Curse

Ensign · Jan 28, 2006, 09:12 AM // 09:12

This thread is a spinoff from an Assassin thread in the PvP Factions event forum. Basically we started talking about Assassins as compared to Elementalists, and how I don't like that comparison because Assassins can actually deal damage. The old thread is HERE.

I'm going to lay out some of the guidelines that I've been working with so that we're on the same page when it comes time to talk about 'high damage' characters. The main thing I look at with a character is his damage potential, how much damage he'll deal to you if you don't take steps to mitigate that damage. While a character in reality will never deal as much damage as this, I still feel that it is important because it correlates very strongly with how much effort an opponent will put into mitigating your damage, and it's a good indicator of how much effort you should put into forcing a given character's damage onto the other team.

The baseline for pressure in this discussion is a warrior who does nothing other than autoattack a caster. With an unmodded max weapon and 16 attribute, he'll dish out the following amounts of damage:

Sword: 34.12 damage per hit, 25.59 damage per second, 1536 damage per minute; 38.39 damage per second, 2303 damage per minute while under Frenzy
Axe: 35.55 damage per hit, 26.66 damage per second, 1600 damage per minute; 40 damage per second, 2400 damage per minute while under Frenzy
Hammer: 51.36 damage per hit, 29.35 damage per second, 1761 damage per minute; 44.02 damage per second, 2641 damage per minute while under Frenzy

Again this what a single warrior will do to 60 armor dummies. In reality an opponent will kite, or prot the warrior's targets, or otherwise mitigate the warrior's damage. At the same time though, opponents kite and spend energy protting his targets because of that damage potential, because letting an opponent sit there and rage your face will get you killed. The threat of dealing damage and killing people is what makes teams react and causes someone to be a priority target.

Axe warriors are the most common, they have the median damage numbers, and those numbers happen to be nice and round, so I use those as a basis for what an attacker should do. If a warrior with no skills can deal at least 1600 damage a minute to a target, any attacker you make better be able to do that as well. Similarly I see the 2400 DPM mark as a baseline for 'high' damage. Remember that a real warrior will have attack skills on his bar that will make him even more dangerous than this baseline.

So now that that baseline has been established, what can an elementalist do?

*flare spam*

48 damage per hit, 1.75 second investment. 27.43 damage per second, 1646 damage per minute

Well, the 'basic' attack spell of an elementalist is about as effective as a warrior without any skills. Unfortunately, unlike a warrior, the elementalist has to spend over 170 energy every minute to maintain this clearly blazing DPS, or over 8.5 pips of energy regeneration.

*(theoretical) Lightning Strike spam*

70 damage per hit, 1.75 second investment. 40 damage per second, 2400 damage per minute. Auto-hit, some armor penetration.

Now this would actually be promising if 1) you could fit four copies of Lightning Strike on your skillbar, and 2) Lightning Strike didn't require the same 8.5 pips of energy regeneration Flare did. It exherts the baseline pressure on a character that you want it to, but in ways that are harder to mitigate which makes it valuable. Which is to say that Lightning Strike is good enough to be a filler skill on a character who can get enough energy and serves other useful purposes. Unfortunately the skill lists aren't so accomidating.

*Lightning Strike and Lightning Orb*

10 strikes and 8 orbs per minute (roughly): 30.333 damage per second, 1820 damage per minute, spikey, unreliable (orbs miss frequently), 8.5 pips of energy regeneration.

Auto-attacking warrior efficiency again, at the same 8.5 pips of regen that's becoming a theme. Of course you do get a little downtime here to wand with (hahah), but trying to do more would cost you even more energy.

*AoEing the shit out of things*

It's nigh impossible to calculate how much damage you can deal with AoE because it's entirely dependant upon how many people you can get into the AoE. The big issue here is the energy. A fire elementalist can easily consume 10+ pips of energy regeneration every minute. The upside is that they can realistically dish out enough damage to be worth that investment if they can get it. A character that kicks out 6 Fireballs, 3 Incendiary Bonds, and 3 Rodgort's Invocations in a minute, at a cost of 180 energy (9 pips), assuming he can get a second target on half of his Fireballs or Bonds and hits ~2.5 people with a Rodgorts, is dishing out 2845 damage, a perfectly acceptable number for a nuker. The problems, then, are being able to find enough targets fast enough to get good returns out of the AoE, and the ridiculous energy concerns of this character.

--

So why is a warrior good while an elementalist, well, kinda sucks?

1) Auto-attacks. There are ultimately bigger issues but it all stems from this. A warrior, even without skills, applies a significant amount of pressure to an opponent. His skills all enhance this basic property, and give him better defense, make him more disruptive, or help him dish out even more damage. On the other hand, casters *are* their skills. Unlike a warrior, an elementalist who isn't casting spells might as well not even exist on the battlefield. He needs to be either moving or casting or he's being useless, which brings us to point #2

2) The energy costs of nukes are insane. Sure, a warrior only has two pips of regen while an elementalist has four, but a warrior's pips can be spent entirely on spikes or defensive stances or otherwise 'special' attacks. An elementalist, as you can gather from the above, has to spend *twice* his natural energy regeneration *just to be as effective as a warrior doing nothing*. If he wants to do anything special, like spike harder or throw up a defense or any of the things a warrior takes for granted, he has to spend *even more* energy, which is already incredibly difficult for him to come by. The net effect is that unlike a warrior, where you're looking at the different enhancements and tricks and figuring out which you want on his bar, building an elementalist is really an effort to get enough energy on his bar so that he can actually use the few skill slots that are left over.

3) Cooldowns are absolutely brutal to an elementalist. When a warrior has a special attack on his bar that he can only use every 30 seconds, that's ok because he does his job just fine with only minimal use of his skillbar or energy, so he can afford to have niche skills on his bar like this. When an elementalist puts a long cooldown skill on his bar, it is *painful*. The elementalist needs to be casting all the time to be effective (as the examples above demonstrate), but many of his skills have long cooldowns. That means he needs even more nukes on his bar if he wants to keep casting, but that causes two problems: one, his bar is already crowded from needing to fit a lot of energy onto it, and two, nukes that are even remotely efficient are pretty bloody rare in this game. The ultimate injustice? Warrior skills recharge faster than most Warriors can even think about reusing them, while elementalists, even if they manage to get the 10 pips they need, are often sitting around waiting for their few attack skills to recharge.

4) Casting times are a bigger issue than might be obvious. A skill might deal a lot of damage, but its cast time is usually high enough that the actual damage that you've dealt out per second of investment really isn't any better than if you'd just stuck with the faster skills. When the faster skills aren't any better than normal warrior attacks, what that means is clear: big nukes don't deal more damage, they just deal the same damage *in larger packets*. Contrast this with a warrior attack, which is never listed as a replacement of a normal attack, but as an *enchancement* to your normal attack damage. Hence while an elementalist is concentrating his damage with his big skills, a warrior is actually dealing more damage than he was before. The ultimate insult? Warriors actually spike harder than elementalists due to Deep Wound, and can reasonably follow up their spike skill with another hit while the elementalist has to wait almost two seconds before his next attack will land.

5) Even if you can get around all of these restrictions, an elementalist cannot deal a scary amount of damage to a single target outside of a spike. They have an entire line that is supposed to be characterized by good single target damage, but it has exactly three skills that deal damage to a single target with even a bare amount of efficiency - Mind Shock, an elite with a ton of conditions, Lightning Orb, a decent spike skill but not even the best one available to an elementalist, and Lightning Strike, which is most certainly OK but nothing exceptional. If someone's going to go into the 'single target nuke' line and go through the trouble of getting enough energy to power it, shouldn't he at least get enough punch to outdamage a random arena retard with Gladiator's Defense and four healing skills on his bar?

I'm not going to pretend that I know why the elementalist ended up this way, or how it would even be changed if they wanted to change it. What I do know, is that warriors are *unconditionally* the best offense in the game without any competition whatsoever, and that the best use of an elementalist is to power out Heal Parties and other big defensive skills with all of that energy management. After all, even if a class can't deal damage, anything that'll help impede their Warriors can't be all that bad.

---ADDENDUM---

I do not feel that this thread is fundamentally about damage. It is about threat, about battlefield presence. It is about the differences between a high and low priority target that creates threat through his ability to deal damage and kill opponents. Now obviously not all threat comes from damage. For example a properly specced and played Mesmer is an incredibly high threat character because of the havoc he wrecks in a backline through disruption and shutdown. Hell, sometimes he's the highest value target on the field because of it. But Warriors and Elementalists don't work that way, they are threatening because of their ability to deal damage. The thing about damage as threat, though, and this is the key I think, is that the threat doesn't get diminished significantly even if damage is mitigated.

In reality a Warrior will have a lot of his damage mitigated. An unmitigated Warrior with a couple of attack skills can pump out close to 3000 damage per minute, and you'd be a fool if you let him do that. So you mitigate his damage. You use snares to limit his mobility and kite away when he gets close. When he does close you use Guardian and other protective effects upon whoever he's attacking to mitigate even more of his damage. Maybe you'll set traps in the back and force him to run through them, or have a Blinding Flash guy babysitting him. With proper attention a Warrior can be reduced to a shadow of himself, perhaps only kicking out 800 damage in a minute on whomever he can get a blow in on.

On the other side of the equation you have something like an Offering of Blood powered blood nuker. He can cycle Dark Pact and Vampiric Gaze upon the other team all day and there's very little they can do about it - the skills are non-trivial to interrupt, the packet size is small, and each attack ignores a lot of defenses (or all defenses in the case of Vampiric Gaze). Because of the short cooldowns and the energy provided by Offering of Blood, this character can dish out around 1200 defense ignoring autohit damage every minute.

Side by side you look at the Warrior dishing out 800 damage and the Necro dealing 1200 and you conclude that the Necromancer was more effective, right? After all he dealt 50% more damage, that's a lot better!

Dead wrong.

The difference is that while the Warrior only dealt 800 actual damage, the extra 2000 damage that wasn't dealt to HP went directly into the other team's attention, energy, and skill usage. It is not a trivial job to constantly pre-kite the Warriors to keep them from getting hits in, especially if there are multiples operating independently. But being forced to kite can be incredibly disruptive. Sure your energy continues to regenerate, but you aren't casting, and every time you stop to cast you have to balance that against the hits you're going to take from doing so. Sure it's an effective way to mitigate some damage, but it's not free by any means. Following a Warrior around with Guardian and maintaining that on his target requires a good amount of attention and is not cheap by any means. It will stop a good amount of damage and frustrate the Warrior but it's still energy that isn't going to be spent healing. Snaring or Blinding the Warrior work on similar principles, it's damage that isn't dealt but it's time and energy that has to be spent to control that damage. Aegis isn't attention intensive but it chews up a lot of energy. Etc, etc, etc. The net effect of all this is that while the Warrior only does a fraction of his damage potential, the amount of trouble he caused his opponent is a whole lot higher. Why? Because of the threat he posed if they didn't address him. In short, the damage he dealt might have been mitigated, but *the threat, largely, was not*.

The Necromancer on the other hand deals more raw damage but isn't threatening. There isn't a lot that the opponent can do about it, but there isn't any need to. They can easily keep up with that damage with normal healing. This theoretical Necromancer, in short, is not scary. He might deal his damage while another guy gets shut down but he doesn't provoke any sort of reaction from the opponent. He doesn't force them to change their gameplan, or expend time and energy on things they otherwise wouldn't want to. Or, in short, he just doesn't matter.

(That isn't to say that Dark Pact and Vampiric Gaze are bad skills - they have value as finishers because of their difficulty to resist, so they can cut down a protted but low health target. But as far as creating a battlefield presence that the opponent has to respond do, the two skills are effectively worthless.)

Back to the Elementalist.

The reason comparing raw Elementalist damage from direct damage spells to what a Warrior dishes out when left unchecked is threat. Even though damage can and very likely will be mitigated it's the attackers who deal the most raw damage that pose the biggest threat. For an attacker his threat is his battlefield presence. If he can dish it out with the best of them, his opponents will take notice of the threat he poses and take steps to shut him down. If he can't dish it out, he doesn't pose a threat, he has no battlefield presence, and simply isn't a high value character. And if he isn't a high value character, what is he doing there in the first place?

Hence the argument laid out initially. Elementalists are simply incapable of dealing the same level of damage that a Warrior can. Because they can't they don't pose the same sort of threat. Because they don't pose a threat they don't force a reaction out of the other team. If they can't force a reaction out of the other team then they can't help their own team dictate the terms of the engagement. And if they can't help dictate the terms and control the battle they are worthless.

If the Elementalist is to be viable as a damage dealing character, he needs to deal enough damage, front loaded or otherwise, to force his opponent to react to him and shut him down if they want to survive, in much the same way a Warrior forces that same response. In fact he needs to pose even more of a threat to make up for his low armor and relative vulnerability. Once an Elementalist is able to put that fear in his opponent, once he's able to push around the other team and force them to deal with him or die, only then will he be a viable offensive character.

End of argument.

Peace,
-CxE

Symbol · Jan 28, 2006, 09:54 AM // 09:54

Just a note, the fast recharge items can make a fair amount of difference to caster damage. Try a 20/20% recharge focus with a 20% recharge wand. Then the average recharge of strike and orb are 4.05 seconds so you can get (roughly, the actual figure is slightly lower since at times their recharges will overlap) roughly 11.9 strikes and 9.9 orbs per minute, for 2219 damage per second.

Another option is mark of rodgort with flare + fireball. Flare + fireball + fast cast/fast recharge equipment is ~34 dps. Constant burning is another 14.

Of course the energy debt of both these builds is enormous, meaning that twin attunements are the only option for energy management.

On the whole, though, I agree with you. Outside of a painfully thin selection of builds elementalists are lacking in the pain department. It's ironic that they're good at everything but inflicting damage.

SilenceWeaver · Jan 28, 2006, 10:07 AM // 10:07

this post makes me sad, simply because its so true.
my elementalist was my first character and has been rendered a piece of junk in comparison to others. not only is he ineffective in pve, but in pvp too.
elementalists have their uses, but as a self-efficient character they fail rather miserably, and, considering they are supposed to be the raw damage dealer of the game, this is not right.

JR · Jan 28, 2006, 10:14 AM // 10:14

I am quite honestly surprised you think there is such a large imbalance between Warriors and Elementalists. Or so it seems. I am also surprised that you failed to mention how generally easy warriors are to shut down in a post that discusses balance between classes. It is something I have always considered a very important factor with warriors; they are as you say the greatest source of consistant DPS, but can be reduced to near uselessness fairly easily by a build with the right kind of hate.

As an example, earlier today I was observing a match between iGi and OG. iGi was running two axe warriors, frightening DPS when let lose. However, OG had two air eles with Blinding Flash. This basicly meant every time the warriors extended to wail on a target, they would be rendered completely useless with blind. The dual air eles were also very effective at helping the single OG warrior finish off targets very quickly.

Obviously there is the question of skill over build, but watching that match I would certainly not say there was the huge imbalance between the two classes that you seem to imply their is. I would however agree on the point about AoE nukes. Unreliable, conditional damage and generally a waste of time.

I do see your point and largely agree, and the numbers work out. In terms of damage warriors by far have the upper hand. I just think in a post such as yours it is fairly slack to not talk about warrior hate. Right now there is an abundance of Crip-Shot rangers in GvG, then theres warders, trappers... I was going to mention hexes, but then they are not really a huge deal to a warrior anymore thanks to the HoD helm we know and love. However, that is still a lot of hate right there. Unless of course you think that this can all be worked around? Having seen you compete with three warrior builds I could hardly argue.

Do you think it is worth the sacrafice of the skill slots it takes to counter warrior hate and make a warrior heavy build work? Obviously, I suppose.

Ensign · Jan 28, 2006, 02:21 PM // 14:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Just a note, the fast recharge items can make a fair amount of difference to caster damage. Try a 20/20% recharge focus with a 20% recharge wand. Then the average recharge of strike and orb are 4.05 seconds so you can get (roughly, the actual figure is slightly lower since at times their recharges will overlap) roughly 11.9 strikes and 9.9 orbs per minute, for 2219 damage per second.

That would be true if you were truly cast time or recharge limited...which you aren't. Realistically you can't cast nearly as often because the biggest wall you hit is energy, and that doesn't care about fast recharges in the slightest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Of course the energy debt of both these builds is enormous, meaning that twin attunements are the only option for energy management.

Prodigy works reasonably well, it isn't as efficient as twin attunements at peak...but twin attunements are so fragile that I can't seriously consider running them. In any case the idea is about the same, you need around 10 pips of energy if you want to run an Elementalist who does anything other than spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Or so it seems. I am also surprised that you failed to mention how generally easy warriors are to shut down in a post that discusses balance between classes.

I don't believe that Warriors are easy to shut down, for starters. Seriously, how do you destroy them? Blind is effective, though it's an expensive condition to use and it gets pulled off quickly - Cripple is effective against low numbers of Warriors but Gale makes snares much less important than they should be. Blocks are also effective against Warriors but all have their own issues, such as being spendy (Aegis), fleeting (most block stances), something you can just power through (Distortion), or things you can play around with target switching (Guardian). Hex stacks are ineffective but that's a completely different argument. The 'good' answer to Warriors is bunching up in a Ward Against Melee...but that has all kinds of problems of its own in anything other than HA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

they are as you say the greatest source of consistant DPS, but can be reduced to near uselessness fairly easily by a build with the right kind of hate.

The other side of the argument is that a caster who relies upon expensive, long cast time spells to be effective is just as, if not easier to shut down if that's what you want to do. If you want to make a character that hates out a specific other one and just makes the 1v1 trade you can, without issue. If you want to camp a Cripple Shot guy on a Warrior and kite him, or devote a Blinding Flash guy to keeping them blind, I'll say more power to you - that's a lot more effort on the part of your team than sitting a Mind Wracker on an Ele's face.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Obviously there is the question of skill over build, but watching that match I would certainly not say there was the huge imbalance between the two classes that you seem to imply their is.

My argument is specifically that elementalists are not a damage threat. What they are is a utility class with a bit of spike potential. An Air Elementalist with Gale, Windborne Speed, Blinding Flash, and Lightning Orb, with sufficient energy management, is a servicable utility character that can assist on a spike with an Orb. A Warder with Obsidian Flame is a similarly playable utility guy with a bit of spike potential. Neither of these guys should be mistaken for damage threats, because they simply are not. The whole reason for this argument is because there's some belief, rightly or wrongly, that an Elementalist is an alternative on offense, a 'nuker', when that is clearly not the case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I would however agree on the point about AoE nukes. Unreliable, conditional damage and generally a waste of time.

Er, I think you disagree with me about AoE nukes. AoE is the only saving grace of the Elementalist 'nuker' concept, and if an Ele were to ever be a credible offensive threat in a build it would have to be through AoE. I'm not saying that particular character doesn't have problems, because he does (the Fire line has zero utility and has very few playable damage spells, making for a rather inflexible character), but it's the only way to get an appreciable amount of damage out of an Elementalist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I do see your point and largely agree, and the numbers work out. In terms of damage warriors by far have the upper hand. I just think in a post such as yours it is fairly slack to not talk about warrior hate.

Well again I think that the hate exists in response to the threat. The only credible threat is Warriors, so the deck is stacked against them. You'd be absolutely insane not to bring a bunch of anti-Warrior stuff in any build you make because if you can't shut down their Warriors they are simply going to smash your face. You could very well bring a bunch of anti-nuker hate as well, but doing so would be pointless, because nukers are virtually non-existant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Do you think it is worth the sacrafice of the skill slots it takes to counter warrior hate and make a warrior heavy build work? Obviously, I suppose.

I don't feel that you have a choice. Either you make a build with Warriors and bring the tools neccessary to force them upon your opponent (Martyr and other condition removal, snares, enchantment removal to keep targets clean, Wild Blow), or you make a spike build, or you make a build that sucks. It's that simple.

Powering through Warrior hate with Warriors is not fun, and it takes a lot of investment from the rest of the build to keep your Warriors running at even a minimal efficiency. If they have enough hate, your Warriors can feel downright impotent. But despite that, a build without Warriors is impotent *all the time*. You're unable to deal damage, simply because there's only one profession that does deal damage, the Warrior. Since you can't deal damage you're reduced to doing the one offensive thing you can that doesn't require damage, spiking, and then you might as well follow that to its logical conclusion.

Peace,
-CxE

draco inferno · Jan 28, 2006, 05:42 PM // 17:42

I said it in the other thread and I'll say it again here.

Back in "the day", Elementalists used to own everyone in the face. Then, I left the game for about 5 or 6 months, and all of a sudden Elementalists are simply a joke. I loved the Elementalists dearly, and I never even considered another class until they became so inefficient.

It makes me so sad to see this happen, and I desperately pray that Factions fixes the Elementalists and makes them useful again (as damage nukers, I mean).

One thing I have not seen mentioned here yet is the earth builds. While they have a lot more energy drain and exhaustion than other builds (except maybe fire), I still think they are a credible threat, especially in organized spikes. Although, I suppose most of their strength lies in their armor pumping potential and wards.

And one thing you said earlier, Ensign, still bothers me. Yes, as raw damage dealers without skills, warriors win hands down. But with so much warrior hate out there, their skill bars need to be stacked with more and more anti-warrior hate. Which leads us to other classes being even more efficient than the warrior, especially the ranger. I don't mean to get off-topic here, but I seriously don't believe that warriors are the most efficient damage dealer out there.

Now, for a little back on-topic whining. I honestly hate Anet for destroying the Elementalist like that... Fire nukes used to be an absolute essential in PvE and air spikes a must in PvP. Now, my beloved Elementalist is simply collecting dust, waiting for some sort of update or build that will make me actually love him again. Every time I try to make a support Elementalist, or an anti-tank, or a build meant for something other than raw damage, I simply cannot bring myself to it. I always end up testing out the old ways. The anti-nuke patch was the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to me in this game. I guess I simply must resign myself to being content with my MM and my warrior in LA.

Racthoh · Jan 28, 2006, 06:40 PM // 18:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by draco inferno

And one thing you said earlier, Ensign, still bothers me. Yes, as raw damage dealers without skills, warriors win hands down. But with so much warrior hate out there, their skill bars need to be stacked with more and more anti-warrior hate. Which leads us to other classes being even more efficient than the warrior, especially the ranger. I don't mean to get off-topic here, but I seriously don't believe that warriors are the most efficient damage dealer out there.

The problem then is that your skillbar is filled with so much warrior hate that you can't do much else but stop halt your opponent's advances. Then when you consider the Denravi Helm, Martyr and Restore Condition... eventually the warriors will come through. So unless you're utilizing wards/aegis there isn't much you can do to stop warriors. Prehaps Sympathetic Visage will become a spammable skill, or Soothing Images will not only prevent adrenaline gain but remove all adrenaline built up as well upon casting.

Also, rangers are unable to inflict a Deep Wound which seriously hampers their damage compared to warriors. Gash + Final Thrust, Eviscerate + Executioner's Strike, Devestating Hammer + Crushing Blow (or however the hammer string goes, not 100% familiar with it) is pretty ruthless no matter how you look at it.

Symbol · Jan 28, 2006, 09:07 PM // 21:07

Quote:

That would be true if you were truly cast time or recharge limited...which you aren't. Realistically you can't cast nearly as often because the biggest wall you hit is energy, and that doesn't care about fast recharges in the slightest.

Actually twin attunements will allow you to cast non-stop. But the salient point is that the ele needs four skills to match the damage output of a warrior with 1 (frenzy), which is pretty lame.

Quote:

Prodigy works reasonably well, it isn't as efficient as twin attunements at peak...but twin attunements are so fragile that I can't seriously consider running them. In any case the idea is about the same, you need around 10 pips of energy if you want to run an Elementalist who does anything other than spike.

Prodigy isn't enough to keep you casting non-stop. Twin attunements are, but are fragile, as you say.

LifeInfusion · Jan 28, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

Warriors are definitely better damage dealers than elementalists. They are more versatile due to their armor and lack of need for any attack skills (weapon attacks alone deal more than enough, usually).

That is why in betas I decided that I would make my elementalist a suppot character, not a damage dealer. Utilizing the large energy pool of the elementalist, blind/weakness/spiking of air magic, wards/armor of earth magic, snares of water magic all contribute to greater flexibility.

A warrior cannot do much other than damage or take damage because of the lack of energy and high armor. They cannot really interrupt at range, trap, or heal without lowering their damage (if you use healing signet you are very vulnerable). So a warrior attacking is one that is effective. A "tank" is more like an added use of the survivability of the warrior.

m30wc0w · Jan 28, 2006, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

The problem then is that your skillbar is filled with so much warrior hate that you can't do much else but stop halt your opponent's advances. Then when you consider the Denravi Helm, Martyr and Restore Condition... eventually the warriors will come through. So unless you're utilizing wards/aegis there isn't much you can do to stop warriors. Prehaps Sympathetic Visage will become a spammable skill, or Soothing Images will not only prevent adrenaline gain but remove all adrenaline built up as well upon casting.

Also, rangers are unable to inflict a Deep Wound which seriously hampers their damage compared to warriors. Gash + Final Thrust, Eviscerate + Executioner's Strike, Devestating Hammer + Crushing Blow (or however the hammer string goes, not 100% familiar with it) is pretty ruthless no matter how you look at it.

Maybe its not the damage. But seeing as how Rangers can cripple someone and have poison on them at the same time thats pretty dangerous.

Ensign · Jan 29, 2006, 12:59 AM // 00:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by draco inferno

It makes me so sad to see this happen, and I desperately pray that Factions fixes the Elementalists and makes them useful again (as damage nukers, I mean).

A few more skills won't fix the problems with the elementalist as a nuker, it's a bit deeper than that. I was long winded in the parent...but the problem can be summed up as 'Elementalist attack skills are balanced against Warrior attack skills, but Warriors deal damage whether they're using skills or not. When a Warrior or Elementalist spikes they are comparable in effectiveness...but between spikes a Warrior actually builds up resources (in the form of adrenaline), while an Elementalist is furiously expending resources trying to accomplish the same thing.'

Besides, the PR from faction talks about how they want to push the viability of 'multiple-line elementalists', which is another way of saying they have no clue how the class works in the slightest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by draco inferno

One thing I have not seen mentioned here yet is the earth builds. While they have a lot more energy drain and exhaustion than other builds (except maybe fire), I still think they are a credible threat, especially in organized spikes.

See, there you go again, 'Elementalists can spike'. We know that. Every class can spike. There's a huge difference between being able to spike, and being able to deal damage.

I'll clarify the two from a Monk's perspective. If you're casting efficient heals as fast as you can because there's always someone who needs a heal to avoid being a death risk, it's because the other team is dealing a lot of damage. If you're chain-casting heals on a target who's being beaten on to try and keep up, it's because they're dealing a lot of damage. If you're sitting there watching your energy regen so you can fire off a Word as soon as you hit 5 because there are two people who need one, it's because the other team is dealing damage.

If you're not healing at all, but camping with a finger over the Infuse Health button and cursing when your reaction time isn't fast enough, the other team is *not* dealing damage. They are spiking. That game has nothing to do with your ability to heal, and everything to do with your reaction time. At the extreme there is no healing to be done at all - either a spike succeeds and a target dies without being touched, or the spike fails, the spiked target is at full due to Infuse, and the only healing to be done is self-healing to get yourself up after the Infuse.

With that clarified, yes, an Earth Elementalist can spike. Obsidian Flame is the best non-elite spike skill available to an Elementalist. If you're playing a build with a large spike component, a "Ward Bitch" with Obsidian Flame can be a worthwhile character. But when it comes to dealing damage, an Earth Elementalist might as well be a Monk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by draco inferno

And one thing you said earlier, Ensign, still bothers me. Yes, as raw damage dealers without skills, warriors win hands down. But with so much warrior hate out there, their skill bars need to be stacked with more and more anti-warrior hate. Which leads us to other classes being even more efficient than the warrior, especially the ranger. I don't mean to get off-topic here, but I seriously don't believe that warriors are the most efficient damage dealer out there.

I will submit my hypothesis that not only are Warriors the best damage dealers, but that they are *so much better* than every other profession at dealing damage that they outclass all of the other non-options despite all of the Warrior hate. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that you'll find that a build that tries to deal damage without Warriors is going to suck at dealing damage. It's comparable to trying to make a build with a strong healing base without Monks. Sure you can make a patchwork of defensive buffs and self heals and whatnot but you know it's not going to be a strength of your build. So you can make a build without Warriors and try and deal damage, but it's going to feel about as effective at dealing damage as a build with shut-down Warriors does, because you're left with a bunch of characters who don't deal damage. You're better off scrapping the entire concept and trying something different, ALA spike.

The second, and perhaps more salient point, is that if you don't have Warriors that your opponent is forced to deal with, you might have made some individual skills on their bars useless or certain characters sub-optimal, but those players have had a lot of their *attention* freed up. That is, because they no longer have to worry about damage mitigation, because you have no Warriors, they can now focus their entire effort on destroying *you*. Their Crippling Shot guy doesn't have to sit back and keep your Warriors crippled to protect the monks...instead he can spend more time poisoning your team, or keeping *your monks* crippled so his Warriors can destroy you even more effectively. The trappers stop laying defensive traps and starts offensively trapping to cause even more chaos. If you don't have any Warriors you'd better not have any Rangers either because the blocks, the blinds, and most of the hexes that work on Warriors rock Rangers just the same. Basically if you do not pose a problem that they are forced to deal with, you are giving them free reign to find a problem to give you. That is never the situation you want to be in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by draco inferno

The anti-nuke patch was the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to me in this game.

You're talking about the AI update? I think that was one of the best things that ever happened in the game for the Elementalist. The power of that character had been limited for years because monsters were too stupid to move out of AoE, which put serious restrictions on the power of any AoE nuke. They basically had to be balanced for this unrealistic scenario of an opponent bunching up in the AoE and tanking the full brunt of it. Now there's some flexibility to make fire nukes actually good. Of course you have problems until those balance updates come, but that's for the best in the long run. I'm actually optimistic about Fire Elementalists as PvP nukers at some point in the future because of this.

Air Elementalists are a different problem entirely - I feel that they're largely being choked by packet size and spike potential. Their single-target damage is downright pathetic, because of both energy and time constraints, and I can't see them getting a significant buff in this regard because they don't want to make spike a bigger problem than it already is. Sure air nukes could use some small damage buffs across the board (I don't think that Orb is better than Obsidian Flame under any metric, and the two should at least be comparable), but buffs to air as an offensive, rather than a defensive line need to be along the lines of Mind Shock or Enervating Charge, damage plus effect, which would allow the Elementalist to be an offensive character without making spike overpowered. Still there's a bit of a problem when the 'single target damage' line isn't very good at it and has to resort to tricks to keep up with what a Warrior dishes out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

Also, rangers are unable to inflict a Deep Wound which seriously hampers their damage compared to warriors. Gash + Final Thrust, Eviscerate + Executioner's Strike, Devestating Hammer + Crushing Blow (or however the hammer string goes, not 100% familiar with it) is pretty ruthless no matter how you look at it.

Deep Wound is another beast that needs to be seriously looked at. Elementalists are no better than the 3rd best spike class, and that's entirely because they cannot inflict a Deep Wound (fittingly, the two that can are Warriors and Mesmers). It adds 100+ virtual damage to any skill, which is a little much...you take a skill like Eviscerate, which is a normal attack +42 damage while maxed, oh but it also deals over a hundred more damage because of this condition. I don't think that Deep Wound was intended to be the king of spike that it is, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it changed in a future update. For now though every Warrior needs to be able to apply a Deep Wound, because it's simply the single most dangerous thing they can do.

Peace,
-CxE

Mysterial · Jan 29, 2006, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Air Elementalists are a different problem entirely - I feel that they're largely being choked by packet size and spike potential. Their single-target damage is downright pathetic, because of both energy and time constraints, and I can't see them getting a significant buff in this regard because they don't want to make spike a bigger problem than it already is. Sure air nukes could use some small damage buffs across the board (I don't think that Orb is better than Obsidian Flame under any metric, and the two should at least be comparable), but buffs to air as an offensive, rather than a defensive line need to be along the lines of Mind Shock or Enervating Charge, damage plus effect, which would allow the Elementalist to be an offensive character without making spike overpowered. Still there's a bit of a problem when the 'single target damage' line isn't very good at it and has to resort to tricks to keep up with what a Warrior dishes out.

I think you were a bit more right on with your point on efficiency - while air couldn't hurt to have a bit more damage, its bigger problem is the rediculous costs on the spells. Why does Lightning Orb cost 15? (which sucks even compared to Fireball let alone other classes) Why does Lightning Javelin cost 10, and why does it interrupt the only thing you care nothing about (and couldn't target if you did)? Why is Lightning Touch so expensive and weak in every way? Why did they nerf Chain Lightning the stupid way instead of being smart and simply having it do half damage to secondary targets? And why oh why, in the 'single target damage' line, are 2 out of 4 elites both AoE and doing no damage whatsoever? (Not like the other two are good, either)

Symbol · Jan 29, 2006, 04:00 AM // 04:00

I don't think it's just the damage dealing potential that makes warriors superior offense. It's the fact that potential is almost completely unconditional, and that warriors are so damn hard to kill for most classes.

Not only do warriors have high (though not the highest) raw DPS, they're a threat from the word go. Resurrect a warrior and they can immediately begin beating on you to build up adrenaline. Resurrect a caster and not only are they helpless waiting on energy regen, but they're easy to take down because of sub par armor.

But this is relatively obvious, the important question is "how can we fix this". WRT elementalists a.net needs to decide what this class is good at. Is it single target damage, AOE, or spike, and just accordingly. If it's single target, air needs better energy efficiency and better elites. If it's AOE, all costs must come down, and mass snaring with water must become a viable option without tons of investment. If it's spike-well I don't know actually.

Akathrielah · Jan 29, 2006, 04:06 AM // 04:06

~Aravis - This is the wrong place for your post, please repost in the Elementalist Builds section if you want criticism on your elementalist build.

Back on topic-
It's a crying shame that no one from Anet will actually see this, or even if they did, shrug and go back to all of the posts of "zOMG, moar greenz plz".

And considering all the "wonderful" multi-line spells and one trick ponies skills they are planning to give the class in the expansion, I seriously doubt they will ever make the elementalist an offensive class.

Phades · Jan 29, 2006, 09:04 AM // 09:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

2) The energy costs of nukes are insane. Sure, a warrior only has two pips of regen while an elementalist has four, but a warrior's pips can be spent entirely on spikes or defensive stances or otherwise 'special' attacks. An elementalist, as you can gather from the above, has to spend *twice* his natural energy regeneration *just to be as effective as a warrior doing nothing*. If he wants to do anything special, like spike harder or throw up a defense or any of the things a warrior takes for granted, he has to spend *even more* energy, which is already incredibly difficult for him to come by. The net effect is that unlike a warrior, where you're looking at the different enhancements and tricks and figuring out which you want on his bar, building an elementalist is really an effort to get enough energy on his bar so that he can actually use the few skill slots that are left over.

This is why i believe ether renewal was what it was at the game's launch. The elementalist is the poster child of defecit spending. So naturally with horribly inefficent spells and unweildy energy pool, it required a just as unweildy way to recover it all at once and hopefully it would last 30s.

You can also comment on how expertise not only effectivly multiplies the energy pool, but it also multiplies energy recovery while the ranger does effectivly nothing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

3) Cooldowns are absolutely brutal to an elementalist. When a warrior has a special attack on his bar that he can only use every 30 seconds, that's ok because he does his job just fine with only minimal use of his skillbar or energy, so he can afford to have niche skills on his bar like this. When an elementalist puts a long cooldown skill on his bar, it is *painful*. The elementalist needs to be casting all the time to be effective (as the examples above demonstrate), but many of his skills have long cooldowns. That means he needs even more nukes on his bar if he wants to keep casting, but that causes two problems: one, his bar is already crowded from needing to fit a lot of energy onto it, and two, nukes that are even remotely efficient are pretty bloody rare in this game. The ultimate injustice? Warrior skills recharge faster than most Warriors can even think about reusing them, while elementalists, even if they manage to get the 10 pips they need, are often sitting around waiting for their few attack skills to recharge.

That isnt even addressing adrenalin and adrenalin boosters, even though some of it is mitigated through block/evade and other defenses. A more resaonable, yet distorted comparison would be to other similar spells from other professions like chain lightning versus deathly swarm or any ranger skill and options for skill recharge reduction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

4) Casting times are a bigger issue than might be obvious. A skill might deal a lot of damage, but its cast time is usually high enough that the actual damage that you've dealt out per second of investment really isn't any better than if you'd just stuck with the faster skills. When the faster skills aren't any better than normal warrior attacks, what that means is clear: big nukes don't deal more damage, they just deal the same damage *in larger packets*. Contrast this with a warrior attack, which is never listed as a replacement of a normal attack, but as an *enchancement* to your normal attack damage. Hence while an elementalist is concentrating his damage with his big skills, a warrior is actually dealing more damage than he was before. The ultimate insult? Warriors actually spike harder than elementalists due to Deep Wound, and can reasonably follow up their spike skill with another hit while the elementalist has to wait almost two seconds before his next attack will land.

Then there is the opposite situation of the ranger spike comming in small packets enmass, which can be alot harder to deal with and occurs alot more frequently and is sustainable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

5) Even if you can get around all of these restrictions, an elementalist cannot deal a scary amount of damage to a single target outside of a spike. They have an entire line that is supposed to be characterized by good single target damage, but it has exactly three skills that deal damage to a single target with even a bare amount of efficiency - Mind Shock, an elite with a ton of conditions, Lightning Orb, a decent spike skill but not even the best one available to an elementalist, and Lightning Strike, which is most certainly OK but nothing exceptional. If someone's going to go into the 'single target nuke' line and go through the trouble of getting enough energy to power it, shouldn't he at least get enough punch to outdamage a random arena retard with Gladiator's Defense and four healing skills on his bar?

What i find sad is when rangers can effectivly mitigate most of what an ele can throw at it by doing nothing more than just throwing up troll ungent and just standing there. When things like large packet spot healing and prot spirit come into play, whatever advantage eles might of had goes right out the window.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I'm not going to pretend that I know why the elementalist ended up this way, or how it would even be changed if they wanted to change it. What I do know, is that warriors are *unconditionally* the best offense in the game without any competition whatsoever, and that the best use of an elementalist is to power out Heal Parties and other big defensive skills with all of that energy management. After all, even if a class can't deal damage, anything that'll help impede their Warriors can't be all that bad.

I would say that the ritualist channeling line of skills is a decent start. I am still in favor of the AOE spells acting more like traps though, even though that really isnt a solution overal more than making them more like static defenses instead of one shot spells.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Of course the energy debt of both these builds is enormous, meaning that twin attunements are the only option for energy management.

Dual attunement e/me that does copies and tries to machine gun spells doesnt work too good outside of pve. There are so many things that can go wrong to hamstring it its not funny. Aside from just feeding anything mesmer energy from your enchantments that do not refresh like monk enchantments, rangers can and will drain your pool just from simple interupt spam through mantra of resolve. That is, they will drain you out if you aren't dead first. Basically the ele is a class with not much of anything that other professions cant already do. The really sad thing with the dual attunments guy, is that a mesmer primary does more damage due to fast casting than the elementalist does due to higher elemental specs. Yeah, the single packet hit is lower, but it arrives a second or more sooner in most cases. This in turn causes the spells to begin their refresh cycle sooner and so on.

Detrick Sky · Jan 30, 2006, 02:02 AM // 02:02

I find the original post to contain some interesting information but I am not quite sure of its overall relevance when the PvP in GW is team based and not individual based.

Although Warrior's can deal a significant amount of damage as compared to other classes, there are plenty of counters that make them insignificant. My guild routinely destory's groups with lots of warriors because of our use of counter classes. Monks easily can heal themselves or others who have multiple warriors on them but its so much harder verse spike teams.

I do not dispute the fact that warriors are individually high damage dealers but readers should not be convinced that other classes including elementalists are not important in GW because they are.

Vox Populi · Jan 30, 2006, 03:05 AM // 03:05

Warriors are better in the long run at dealing damage than everyone else? Wow, news flash.

Elementalists have huge energy demmands that weakens their DPS? Again, shockingly insightful.

Of course Warriors are going to come out ahead in your little thought experiment because you've tilted the rules to be in their favor.

Quit trying to put a round peg in a square hole.

Warriors are a cheep, consistant, reliable source of damage that are hard to put down and so they're better offf being neutralized. An Elementalist, or a Ranger, or a Nightcrawler or whatever other class is never going to be able to stack up with them. Trying to do so is bound to result in frowns all around. That's a given.

But you're having an Elementalist play the Warrior's game. Forget support or Ward bitching, they can put a hurting on, they just can't keep up with a Warrior. They've got "large packets" and they have one thing that Warriors are lacking - range. Multiple Elementalists can stack up on one target or swap targets better and more effectively than a Warrior will ever be able to. Elementalists aren't there to slug it out with the other team, they're artilery. Mass them up, point them at the person who needs to die, and let them deliver massive spikes to punch through defenses.

An Elementalist can be as effective if not more so than a Warrior by looking at a battle as a series of pivotal, discrete moments rather than an contest of infinite duration. In that minute or two or three that's going to decide things, the "large packets" that an Elementalist will throw out can overpower the healing and the issues of energy regeneration don't really come into play. Warriors are reliable. If their spikes fail they're an armor coated brick that can hurt you without spending a drop of energy. Elementalists are risky. They have better spikes but they're costly and they're going to leave them weak and vulnerable if they don't work. Exactly how they're meant to be.

You heard it here first, apparently.

Vermilion Okeanos · Jan 30, 2006, 04:22 AM // 04:22

I think people are missing the point...

The main point of the OP was that elementalist is not so much the "nuker". The real damage class is the warrior and warrior alone.

This had been agree by the top level of the PvP for a long time now, ever since back day with KOR (for those that dont know, KOR was a korean clan that held the top of the ladder back during beta) would slaughter everyone with just warriors and monks (warrior doing insane damage, monk handling everything else such as healing buffing condition etc).

Now the OP posted "why", and the reason why is that warrior's auto-attack are far superior than any class if given the right circumstance. So as warrior are allowed to have the right circumstance, so will other class allow to have the "right circumstance". If you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to argue about "who can deal the most damage in the wrong circumstance", the answer would be something like "everyone would be useless".

The counter argument is "how well can one meet the circumstance". Currently, warriors have the easiet way to maintain their correct circumstance thanks to HoD helm and condition is easily removed + heavy armor. This means that warrior are also harder to shutdown than others. Now with double team gale warrior or some kind of snare, the range factor are easily removed at the same time.

Therefore, most of the battles today are a battle of "maintain your warrior" or "spike the hell out of your opponent" when two full teams collide and duke it out. Even with just spike team, ranger spike is often more prefered than the ele spike.

Symbol · Jan 30, 2006, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Elementalist spike is hurt by aftercast. So while mass obsidian flame is a GODLY first strike, the follow up is difficult to do quickly.

a cadet · Jan 30, 2006, 04:59 AM // 04:59

This thread very neatly explains why IWAY is so potent.

If you accept the premise that warriors are the best (if not only) serious damage dealers, then IWAY is simply as many damage dealers as you can pack in a build, while the rest provides some support (orders, corpse control, trapper, etc).

Ofcourse IWAY is deeper than that, what with the skill "I Will Avenge You", but the concept of doing as much damage as possible is clear.