elites that desperately need help. This will take a look at some of those sub-par elites and make some suggestions to fix them.

The ones that really stand out are Mind Shock, Mind Freeze, and Mind Burn. These skills look okay at first, but they really don't compare to any other ele elite. Their damage is comparable to any other nuke in the line and they simply have an added effect. For example I can take deep freeze and glyph of energy and get a result vastly superior to mind freeze. I think for all three of these skills dropping the exhaustion would make them much more worthy of the elite status. It would give the lines an extra cheap, spammable, conditional nuke to help encourage them to be taken over energy storage. Seeing these skills used in PvE and PvP is very rare.

Ether Prodigy gives +4 pips of regen with the penalty of damage when the enchantment ends. It also canibalizes all other enchantments. This may be alright, but at the moment there is very little reason to take it over the massive energy engine that is Ether Renewal. Possibly reducing the drawbacks would make this more appealing. I feel I am better off with glyph of energy, ether renewal, or elemental attument in most cases though.

Lightning Surge, this skill looks good however again suffers from being outshined by a lot of other skills. Maybe a few more points in damage would help it. The reasons to take this over an energy management skill are low. The major use I see for it is a one man spike. However it gives a 3s warning that the spike is coming and if it is countered you have 10 exhaustion for nothing. I have tried it and just get a lot more out of other skills.

Rieselle · Sep 06, 2005, 01:01 PM // 13:01

The way I see it, is that Elems have the worst spell side-effect of any of the classes.

Necros: Life sacrificing. Easily healable, sometimes avoidable, and sometimes even useful.

Monks: Maintained Enchantments. Not a big pain, and there are skills that take advantage of it, like Blessed Signet. Also it's pretty convenient sometimes, since you dont need to constantly recast.

Warriors: Adrenaline. This is actually a good thing for them.

Rangers: Easily interruptable. Kinda sucks, but is easily preventable with dodges, and can be a non-issue sometimes. (eg, setting traps before a fight)

Mesmers: None.

Elems: Exhaustion. Can't be avoided, (except with an semi-useful elite.), can't be removed except by a long wait, and has a fairly strong effect on your usefulness. And they have no skills to take advantage of it. (Eg. For 30secs, gain energy regen proportional to your level of Exhaustion...)

Now, exhaustion isnt such a big deal as a concept. The real problem is we have exhaustion slapped on all sorts of skills that are absolutely not powerful enough to warrant such a big penalty. (maybe except for Obsidian Flame...)

Maybe if Meteor Shower had a recast time of 5 secs or something, exhaustion would be a nice way to limit how many you could spam in the long term. But meteor shower takes forever and a half to recharge. And it doesnt do that much damage after armour anyway. Elem spells are simply not good enough to warrant such a severe penalty.

Maybe if spell damage increases in proportion to exhaustion level? You'd constantly have to walk a tightrope between increasing your damage and keeping your pool large enough to actually cast things...

Third Quarter · Sep 06, 2005, 03:16 PM // 15:16

Exhaustion is pretty easy for an Elementalist to deal with because they get a comparitively enormous energy pool. Secondary Elementalists don't get this benefit, so exhaustion is a big problem for them.

Enigmatics · Sep 06, 2005, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Not all builds are stereotypical blood necros, 55/103 health monk builds, and trappers, therefore most of the weaknesses you have listed vary in actuteness; certain monks have less enchantments than elementalists, while certain rangers depend on skills with little to no delay time.

knives · Sep 06, 2005, 11:21 PM // 23:21

Glimmering Mark FTL.

smurfhunter · Sep 06, 2005, 11:37 PM // 23:37

i essentially agree... ether prodigy is like totally retarded right now with ether renewal.. (ill wait for the update to elaborate on that).. glyph of energy is only ok if you are a secondary elementalist... otherwise just about everyone uses elemental attunement.

i.e. boring. the elites should be more versatile, like ranger elites. theyre so different and weird i dont even know what to think o.O

yea theres alot of other elites but theyre just mediore. i capped elemental attunement on my ele... then capped ether renewal and got bored and deleted it.

/agree

Akathrielah · Sep 07, 2005, 08:25 PM // 20:25

The Elementalist class offensively, much less their Elites are sub-par when you compare them to dps-build Rangers and Warriors. I believe that Ensign posted an article about this in the General (Riverside) Forums, it was fairly recent, last post was about 1-2 weeks ago I believe (last week of August).

Pinch · Sep 07, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Mind Freeze, PoS elite (as a devout hydromancer, I would know). It should slow for 15+ seconds at least in order to be elite. I mean, come on, Mind Burn is has a burn time double all "set on fire" elementalist spells, so why doesn't mind freeze have a double "slow you down" as compared to majority of the water spells. It's basically a +15 damage version of Shard Storm, except not a projectile.

Cs Coldize · Sep 08, 2005, 07:25 PM // 19:25

you need to be creative with your elites. I have made a lot of good strats to use with Ether Prodigy since getting it yesterday (after trying to get it off and on for about 1 month) one of them being: Protective Bond + Ether Prodigy = good energy and you'll like never die. Assuming that you're a good ele and have around 80 energy. It would take a while to get Protective Bond off of you and after the 23 seconds or so that Ether Prodigy gives you, you can get off quite a few good PBAoE's.

I am going to try doing this in Underworld as a solo technique. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Zeru · Sep 08, 2005, 08:31 PM // 20:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cs Coldize

you need to be creative with your elites. I have made a lot of good strats to use with Ether Prodigy since getting it yesterday (after trying to get it off and on for about 1 month) one of them being: Protective Bond + Ether Prodigy = good energy and you'll like never die. Assuming that you're a good ele and have around 80 energy. It would take a while to get Protective Bond off of you and after the 23 seconds or so that Ether Prodigy gives you, you can get off quite a few good PBAoE's.

I am going to try doing this in Underworld as a solo technique. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Compare Ether Prodigy to Ether Renewal. No contest.
Power/efficiency over creativity anyday.

When looking at good ele elites...not many spring to mind.

Surge has it's uses as misdirection, but never direct damage.
Water Trident and Ward Against Harm are excellent.
Ether Renewal is unbelievably good. It makes the other ele energy management elites crap except glyph of energy because of the exhaustion part.
Obsidian Flesh has uses once in a great while.

Other than those no other ele elites come to mind as worth it.

Anya · Sep 08, 2005, 08:58 PM // 20:58

I've found Glyph of Energy essential to my UW fire nuker build. It gives me very nearly infinite energy, or at least always enough to cast the next spell. But then again, I've only gone UW with my guild and we have a very specific build.

Bugeater · Sep 08, 2005, 08:58 PM // 20:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cs Coldize

Protective Bond + Ether Prodigy = good energy and you'll like never die.

I'm confused on your strategy. According to the skill description (I've never used Prodigy in game) you lose all your enchantments. So PB+EP=EP. If you cast EP first, you'll get the energy gain, but only 4 pips. I'll assume that either the description is wrong or you meant to cast bond first, either way you have both of them on you.

You say you want to solo with this skill and I guess I immediatly see a couple of problems with this. Even with 12 prot, you're still losing 3 energy per hit. With 3 ememies hitting you, that's 6.75 energy/sec loss, sure you'll be gaining 2.67/sec but that's still a loss of a little more than 4/sec. With 90 energy to start, it will take you 22 seconds to lose all your energy. And that's not even casting any other spells. I have yet to see a solo character who can kill 3 Aatxes in 22 seconds. That's a pretty good time for a common 2-man team.

The second problem I see is the Nightmares that they put in the UW to strip your enchants. (I still haven't figured a way around those with any solo build)

Stayfrosty · Sep 10, 2005, 06:13 AM // 06:13

well before prot bond got nerfd.. my friend and I had a 2 man fow team going.. it was showing alot of potential, there was a Mo/R who would cast QZ and then put spellbreaker on the other person, and with blessed aura he could keep it on 100% of the time then that other person was free to cast prot bond and whatever other enchantments they wanted without worry of strip or degen spells, or anything of that sort, we are thinking that prot spirit + aura of the lich could do the same thing we just need to go out n test it