Curse

Dr Strangelove · Jan 03, 2008, 11:43 PM // 23:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paint lt Black

Another great combo would be being a E/W.

You'll be able to get good skills such as the Healing Signet, Sprint, and Endure Pain abilities. Even though I've never used one melee weapon once, these skills are extremely useful for running out of a sticky situation, and then healing yourself.

There really are better options for this. Like, say, anything.

On topic, even if you didn't like E/me, you can change your secondary on a whim 70% of the way through prophecies and 20% of the way through the other campaigns. It's not that big a deal.

xDusT II · Jan 04, 2008, 05:44 AM // 05:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paint lt Black

Another great combo would be being a E/W.

You'll be able to get good skills such as the Healing Signet, Sprint, and Endure Pain abilities. Even though I've never used one melee weapon once, these skills are extremely useful for running out of a sticky situation, and then healing yourself.

This person also makes a great point.

I highly suggest you ignore this persons advice, as it is completely redundant and will only effect your gameplay negatively.
Appart from 2/3 said skills being under the strength attribute, all of the effects can be replicated to better effect without having to play a gimped bar. Speed boosts can be found in Storm Djinn's Haste or Flame Djinn's Haste, which are far better than an 8 second sprint. Endure Pain on an elementalist is incredibly retarded. It's like taking ana lready bad skill and trying to make it even worse. A 7 second 90 Health boost? I'd much rather just swap to my shield set...
As far as healing is concerned, elementalists don't really have a solid selection. You can always secondary dervish and take Mystic Regeneration (which synergises nicely with Storm/Flame Djinn's Haste) if your that concerned about being blown up. I've honestly never bothered with a self heal on an elementalist, I'd much rather use my skillslots on something more worthwhile.

ShadowbaneX · Jan 04, 2008, 07:45 AM // 07:45

In the case of my ele, I prefer to let my monk heroes do the healing...that's why they've got all those points spec'ed into Healing Prayers, Protection Prayers and Divine Favour. All of my points are put into whichever element I'm running and Energy Storage.

As for my personal builds, I use nothing but /me and that's mainly for Arcane Echo. The philosophy is simple: if one copy of the spell is nice, two is better (or in the case of meteor shower, three is superb).

My ele's first real build was this:
[skill]Flare[/skill][skill]Fireball[/skill][skill]Meteor[/skill][skill]Meteor Shower[/skill][skill]Echo[/skill][skill]Arcane Echo[/skill][skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill][skill]Fire Attunement[/skill]

Pretty much echo, ms, ae, ms, gos, ms, spam other spells until stuff's dead. If you suffering from heavy exhaustion you can just double echo fireball for some cannon fire fun. Non-stop casting of fireball for over 20 seconds.

Then Searing Flames showed up, but you know what? Arcane Echo was still my friend. SF didn't need to be echo'ed itself as it only has a two second recharge, but it was a fairly energy intensive build, even with Fire Attunement and Glyph of Lesser Energy. SF is 15 energy as is Mark Rodgort. You keep spamming SF and you're bound to run out of energy, even with Glowing Gaze. So here, you echo glowing gaze for twice the energy gain.

I've recently moved onto Savannah Heat, and again Arcane Echo proves it's usefulness. Twice the fun, for twice the monster burning power, for no investment in any mesmer attributes.

Samething can be applied to Earth and another great elite, Sandstorm. If you know you're going to be in a place with alot of tight spaces, you can start playing with alot of AoE spells because there isn't much room to hide. At that point laying down double the damage really kills stuff good.

Same can be applied to Air and Invoke Lightning, although there's another mesmer spell thatworks very well, and another poster already pointed it out: epidemic. He did miss one skill though.

It looks something like this:
[skill]Elemental Attunement[/skill][skill]Air Attunement[/skill][skill]Enervating Charge[/skill][skill]Shell Shock[/skill][skill]Blinding Flash[/skill][skill]Lightning Hammer[/skill][skill]Epidemic[/skill]+Res.

You get to spam around Blind, Weakness and Cracked Armour, with no investment into any mesmer attributes...and with the Dual-Attune even Lightning Hammer, a 25e spell, you get 21e back, so it only costs you 4e.

So, in conclusion, no you didn't make a mistake in going Ele/Mes. You just picked one of the best offensive class combos out there. Going with a monk secondary is just if you don't trust the AI random monks to keep you alive, or if you want a hard res. Personally, I like burning things.

Dr Dimento · Jan 04, 2008, 07:55 AM // 07:55

E/Me > E/Mo

Every single time. I honestly cannot think of a place where E/Mo is superior. Sure it loooks good, an ele that can handle degen....

However, with a nuker E/Me, you can use both attunements, arcane echo, meteor shower......a few more nukes, and aura of restoration. Then, you're healed for about 100hp every time you cast a spell that costs 25, and you never run out of energy. So all your bases are covered..... You can dish out more hurt than anyone on your team, you never run out of energy, and you heal yourself CONSIDERABLY every single time you cast a spell.

Also, if you echo rodgort's invocation..... You can heal yourself for 100hp+ every 3.5 seconds while its echoed. That works out to the equivalent of +14 health regeneration. Not to mention you're dishing out about 120 damage every 3.5 seconds and setting groups of enemies on fire as well, with no drawbacks and constant energy.

I won't go into too much detail on an earth E/Me because the build really does speak for itself..... It can farm pretty much anything, HM and NM, it can solo just about any mission or quest that can be solo'd. It's the only thing that can maintain a "spell breaker" type spell (obsidian flesh).

rubina1 · Jan 04, 2008, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Thank you all for the great tips and insights for using E/ME. I've been experimenting with a few E/ME builds over the past few weeks.

1) Some would say it's a dumb build but I tried putting together a point blank AE fire E/ME centered around Echoing Double Dragon plus having several other point blank AEs on the bar. Not great for missions but great for non-solo farming up stuff.

2) I tried several variants of Echoing Meteor Shower once and twice. I'm not a huge fan of MS even when I do manage to insta cast it. It either works very well or the mobs are smart & quick enough to get out of the way. I would say that out of six encounters with mobs packs 4+ in size, the setup would work perfectly once. Most of the time the mobs would either be extremely dispersed or the mobs are in lots of small packs of 2-3 which IMHO not worth the effort in MSing. I'm guessing that this build is great in certain enclosed areas.

3) Early on I was kicking around Mark of Rodgort followed by Fire Storm + Fireball + Phoenix.

4) Since I really haven't gotten the new elites, I tried out Rodgort's Invocation + Glowing Gaze + Liquid Flame + Glyph of Lesser Energy + Elemental Attunement + Fireball. I was having a lot of fun with this build last night. I'm hoping this weekend I'll figure out in how to cap elites like Mind Blast, Searing Flames and Savannah heat.

LightningHell · Jan 04, 2008, 01:44 PM // 13:44

I expect that as you progress through the game, you'll learn to take Fire Storm and Phoenix, etc, off your bar.

Also,

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubina1

4) Since I really haven't gotten the new elites, I tried out Rodgort's Invocation + Glowing Gaze + Liquid Flame + Glyph of Lesser Energy + Elemental Attunement + Fireball. I was having a lot of fun with this build last night. I'm hoping this weekend I'll figure out in how to cap elites like Mind Blast, Searing Flames and Savannah heat.

That isn't half bad. I.e. it's plenty good to start off with.

By the way, let's just say...Meteor Shower, echo'd or otherwise, does next to nothing in a coordinated group, aside from providing free knockdowns when you're in a planned spot (i.e. you're farming).

rubina1 · Jan 04, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningHell

I expect that as you progress through the game, you'll learn to take Fire Storm and Phoenix, etc, off your bar.

It's already been taken off and forgotten. I was just showing my slow progression in what I use to use when I first played the game and trying to catchup with all the new tactics. I have all the expansions and I was really confused in which expansion to explore first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningHell

That isn't half bad. I.e. it's plenty good to start off with.

I was wondering for the elites I was interested in, which expansion should I go through to get them quickly?

Mind Blast

Nightfall Exuro Flatus (Domain of Secrets)
Eye of the North (Bjora Marches during Blood Washes Blood)

Savannah Heat

Nightfall Hajkor, Mystic Flame (The Sulfurous Wastes)
Eye of the North Lok The Mischievous (Arachni's Haunt)
Eye of the North Regent of Flame (Catacombs of Kathandrax)
Eye of the North Magmus (Heart of the Shiverpeaks) - Level 3

Searing Flames

Nightfall Kormab, Burning Heart (Dasha Vestibule)
Nightfall Korr, Living Flame (Turai's Procession)
Nightfall Korshek the Immolated (Forum Highlands)
Eye of the North Borrguus Blisterbark (Sacnoth Valley)
Eye of the North Forgewight (Slaver's Exile)

Stormlord Alex · Jan 04, 2008, 03:15 PM // 15:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubina1

I was wondering for the elites I was interested in, which expansion should I go through to get them quickly?

Go EotN and get Mind Blast.

It turns your ele into a very strong character - you can compress your damage dealing skills down to Rodgort's Invocation and Fireball and still deal incredible damage, you've got nearly limitless energy from Attunement and Mind Blast; which - best of all - leaves you with half a bar to play with for utility skills - stuff like earth Wards, expensive Monk skills, PvE skills... stuff.

Chicken Ftw · Jan 04, 2008, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormlord Alex

Go EotN and get Mind Blast.

It turns your ele into a very strong character - you can compress your damage dealing skills down to Rodgort's Invocation and Fireball and still deal incredible damage, you've got nearly limitless energy from Attunement and Mind Blast; which - best of all - leaves you with half a bar to play with for utility skills - stuff like earth Wards, expensive Monk skills, PvE skills... stuff.

+1. Damage isn't everything, as some bad players would have you believe. Support is just as needed and really viable on a Mind Blast bar.

ShadowbaneX · Jan 04, 2008, 05:43 PM // 17:43

if you do go cap Savannah Heat go and do it outside of the Remains of Sahlahja in Nightfall. You can do it in a wurm and is about the easiest skill to cap ever.

For Searing Flames I'd go with Korr, but bring Jin or Margrid with Broad Head Arrow.

While I've capped Mind Blast (in Nightfall), I haven't really had the chance to use it, although, truth be told, I haven't really used my ele in some time. I was playing around with Savannah Heat last night and while it worked in some occasions, in others I found it lacking. I might go back to my Searing Flames build.

Painbringer · Jan 04, 2008, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Personally I think E/ME is a good choice

Inspiration Line is one of the best to have [skill]Drain Enchantment[/skill] removal of an enchantment and net energy gain plus a heal WOW(skill tag needs updating). Another popular choice is [skill]Power Drain[/skill]. There are some great skills available.

If you are going to go Monk just to carry a Hard Rez Spell then you should think about the Ritualist [skill]Death Pact signet[/skill] another good skill.

xDusT II · Jan 04, 2008, 10:50 PM // 22:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Painbringer

Personally I think E/ME is a good choice

Inspiration Line is one of the best to have [skill]Drain Enchantment[/skill] removal of an enchantment and net energy gain plus a heal WOW(skill tag needs updating). Another popular choice is [skill]Power Drain[/skill]. There are some great skills available.

If you are going to go Monk just to carry a Hard Rez Spell then you should think about the Ritualist [skill]Death Pact signet[/skill] another good skill.

The thing about running inspiration based energy management skills on an ele is that the ele already has a great e.management skill in Glyph of Lesser Energy, without the discomfort of speccing out into a new attribute line.

Dr Dimento · Jan 04, 2008, 10:51 PM // 22:51

A E/Rit can do a 10 second knockdown lock on groups of enemies.....which is always fun. Meteor shower + Earthbind = 10 seconds of being "locked" on the ground, defenseless. Good idea to bring arcane echo....depending on how many enemies ur facing (and their strength) you can echo either meteor shower (for single enemies) or earthbind (for larger groups).

Sir Pandra Pierva · Jan 06, 2008, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Please dont bring
[skill]Rebirth[/skill]
Just a personal pref if you go ele monk.

as tempting as it is to bring a rez that does that............your down too long with the energy pool of an ele

Mind blast is the best fire elite for general purposes.

LightningHell · Jan 06, 2008, 02:19 PM // 14:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Dimento

A E/Rit can do a 10 second knockdown lock on groups of enemies.....which is always fun. Meteor shower + Earthbind = 10 seconds of being "locked" on the ground, defenseless. Good idea to bring arcane echo....depending on how many enemies ur facing (and their strength) you can echo either meteor shower (for single enemies) or earthbind (for larger groups).

Good job getting E/Me/Rt?

Why not just stick with a more flexible bar, drop the tank, and go with warriors that pwn face?

xDusT II · Jan 06, 2008, 11:56 PM // 23:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Dimento

A E/Rit can do a 10 second knockdown lock on groups of enemies.....which is always fun. Meteor shower + Earthbind = 10 seconds of being "locked" on the ground, defenseless. Good idea to bring arcane echo....depending on how many enemies ur facing (and their strength) you can echo either meteor shower (for single enemies) or earthbind (for larger groups).

Last time I checked (Which was awhile ago, so I could be wrong) the Meteor Shower + Earthbind combo didn't work out in practice as it did in theory, that is it didn't keep an enemy KD permantly for the duration of the spell.

Regardless I'd still call the combo pretty lackluster. You'll need to spec atleast 6 in communing so your spirit can survive 3 KD's, which isn't that bad compared to the casting times. Two 5 second casts back to back is really going to blow away the advantage to KD a group for 9 seconds.

rubina1 · Jan 07, 2008, 12:46 PM // 12:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowbaneX

if you do go cap Savannah Heat go and do it outside of the Remains of Sahlahja in Nightfall. You can do it in a wurm and is about the easiest skill to cap ever.

I must admit that doing the cap for Savannah Heat while inside the belly of a wurm was the most fun I've experienced in the game so far. The only issue I had was that I only recently came back to the game so all these expansions are brand spanking new. When I finally reached the OP, I found that I needed to have the quest that allows me to tame the wurm queen. After spending a few minutes with Wiki, I had to go through 16 missions. Pretty much the entire Prince lineup. But the payoff of the wurm mission was well worth the effort. After getting the cap for the elite, I logged for the evening but I want to go back and have some more fun slaughtering mobs while inside a wurm.

Getting the cap for Searing Flames was an interesting experience. Luckily I was only one zone away from Sacnoth Valley so I went after Borrguus Blisterbark. Let me tell you I really REALLY hate djinn mobs. I went in with just hero/henchs and it was a rough learning curve in fighting those mobs in the fiery woods. I did find a safe spot in where I can pull the non-boss mobs and safely kill them on the grass but before that I wiped twice and had to start over from the town. The first attempt I couldn't even take down a single member of the boss's entourage.

The second attempt it was just the boss left at 5% life but an add wiped us. After this setback we ran from the rez point and engaged the boss since it's by it's lonesome. I thought this was going to be easy since it's by itself. Wrong. It's first attack was some sort of massive AE which insta-killed most of the cloth armor hench/hero. I survived because of the fire resistants on my armor. But it gets better. At the end of the fight it was me, fighter and the boss. We managed to kill the boss but the fire DoT killed us so it was a wipe. But I ran back and capped the elite. I chalked it up as another fun cap session.

Did I mention that I hate Djinn mobs? But they're sure cool looking zipping around the area with their speed buffs up.

rubina1 · Jan 07, 2008, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormlord Alex

Go EotN and get Mind Blast. It turns your ele into a very strong character - you can compress your damage dealing skills down to Rodgort's Invocation and Fireball and still deal incredible damage, you've got nearly limitless energy from Attunement and Mind Blast; which - best of all - leaves you with half a bar to play with for utility skills - stuff like earth Wards, expensive Monk skills, PvE skills... stuff.

I went with your advice and picked up [skill=text]Mind Blast[/skill] off of Bjora Marches during EotN Blood Washes Blood mission. I've been kicking around the following builds this weekend. Any suggestions or tweaks to the builds?

Infinite Energy Spam
[skill]Mind Blast[/skill][skill]Rodgort's Invocation[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Liquid Flame[/skill][skill]Glyph of Elemental Power[/skill][skill]Aura of Restoration[/skill][skill]Fire Attunement[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]
Lots of spamming with a 18 Fire Skill with Glyph of Elemental Power is up. Whenever I'm at near max energy I cast off a Rodgort's Invocation and Liquid Flames. I have the Glyph of Lesser Energy in case I need to concentrate on the AE fire skills and I want to keep my power levels up. I guess with the number of times I get spells off with this build, I get to see my Wand and artifact's 1/2 cast duration and 1/2 recharge duration proc a lot.

AE Energy Hog
[skill]Immolate[/skill][skill]Searing Flames[/skill][skill]Glowing Gaze[/skill][skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill][skill]Meteor Shower[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Fire Attunement[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]
I've seen similar builds like this, great AE but rather energy intensive. But if I remember, which is the key, to keep Glyph of Lesser Energy up and the mobs on fire, I can keep my pwoer levels from completing draining. However if we aggro another group or two, I will run out of energy. If I'm using just hero/henchs, I just use a hero Necro and give it [skill=text]Well of Power[/skill] and that pretty much solves the energy regen issues. On the first few runs, I was seeing huge damage with Searing Flames. I'm guessing there are spell crits in the game because I would sometimes see multiple enemies getting hit for 214-245 fire damage. But I haven't seen the big numbers like this since I swapped out Rodgort's Invocation with Immolate when a guildie made the suggestion. I'm not a big fan of Meteor Shower but there are certain situations where it can be very useful so I wanted to make sure it was instant cast. I tried a few builds with echo and multiple-echo for Meteor Shower but it didn't fit my playstyle.

ShadowbaneX · Jan 07, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubina1

Did I mention that I hate Djinn mobs? But they're sure cool looking zipping around the area with their speed buffs up.

You've got the jist of it, Ruby/Flame Djinn mobs kill stuff dead. However, I would like to point out that there was a reason I advocated capping it in Nightfall: smaller djinn mobs. That fire zone is sacnoth...yeah, that's only to be braved if you're prepared for it. About the bosses specifically, well there was this wonderful little development that happened post-Prophecies:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guild Wars Wiki

In the Factions and Nightfall Campaign, damage from bosses is doubled. For example, if a Mesmer with 16 Domination Magic uses Cry of Frustration which would normally deal 46 damage at 16 Domination Magic, the boss deals 92 damage. Also, their skill activation times are halved. The double damage is not including for the level difference of the boss, which will also increase the base damage of the boss's attacks and increase the damage due to the level ratio (armor is considered lower vs high level enemies).

So, yes. A fire elementalist boss can and will kill anything and everything that moves. There are a few answers though, namely:

[skill]Broad Head Arrow[/skill]+[skill]Epidemic[/skill] and/or [skill]Maelstrom[/skill] and/or [skill]Power Block[/skill].

Pretty much you need a ranger or mesmer with interrupts when you go hunting ele bosses...or, you know, wurms. Those help alot too. But, yeah, either Daze them and then pounce on them and kill them before the daze wears off, or Power Block them and take out their entire skill bar for 10+ seconds, or just put them in an AoE interrupt. The trick to killing them is to make sure they cannot kill you, and to do that you need to make sure that they cannot cast spells.

Congrats on picking up these elites though. I'm sure you'll have alot of fun with your new skill bars.

rubina1 · Jan 07, 2008, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowbaneX

You've got the jist of it, Ruby/Flame Djinn mobs kill stuff dead. However, I would like to point out that there was a reason I advocated capping it in Nightfall: smaller djinn mobs. That fire zone is sacnoth...yeah, that's only to be braved if you're prepared for it.

I did come across that one Nightfall boss that had Searing Flames but I came across it somewhere after 10-11 missions. I wanted SF quick and since I was so close to that little slice of hell in Sacnoth Valley, I went blindly with that one. But it was amazing seeing the damage output between the boss and it's pack of djinn. After the first wipe, I saw 3xSearing Flames on me. Ye-ouch.

Speaking of going through blindly, I tried to get Savannah Heat by visiting the Heart of the Shiverpeaks. But since I didn't have the quest, I couldn't get past the cracked wall. Maybe I should have tried Catacombs of Kathandrax but I wasn't sure if I was going to find a similar stumbling block of needing a quest in order to reach that particular boss. I also tried to shortcut directly to the The Sulfurous Wastes to cap it but yet again I need go through that long quest chain to get to the point of riding inside the wurms.