Curse

Thom Bangalter · Dec 04, 2006, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

How about

Elemental Attunement (E)
Fire Attunement
Mark of Rodgort
Fireball
Flare?

60% of those skills are terrible, the other 40% range from fair to good. If you want real damage use searing flames, but don't try to run other things and think you're good at killing stuff. Searing flames, or support: those are your roles. deal with it.

Ensign · Dec 04, 2006, 10:22 PM // 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

How about

Elemental Attunement (E)
Fire Attunement
Mark of Rodgort
Fireball
Flare?

You're proposing that Fireball + Flare is equivilent in power to a Searing Flames Elementalist?

Peace,
-CxE

i Valinor · Dec 05, 2006, 04:11 AM // 04:11

glyph lesser energy
searing flames
liquid flame
glowing gaze
res sig
ward vs foes
ward vs melee

fire 15
earth 11
energy 11

i have been using this on my ele heros and have had good success. i aslo use a searing flames build when i nuke so this setup gives a quick boost to what my targets are for glowing gaze and searing flames.

Francis Crawford · Dec 05, 2006, 05:18 AM // 05:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

You're proposing that Fireball + Flare is equivilent in power to a Searing Flames Elementalist?

Peace,
-CxE

Please check the arithmetic yourself before you sneer.

Francis Crawford · Dec 05, 2006, 05:24 AM // 05:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

60% of those skills are terrible, the other 40% range from fair to good. If you want real damage use searing flames, but don't try to run other things and think you're good at killing stuff. Searing flames, or support: those are your roles. deal with it.

OK, I cheated in one regard -- I was just comparing damage based on our basic 80 energy/minute, and not adding in the once-per-fight pool we have up front. (What's more, I think I used 60 for the figure instead of the correct 80.)

That said, I stand by my original point. The advantage of the Searing Flames/Glowing Gaze build is NOT raw power. Rather, it's usability -- casting speed, lack of reliance on fragile enchantments, ability to compress damage into a short time, etc.

ubermancer · Dec 05, 2006, 06:56 AM // 06:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

Please check the arithmetic yourself before you sneer.

Have you been injecting pure cocaine into your brain?

SF is AOE. Fireball, while AOE, has nowhere near the DPS potential SF does. Flare just straight up doesnt count, because if your reduced to spamming Flare you are not allowed on my team.

Francis Crawford · Dec 05, 2006, 09:47 AM // 09:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by ubermancer

Have you been injecting pure cocaine into your brain?

SF is AOE. Fireball, while AOE, has nowhere near the DPS potential SF does. Flare just straight up doesnt count, because if your reduced to spamming Flare you are not allowed on my team.

Not to worry; it's been quite a while since I've used Flare in anger, except when slaughtering mergoyles for the sake of my heroes' education. Even so, giiven what I know of your manners and your reading ability, I have little interest in being on your team.

I was comparing Flare damage to Glowing Gaze damage.

As for the SF DPS -- before the benefit of HSR, one can hit with a Fireball every 9.75 seconds, ideally. One can hit with SF for damage approximately every 7.5 seconds, ideally. And guess what? Dual Attunements/Fireball leaves you both more energy and more time to throw in other AoE spells.

Enix · Dec 05, 2006, 11:22 PM // 23:22

This is the build that I use personally and Sousuke uses it reasonably well. As long as you keep your two attunements up and cover them with Aura of Rest (pretty much its soul purpose), you can cast almost infinately. Sousuke will sometimes let his Fire and Ele attunes run out if the fights are long, but how many heavy PvE fights last over a minute anyway? I stick to AoE (that is what fire is for) and one cheap single-target spell to cast through walls and for kill-shots.

Ele Attunement {E}
Fire Attune
Aura of Rest
Immolate
Fireball
Mark of Rotgort
Liquid Flame (or other option)
Meteor Shower (Disable this skill and call it yourself - like calling in an airstrike)

XvArchonvX · Dec 06, 2006, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

I was comparing Flare damage to Glowing Gaze damage.

Why? No one brings Glowing Gaze to do damage. It is used for energy management. The damage is nothing more than a nice little bonus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

As for the SF DPS -- before the benefit of HSR, one can hit with a Fireball every 9.75 seconds, ideally. One can hit with SF for damage approximately every 7.5 seconds, ideally. And guess what? Dual Attunements/Fireball leaves you both more energy and more time to throw in other AoE spells.

Have you completely overlooked the armor ignoring damage from burning??? Have you also not taken into account that Fireball can miss/can be obstructed, while SF will always hit? Are you seriously having energy management issues with SF? How many more AoE spells do you need when you can almost constantly spam SF? Ever tried SF + Serpent's Quickness + Glowing Gaze + GoLE + Fire attunement?

Francis Crawford · Dec 07, 2006, 05:43 AM // 05:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by XvArchonvX

Have you completely overlooked the armor ignoring damage from burning???

Obviously, I included Mark of Rodgort in the hypothetical build without thinking about burning at all.

OK. I'm out of this thread. Next time you guys want to flame one of my posts, please read it first, or I won't be nearly as polite as I'm being this time around.

Scourgey · Dec 07, 2006, 12:12 PM // 12:12

I use searing flames for sousuke, even with 1 elementalist it's reasonably powerful. With 2 searing flamers, damage output doesn't always increase as much as in PvP. Later on in the game when enemies have more armour decreasing the fire damage from searing flames. Still the damage output is good with multiple searing flames compared to other "nuking" ele builds.

I use sousuke with:

Searing flames, glowing gaze, glyph lesser energy, meteor shower (disabled, I only manually use for boss mobs), fire attunement, extinguish (disabled, or he spams it), and the other 2 skills are free for whatever you want. I take Resurrection signet and a hex remover.

Scourgey · Dec 07, 2006, 01:28 PM // 13:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

How about

Elemental Attunement (E)
Fire Attunement
Mark of Rodgort
Fireball
Flare?

This is hardly comparable to searing flames. If you want to have AOE damage with this build you'll have to get other fire damage skills which have 2-3 times casting time of searing flames, and I'm not even gonna talk about the stupidly high recharge of AOE spells that aren't searing flames. Fireball's AOE is tiny, and so is mark of rodgort.

Even when "nuking" 1 mob I question whether it is as powerful as the standard searing flame builds.

XvArchonvX · Dec 07, 2006, 02:24 PM // 14:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francis Crawford

Obviously, I included Mark of Rodgort in the hypothetical build without thinking about burning at all.

OK. I'm out of this thread. Next time you guys want to flame one of my posts, please read it first, or I won't be nearly as polite as I'm being this time around.

Yea, I overlooked Mark of Rogdort in there. >.>

I didn't mean to come off as flaming you and I apologize if I came off as such.

Evilsod · Dec 07, 2006, 06:31 PM // 18:31

For my ele i've given both Heros (and myself):

Searing Flames
Fireball
Glowing Gaze
Meteor Shower
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Aura of Restoration
Fire Attunement
Res/Cap Signet (For some reason i've stopped running a hard res... i guess its because if you actually begin to need it you've failed 75% of the time already).

As for running only 1 ele. Given Zhed:

Water Trident
Ice Spear
Ice Spikes
Blurred Vision
Deep Freeze
Armour of Mist
Water Attunement
Res Sig

He uses this with my warrior. Armour of Mist is there because for some reason Zhed is ALWAYS the first to die. He makes a good snarer for my Triple Chop/Cyclone Axe Warrior w/ Dunkoro as Strength of Honour/Judges Insight smiter. If you can make for some extremely high damage, who says your ele can't just hastle things while you take on the role of executioner?

beanerman_99 · Dec 07, 2006, 09:21 PM // 21:21

I tend to agree with most here on the skill bar. I don't have Osouske but I do have Zhed. I have him as and Ele/Mesmer.

My idea for a hero's skill bar is like the infomercial by Ron Popeil: "Set it and Forget It!" My personal preference is not to have to micro-manage my Heroes and the use of their skills. Could be a mistake but thats how I roll

That said, thats the reason I do NOT put Meteor Shower on him. He doesn't know when/who/how to cast it effectively. So I use the Searing Flames/Glowing Gaze combo. I also give him Ward of Melee and Ward Against Foes and the rest is used from the Inspiration line. I give him Power Drain and other interupts/energy steal skill. Sometimes Inspired enchantment. Oh, and a rez sig too. I tend to play around with the mesmer skills to see what works best but I always have Searing Flames, Glowing Gaze, Ward-melee and Foes and Rez.

This may split up the Attribute points a bit, but I don't go too heavy on the earth line because all it needs are a few points to make the Wards effective. So far I have used him quite a bit and with my Searing Flame set up we seem to do fairly well. So far I am up to the Mission where you have to guard the spirits in the garden and kill the Harbringers with the light thingy.

Captain Arne Is PRO · Dec 07, 2006, 09:27 PM // 21:27

1. [skill]Mind Blast[/skill]
2. [skill]Fireball[/skill]
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8. [skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

XvArchonvX · Dec 07, 2006, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

...(For some reason i've stopped running a hard res... i guess its because if you actually begin to need it you've failed 75% of the time already)...

Yea, I've gotten to where I tend to run Glyph of Sac + Rez Chant. It's a good 1 sec rez and if people are still dying then it really doesn't matter if Rez Chant has to recharge for 30 seconds. I don't think I'd ever put Glyph of Sac on a hero however since they would probably use it with something like Glowing Gaze lol.

Ensign · Dec 07, 2006, 10:37 PM // 22:37

The AI isn't very good with Glowing Gaze (or GLE for that matter) so it tends to run out of energy fairly quickly as a solitary SF caster. But with multiples, there's more burning in general, Glowing Gaze hits more often, and the AI performs better. That is on top of the advantages of running multiple Searing Flames guys.

Peace,
-CxE

Francis Crawford · Dec 08, 2006, 04:21 AM // 04:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by XvArchonvX

Yea, I overlooked Mark of Rogdort in there. >.>

I didn't mean to come off as flaming you and I apologize if I came off as such.

OK. Peace.

Besides, if one can't flame on this subject, when can one flame?

Francis Crawford · Dec 08, 2006, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The AI isn't very good with Glowing Gaze (or GLE for that matter) so it tends to run out of energy fairly quickly as a solitary SF caster. But with multiples, there's more burning in general, Glowing Gaze hits more often, and the AI performs better. That is on top of the advantages of running multiple Searing Flames guys.

Peace,
-CxE

They can run out of energy no matter WHAT one does, in my experience.

But yeah, with multiple SF casters, there are a lot of dead enemies fast.

I just went on a hike in the Forum Highlands with three nuketeers and an MM (plus defensive henchies and a tank or two -- definite overkill). The enemies didn't last very long.

And let me hasten to confess -- when the enemies die that fast, the theoretical benefit of Mark of Rodgort is largely obviated. One MoR MIGHT do the job of 2 or even 3 SFs, but it hardly matters.

I'll revisit MoR later in the game.