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Feb 04, 2006, 08:46 PM // 20:46
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#101 |
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Just read your addendum and the rest of the thread.
It seems you've moved your focus from first saying that warriors are the best offensive threat currently in the game. And that elementalists are jokes in comparison. To mostly, elementalists aren't the big threat at all in PvP play. Or at least one that requires an immediate response. Well... lets see this from a few points of viiew... Rangers: the elementalists natural enemy Mesmers: is there any target EASIER to disrupt than an elementalist? Mesmers primary role always has been to interfere with other classes ability to do anything. Especially casters. Warriors: look a chew toy... lowest armor class in game (really even monks, mesmers, and necros have better options). Ohh that tickles... Despite the fact that it used to be the class best suited to smacking warriors silly. This is no longer the case. Necro: the class lacks any effective self heals. I can simply life steal and degen him to death... not to mention my direct damage spells are better. Monks: You joking... this guy can't hit hard enough to make a monk brake a sweat. Booned prot against elly spells... easy 200 point heals. (100+ from the boon, then ~50 prevented and 50 healed for the RoF). .25s cast .75s aftercast... casting times aren't even comparable. Even the direct healing spells outheal any ability to do damage in a much faster timeframe. To be honost I think monk is the biggest one there. It's the single reason why an elementalist doesn't need dealt with immediately. It's simply too easy to outheal. He spends energy to do damage, I spend less energy and in a smaller casting time. If they were HONOSTLY balanced... 2 ellys vs. an elly + a monk... wouldn't be a 95% probability of monk team wins. (even going to 3 ellys, vs. 2 + 1 one monk doesn't help much). And I'm not talking a specialty 2 v 2 build here... but just general builds. The way you attempt to take monks out of the equation is spike damage. But outside of pre-damage hexes. Elementalists lack good spikes in comparison. Even then you need solid overage on your spike or it's easily disrupted. So we start getting back to the issue... how do you make elementalists more of an EMMINENT threat. Spike will have more counters in the expansion. See the ritualist and his spirits. Union has 15 point DR for everyone. Then there's the other one which is like protective spirit for everyone. I think it can arguably be said.. that the best offensive classes will be those which can land consistent ~60 point hits in rapid succession. Any spike squad will have to come up with viable counters to those 2 spirits at least. Assassin also makes thinges different. On one side, it's like a warrior... raw melee damage. But it adds the rangers ability to do strong hit and fades with it's offensive/defensive teleports. I've asked before, did a quick brainstorm (not vetting any ideas... just laying them out) and was ridiculed. So I ask again... how do you go about fixing the 'imbalance'. (percieved or right.. I'm simply the devil's advocate). More critically... how do you do it without making largescale changes in the system. To JR: 3s is rarely enough time to communicate over voice spike targets. Especially if someone else is saying something. 3s is plenty of time for any competent player to take personal action. Though not necessarily enough to warn/inform others. You also pointedly ignore the possibility of people intentionally using it as a false flag. As far as air spike... yeah pure air spike... it's a sure telegraph... hence why I said if OTHER HEXES ARE FLYING.. EG: *ONE* air elly supporting a mixed spike group. Yes not balanced now... but that's what testing and feedback are for now isn't it. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 12:20 AM // 00:20
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#102 | |||||
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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You're not supposed to try and fight healing with damage head-on, that's just being foolish. You want to fight healing with disruption, with energy denial, interrupts, skill locks, and the like. Those are the battles that you're set up to win so those are the ones you should make. The only way that two elementalists should be able to beat a monk + elementalist is through disruption, which would imply knocklocking air guys. If they could just win a straight damage race something would be seriously wrong with the game. On the other hand, an ele and a mesmer should be able to beat a monk plus an ele, because the mesmer can make an asymmetric trade with the monk, damage while shutting him down, and the ele wash should lead to a win. Not a pretty win, but a win. Quote:
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I think a good starting place is to look at two skills: Fireball: Target foe and all adjacent foes are struck for 7...119 fire damage. 10 energy, 2 second cast time, 7 second recharge Conjure Phantasm: For 2...15 seconds, target foe experiences -5 Health regeneration. 10 energy, 1 second cast time, 5 second recharge Looking at those two skills, there are two sets questions that you need to ask: 1) Are either of these skills overpowered? I think the answer to that is clearly no. I think they're both solid skills if you've specced high in their attribute, skills that are worth the energy and time that you're putting into them if that's the option available. But I don't think that either skill does so much individually, or in combination with other skills, that they pose any serious threat to game balance. 2) If a character had multiple skills of this type and good energy management to power it, would he be a worthwhile threat? I'd give that a tenative yes. I feel that a Fireball spammer would do enough to pull his weight, but he'd need some tricks with a bit more oomph to really be worthwhile. I feel that Conjure Phantasm is in the same boat, it's worth the energy and a Phantasm spammer isn't a dead slot, but you want some strong tricks, like Migraine, to really make that guy something that the other team feels they need to deal with. So on the balance Fireball is a solid but unspectacular skill. It's the kind of basic spammable that forms the foundation of an offensive build. I feel that it's a good skill to use as a basis for comparison in balance discussions. If an skill isn't comparable to Fireball it's probably worth looking at to decide if it really is at an appropriate power level. To go through the lines: This is a pretty easy line to go through using the Fireball and Conjure Phantasm comparisons. It's pretty clear from that inspection that a lot of the skills here are just overcosted, and the big nukes that you might want to cost that much just aren't scary enough. Fire is also the easiest line to fix, though, because it has those two great tools already available - AoE and burning. Increasing the AoE and/or the burning duration on many of the damage skills would push them into an area where they could be seriously considered. For example Immolate has the exact same properties as Conjure Phantasm, but only deals 95 damage (53 + 42 burning, 95 total) instead of 150. Pretty sad from a line that's supposed to be a heavy hitter, no? If you up the burning duration to 6 seconds, though, the skill becomes comparable to Conjure Phantasm (53 + 84 burning, 137 total) and the kind of skill you'd seriously consider running as a spammable damage source (you could set it to 5 seconds as well but then it isn't terribly attractive next to Fireball. Rodgort's Invocation is another good example. 15 more energy and another second of cast time, not to mention the recharge, for something that just tacks 3 seconds of burning and a slightly larger AoE on? Please. If a skill is going to run someone 25 energy it needs to rock people when it lands. Start with a full ward AoE, there's no reason for the king of fire nukes not to have the biggest AoE available. Then don't skimp on the burning. Burning is a great way to creep up the damage on a skill without it becoming a spike risk. Let's tack on another second of burning because, hey, why shouldn't but big AoE nuke cause more burning than every other dumb burn effect out there? It isn't like we're talking about a spammable here, we're talking about the heavy hitter. 312 AoE, 4 seconds burning? Works for me. Why do the 'ticking' AoE effects deal so little? Because monsters in PvE stand inside of them? Right, they fixed that. Go wild. No one wants to stand in these things anyway so you might as well punish people while they're there. Did you know that Eruption is the highest damage 'tick' available? Does that make any sense to anyone? Kick the damage per tick from the fire ticks up closer to 40. What about the trap mechanic - why do those skills hit every pulse while the fire nukes have to wait until the last tick to do anything? Rock people with the blind or burning every tick. Sure that's a lot of damage if it hits the full duration but isn't that the whole bleeping point of using these things? If someone wants to stand in a Searing Heat that I just pumped 25 energy into I want them to, I don't know, burn to death. Let's look at the water line for a minute. It has a good conceptual base in its attacks, damage and movement control in one package, plus you have AoE and other tools, there's a lot to work with. What's the problem then? You can't keep anybody snared because all your skills have such low utility. Look at Shard Storm. The damage is kinda blah and the snare effect is cute, but on a 10s recharge? What, are you afraid of a water elementalist actually being able to keep someone snared? What about a 5 second recharge? The effect isn't more powerful but now that utility skill has a lot more utility! Ice Spikes is another fun one, because it's so comparable to Fireball, same cast time and AoE and everything. The damage again looks fine, but why is the recharge so high on what'd seemingly be a staple of the water line? I think water elementalists want to cast spells to, not sit around waiting for recharges. Let's try 10 seconds. How about the effect, is that ok? Eh, maybe it's a little spendy for the effect. Don't want to touch the damage, the AoE and cast time are fine, don't want to lower the energy and step on Shard Storm's new shoes...how about a couple extra seconds on the snare effect? Maybe go 3...8 instead of 2...6? Yeah, that looks good. Deep Freeze is already pretty hot (hahah), it just needed some support, some stuff to do with the big attribute when you didn't want to spend 25 or didn't have a big juicy target for it. Oh, and what's up with all of the 'ends on fire' effects? I mean seriously, I thought you wanted to encourage Captain Planet and mixing and matching. Air magic, oooh, I can smell the controversy already. Let's get right to the fun part, Lightning Orb. 140 damage on a 2 second cast time is scary good, right? Let's dig up that Fireball again...119, same cast time, AoE, 5 less energy...well, what do you know, Lightning Orb kinda stinks doesn't it? 5 more energy and losing the AoE for 21 damage doesn't quite cut it now does it? But it's a spike skill, you say? Well, that would explain why every elementalist in a 321spike build runs Obsidian Flame. Obviously it's because they're terrified by the power of the Lightning Orb. Seriously. Lightning Orb only gets played ever because you want the air utility and there's nothing else you can even think about using. Would there really be harm in making it something people would actually want to use? Right, thought so. Let's start with the easy stuff, 10 energy. Now we can at least start weighing it evenly. 119 AoE or 140 single target? Hmmm, still doesn't measure up, and we're talking about the marquee single target skill from the single target nuke line. How about we kick up that armor pentration to 40%? That'd make the Orb dish out 161 damage in a single hit to a caster, and make it even better against heavy armor, further distinguishing it from Fireball. You might even think twice before grabbing Obsidian Flame when making a spike ele. Spread that 40% armor penetration across the entire line. Strike hits for a respectable 80, not a huge change on its own, but it gets a lot better against the heavy armor that normally eats this line up. Sure your stuff hits a bit harder in general but we're ready to handle it. Hmmm, what else can we do to spice this up a bit? Chain Lightning needs a little something. That cast time is unwieldly, AoE effects are a pain to aim already and every second on the cast time makes it worse. You don't want to just drop the cast time down to 2 seconds though, then it starts stepping on toes again. 15 energy, 2 second cast, keep the exhaustion? Yeah, that works a bit better. (Might want to take this opportunity to go back to the fire line and look at Meteor and Phoenix, same issues with aiming small AoE effects there). What about Lightning Javelin? Has anyone ever taken that skill seriously? I mean if they're attacking it *interrupts* them? C'mon. How about knockdown if they're attacking? I still wouldn't use it but I'm sure someone would have fun knocking around warriors with it. Earth stuff you just balance by comparison. Once you rework Meteor into something that actually has some utility it becomes pretty clear that you only want to pay 15 for Earthquake. Eruption gets to blind on every pulse and look like a goofy Dust Trap. Stoning doesn't need to cost more than 10 even if it is part of a key piece of Maguuma Jungle tech. You make the skills worth spending your energy on, one at a time. Then you address how to pay for everything...but those solutions are largely there already. The only change I'd suggest there is to reliability - attunements are a strong bit of energy management and a key piece of the puzzle, I feel, but their recharge makes them wholly unreliable for competitive usage. Halve that recharge so you can at least get the thing back up and they'd be in good shape. Energy management is an important issue that shouldn't be taken lightly, I think it's the most fundamental mechanic in the game and if that aspect isn't robust the entire game suffers. --- Addressing warriors: I don't feel the class is fundamentally broken or in need of sweeping changes. I do feel that they get away with far too much, though. The core is strong and shouldn't be tampered with but some of the details are a *bit* much. For example: -The Hex Helm. There's a lot of good stuff to give warriors fits that just doesn't matter because of this silly piece of equipment. Removing it would go a long way towards turning the unstoppable killing machine that is a warrior into a tractable problem. -Deep Wound. Did you know that it causes a 20% healing reduction? I remember reading that somewhere once, but I never thought much of it because deep wounds kill people when they're applied. When people replace a spiker in a build with a goofy Phantom Pain / Shatter Delusions guy just to apply a deep wound to the victim you know there's a problem. A rework of the condition to be less instantly lethal and more of a lingering problem seems to be in order. -Gale. Warriors are best suited to spam the skill because they don't need the energy, and get to abuse the way exhaustion zeroes to hit a Gale every 15 seconds. They also stand to benefit the most from it because it eliminates the movement game that the really don't want to play. At the very least it needs to cost 10 energy, or exhaustion needs to go negative - at most the game needs to be re-evaluated in how you can deal with or counter these effects. Peace, -CxE
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Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 01:02 AM // 01:02
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#103 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Feb 2005
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You know, now that people actually understand the game a little better and know how to use RoF / Protective Spirit, Anet could just reinstate all the old Elementalist skill values from E34E to prior Nov 2004 (factoring in that you now have 2x the hp you did back then as well).
Water Trident was actually a viable skill.. 1 sec recharge, 1 sec cast, 5 en and double the damage it does now. It was damn easy to avoid when people were looking out for it, but gave you a decent, low cost damage skill that made the water line attractive. How often is it actually used now? Outside of RA, never.. Same as maelstrom. It did twice the tick damage, something like 15 energy cost/20 recast, no exhaustion. And it has to be that way to be playable, with the pathetically small AOE radius. Inferno/Phoenix. Bring back the old playable values of 10/15 recharge, respectively. +20% damage. PBAOE's should be worth a damn when you have skills designed around keeping soft casters in the front lines. I'd take a serious look at getting rid of the retarted exhaustion mechanic on a lot of the skills, as well. For example Mind Shock/Burn/Freeze already have pretty absurd costs and recharges that prevent it from being spammed.. GvG is all about prolonged fights, usually lasting anywhere from 20-30 mins. No need to punish Ele's completely out of the game when they aren't doing much in the first place. Last edited by Hado; Feb 05, 2006 at 01:08 AM // 01:08.. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 01:12 AM // 01:12
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#104 |
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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Exhaustion is great man. It's a form of built-in energy management because skills with it tend to be cheaper than they otherwise would be because of exhaustion. So if you milk the exhaustion right you get an effective 5 pips of natural energy regen, four of straight energy and one of 'exhaustion' energy. Plus elementalists are even better suited to use those skills because their high energy creates a solid exhaustion buffer.
Not that it's always used that way, it's thrown onto a lot of skills for no apparent reason (like the Mind * spells which seemingly have everything conspiring to make them bad - must have more energy plus causes exhaustion? AWESOME!), but when used right it's a strong, distinct mechanic that I'd congratulate A.Net for creating. Peace, -CxE
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Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 01:41 AM // 01:41
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#105 | |||||||||||
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Desert Nomad
Join Date: Jun 2005
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In the second scenario, it would depend entirely on if the monk's elementalist could kill the mesmer faster than the mesmer's elementalist could kill the monk. Shatter enchantment and blackout seems to make the mesmer's side in favor, but the monk's elementalist could have gale as well preventing such disruption for a period of time zeroing it out. The most likely scenario would see the mesmer doing degen to both and stopping the ele from doing damage, while the ele knock locks the monk. Quote:
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Looking at ward sizes, they are ever so slightly larger than the "in the area" targets and you get the effect of it so long as one foot is basically touching/inside the ward. *IF* ward sizes were to be the point of contention to scaling up the area of effect, i would argue in favor of extending it slightly past that point. The reason being is that most of the aoe is directed, not placed like a ward. This makes optimal use and coverage unreliable at times. This reason alone should have caused most of the aoe on ele spells (if not all spells with aoe) to be increased considering other options to augment have effectivly detection circle range in application to the entire party. While those augmentations arent directly comparable to dealing damage with spells, it does contribute to the average working area that an elementalist has to contend with in order to get the most out of his spells. Ward size being roughly half the detection circle size in daimeter, by comparison. Quote:
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Other things to look at would be making glyphs more usable, like say stance or shout like. If they cant be used multiple times at least dont penalize the guy using them in terms of time before they can start casting the real spell. Last edited by Phades; Feb 05, 2006 at 01:49 AM // 01:49.. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 02:00 AM // 02:00
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#106 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Ok, so you use exhaustion on a couple of utility skills such as Gale or Ether Prodigy to milk the extra regen. Except 90% of the GW population won't be using it for that reason, and I doubt that's the intended reason why it was tacked on to so many skills.
It's still a retarted mechanic to tack it on to high cost/recharge damage dealing skills, especially nuking Ele's (which is pretty much their designed role judging from the original pre-retail Ele's and manual descriptions). Pretty much the only reason you'd be using maelstrom or one of the Mindskills is for decent pressure damage, and as a nuker with the exhaustion mechanic you're casting those maybe only once or twice a fight unless you want to screw yourself out of the game. Exhaustion on Surge/Minds/Maelstrom makes unplayable skills even worse, but with upped damage or no exhaustion it could help the profession.. people might actually consider using those skills over energy management.. say a Meteor/Meteor Shower/Maelstrom/Deepfreeze/Firestorm/Rodgort's/Mind Freeze crowd control expert that was actually playable in the old days. Come to think of it, I don't even know why the Mind spells and Surge were even elite in the first place. The only skills I wouldn't remove exhaustion for are Obsidian Flame, Gale, and EP, because as you said, it keeps the prices on them low but prevents them from being spammed. However for the other skills it doesn't matter because the costs, recharges and effects are so bad in the first place, exhaustion on top of that is like kicking a sick puppy to death. Last edited by Hado; Feb 05, 2006 at 02:36 AM // 02:36.. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 06:10 AM // 06:10
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#107 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Has anyone e-mailed a link to this thread to Arena Net? There's some damn good ideas and observations in it. I, for one, feel lied to because the description on Elementalists clearly said they were for dealing damage. A direct quote from the manual says "They can inflict more damage in a single strike than any other profession." Is this even remotely close to the truth?
One thing that hasn't been pointed out in this thread is the fact that the Elementalist primary attribute gives the elementalist more energy, but due to the fact that elementalists spells cost 3 times as much to cast (and take three times as long to cast them) that the extra energy really just balances the elementalist out with the rest of the casters BEFORE taking into account their primary attributes which makes the elementalist primary pretty redundant. Increasing the healing granted on all monk spells makes them more energy effecient because they have to cast fewer spells to heal the same amount they would without it. Soul Reaping provides free energy during combat. Mesmers don't really gain energy effeciency from their primary, but they have several skills that steal or provide energy in their other lines. The amount gained from those skills is too small to be of much use to an elementalist, but because the mesmers spells are cheaper, it's just fine for them. We also have to dump more attributes into our primary to make it useful than the other classes do, not to mention the fact that we have to jack up our other chosen line as high as we can to make it worth while. |
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Feb 05, 2006, 09:24 PM // 21:24
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#108 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Feb 2005
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12+1+3 Axe/9+1 Strength/9 Air is an even better split (because Strength sucks) and already common (for air foci).
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Feb 07, 2006, 08:58 PM // 20:58
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#109 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Jan 2006
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I feel your pain Ensign. We had a similar discussion to this the other day in our private forums.
To further your point, it might be worth a quick comparison of an extremely heavy degen team to warrior damage. If you managed to keep a permanent -10 degen on the entire other guild, your team would output 9600 damage per minute. This is exactly the same as 4 axe warriors who never use attack skills (but who are not kited/hated with conditions/hexes/block/stances/etc). Consider that for a second. 4 warriors without attack skills do more damage than -10 permanent degen on the entire team. Or another way of looking at the issue, how often does a warrior have to actually connect with his attacks to equal or better an ele spamming attack skills as fast as she can? If the axe warriors use axe skills, they gain an average of about 33 per hit (including exe, pene, esviv, and protectors strike), up to 4080 DPM (the damage is higher if the warrior manages to land hits while the target is running, but lets leave that out for now). Using Ensign's earlier numbers, let's assume an air ele can average 1820 DPM while sustaining the 8.5 pips of regen. As you can see, the warrior needs to connect with 27 hits per minute to outdamage the ele. In other words, even if the ele is standing in a ward v melee, the warrior out DPSs them. If the warrior has permanent shadow of fear, the warrior still out DPSs the ele. If the warrior spends half of the match blind, it still wins the DPS war. Even facing heavy hate, the warrior can out DPS the ele. This isn't to say the eles can't kill with a spike, but in terms of pressure damage (or in other words doing more damage to the enemy than they can heal per minute), the warriors beat degen, necro damage, or ele damage hands down. Meh, this was a long rambly post. In any event, I enjoyed the discussion. Some intelligent discussion never hurts, even if the great majority both missed the point and refuse to accept reason when they are shown it. |
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Feb 08, 2006, 10:28 PM // 22:28
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#110 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Feb 2006
Guild: Striking Distance
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2 second knockdown is not a big deal, you would just see gale wars giving up the +1 energy glads gloves for stonefist gauntlets
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Feb 10, 2006, 10:48 PM // 22:48
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#111 | ||
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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Peace, -CxE
__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Feb 12, 2006, 12:45 AM // 00:45
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#112 |
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Academy Page
Join Date: Feb 2006
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I'm fairly saddened by you're lack of a good defense argument onthe elementaist part. you argued that the warrior could cripple the enemy team by draining the opponent resources, but the elmentalist can do the same, much more effieciently. In my experiences, a couple well placed round of an AOE could send any monk fleeing, providing those precios seconds where ur team could attack the enemy
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Feb 12, 2006, 04:39 AM // 04:39
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#113 | |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Aug 2005
Guild: Servants of Fortuna
Profession: E/Me
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Second, Ensign actually pointed out that the fire AoEs are the only chance elementalists have of doing damage at all, and it's pretty remote, except for tombs altar maps. You have to consistently hit multiple targets to beat the damage a warrior can put out and you have to be able to deal with the insane energy costs ("much more efficiently"... yeah, right). Even then, it's not really enough to justify the risks, although the AoE patch has given some hope that they'll improve that situation in the upcoming balance changes. |
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Feb 14, 2006, 08:51 PM // 20:51
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#114 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: May 2005
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Great thread.
My only observation would be that the reason why nuking sucks (and has to suck) is that spikes are very effective. For "nuking" to be improved, it has to take the form of something other than fast, single-target damage or the game could devolve into spike contests to the exclusion of other strategies. I think Ensign and others have given a number of ways in which the elementalist and the elementalist lines could be better, but making them better spikers can't be it (and he hasn't suggested that). I was watching #4 [RIFT] in GvG last night running a 6 x Me/El Air Spike and it seemed ridiculously powerful. I'm sure there are counters, but it sure looked awesome. |
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Feb 14, 2006, 11:22 PM // 23:22
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#115 |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Jun 2005
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I just spent an hour reading this whole thread. Every time I thought of a point I'd like to make, Ensign makes it a couple of posts down, and has the data and the experience to make it stick. (Nobody is going to say "stfu noob" to an iQ guy.) I do have a few things to add, suggestions for balance and
(As a side note: Ensign, it's posts like yours that have always made me admire iQ. As a physicist, my first instinct when looking at a situation is to pull the whole thing apart and look at how the pieces work, analytically and thoroughly, and you and the other iQ people have always done that.) I've always felt the same way about Ele damage. I'm an advocate of Fire eles in Tombs, simply because 1) people are more bunched up and chaotic, making the aoe actually effective, and 2) there is so much aegis going around that block hinders warriors, and there is so much ward melee around that having ways to blast people out of them can be useful. However, even these fire eles that are somewhat effective in Tombs suffer from problems that show the lack of balance of the class. It appears that ANet has priced Ele spells more highly with the logic that an Elementalist has access to more energy with which to pay for them. This faulty logic is responsible for many balance issues. First, we consider the Elementalist's supposed advantage granted from Energy Storage. The higher maximum energy granted by Energy Storage doesn't give you any benefit after the front-load is gone. However, this is the same front-load as everyone else gets! Given the lower benefit/cost ratio of Elementalist skills to Monk (et al.) skills, the "front-load" of the Elementalist's larger energy pool actually will give no more benefit, and last no longer, than the front-load granted by the Monk's pool. As an engagement begins, the Elementalist casts spells at an increased rate, forcing the enemy Monks to heal at an increased rate. However, since the Elementalist expends energy more quickly, he uses up his savings at the same time as the Monks do. Thus, we see that there is no benefit granted by Energy Storage to Elementalists; it merely gives them the same frontloading that everyone else enjoys. Now, we consider the Elementalist's supposed advantage granted from superior energy management skills. Glyph of Energy is equivalent to Offering of Blood in energy return, except with much less flexibility. Glyph of Lesser Energy is inferior to Inspiration options. Ether Renewal is not an option unless you're doing something gimmicky. Ether Prodigy is wonderful. However, it's no reason to make Elementalist skills more expensive -- after all, why not just use it to spam Heal Party? This leaves us with Attunements, which *are* a valid argument for making those Elementalist skills so much more expensive. One could argue that charging Elementalists 25 energy for a moderate effect is justifiable since they only pay 7.5. Arguments about stripping attunements aside, though, why should an Elementalist have to use two skill slots, including his elite, for the ability to maintain energy? When is the last time you saw a good Elementalist use an elite other than Elemental Attunement, Glyph of Energy, or Ether Prodigy? A fundamental tenet of design ought to be that no choice should be compulsory; an elementalist shouldn't have to waste the elite slot on energy. Even with lowered energy costs, I'm not sure Elementalists would be any good. Their spells simply have too high of a casting *time*, in many cases, for too little of an effect. So, how do we fix this? Cranking up damage isn't the answer, because things will just get more spiky. There are sort of two options here: Increase effects, or decrease cast time and energy cost. I'm more inclined to go with the former, since it lends itself to a contrasting class to the Warrior, which can't constantly output damage but can cast a few devastasting spells and then must wait for energy/skill recharge. The damage can't just be increased without getting into spikyness. In order to make the class valuable at the current level of cast times, spells will need energy cost reductions (to bring energy costs in line with everyone else) along with increases in the side effects of the spells. This will allow the class to provide suppression and pressure in addition to simply dealing damage. |
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Feb 15, 2006, 01:50 PM // 13:50
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#116 | ||
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Jul 2005
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This way ANet can cheerfully increase the potency of all spells across all spell lines without any real complaints. And personally I think the air line does need more damage, since nearly every single class except for the necro (whose spells ignore armor and prot spirit), can outspike the air elementalist (a single ranger with orders can deal 280 and a warrior can deal that much damage without orders), and then go off to fill some other role, while the air ele is stuck firing that silly 2 second cast projectile spell of his (which is affected heavily by armor to boot). What about spike builds then? Well, it's not like air elementalist spike was very good in the first place, the only reason why it became a FoTM because the metagame was young (I don't think anyone was even 1/3 of the way to UAS back then) and people were far less skilled or inventive back then. Quote:
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Feb 15, 2006, 02:32 PM // 14:32
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#117 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: UK
Guild: Charr Women [hawt]
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I have to agree totally with Ensign on this, but I feel that the OP misses an important point.
It is insanely difficult for anyone but a very experienced player to play a warrior well, and a poorly played warrior is possibly the weakest class in the game. So while I would agree that you need at least one warrior in every build you'd better make damn sure that guy knows exactly hat he's doing or he will be more of a liability than if you stuck him as an ele and accepted you wont do quite as much damage. I guess that what i am saying is that a GvG warrior is not for the beginner in my opinion, whereas a GvG ele is possibly a better starting point as it is easier to understand and execute ele skills properly than it is warrior skills. An ele spike build is IMHO a better starting point for a new inexperienced team than a warrior heavy build if they want to earn some points and learn the ropes. |
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Feb 22, 2006, 04:02 PM // 16:02
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#118 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Just fix energy costs first. There are almost no 25E elementalist spells that have effects that justify the costs. Ditto for the 15E spells. Reduce their costs by 5E (with exceptions as needed) and you've already gone a LONG way towards fixing the problem.
Then for air, make chain lightning a 2s cast, make it do half damage to the secondary targets, and make it hit as hard as orb (basically like it used to be, but with the AoE damage reduced). Make javelin interrupt any action instead of just attacks. Surge and mind shock could use some buffing as well to make them worthy of elite status, but this isn't as important as fixing chain, IMO. Does anyone thing an air ele with 10E orb, buffed chain lightning, strike, and ether prodigy or attunements for energy management could not deal respectable pressure damage at range? As for the rest, buff up the AoE DoT damage, maybe increase the range or decrease the casting time on a couple (lava font comes to mind), make inferno not suck, and reduce the recharge on shard storm/ice spikes/deep freeze. Voila you have an air line that now does real damage, a fire line that can be used effectively for mass AoE nuking, and a water line that's actually dangerous. |
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Mar 16, 2006, 04:40 AM // 04:40
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#119 |
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Pre-Searing Cadet
Join Date: Apr 2005
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I'll take a stab at this from a different angle, a bit off the top of my head, and I haven't read the whole thread through so perhaps something similar has been said... It was touched on but not explored fully in the first post, actually.
Competitive games, whether football, basketball, Quake, Counterstrike, UO, or what have you are almost universally games of positioning first and scoring (I mean this in the sense of accomplishing the goal/task whether it's a basket or a touchdown or a frag or whatever) second. I think GW is no exception. In GW there are two types of positioning, the first of which is physical position and I'll call it position. The second I'll call condition -- health, energy, and some special cases like blackout and other skill-cost manipulations (but not GW "conditions" which are just manipulation of either position or condition). The practical possibilities for position manipulation in GW are runspeed slows and buffs which are relatively weak and have a mild duration, knockdown which is the most powerful but usually brief in duration, and then warriors which are both quite powerful and potentially infinite in duration. They are essentially a big DOT that you can avoid by moving around; the DOT is just a means to an end vs a target that will move. Any other type of range-limited damage might also make you want to move, but the greater the range of the attack the less effective moving will be in most cases. Furthermore, when you do have to move away from long range damage, you might only have to move a short distance (behind a wall or other obstacle). Position is very transient but can be of anywhere from little to extreme importance in scoring, the extreme situations being a mindless ffa battle in an open area on the low end and I suppose ganking the guild lord on the high end. The case of condition is probably obvious to anyone who cares about/has read this thread, as GW focuses almost entirely on manipulation of condition (which is a problem in my opinion, and the source of the Ele's troubles). The important points: Condition is easily restored not only before the character dies, but also after. To compensate we have the death penalty mechanic, which places a lot of emphasis on preventing deaths. Melee range is a disadvantage and therefore should do higher damage, and a larger range is an advantage and therefore should do less damage. More damage over time means a greater impact on the condition of the entire team. You can't increase ranged (and thus ele) damage without overpowering it. If you make that large sustained damage ranged, then the target is often going to die unavoidably; either they can move a short distance or they cannot get out of the way. If you make spiked range damage even larger than you've made it even easier to kill people. The only thing that makes GW's condition emphasis playable is that death is avoidable. Every class is set up to be signifigant in the condition game. Some are a bit more signifigant than others (monks), but they are all usable given a proper build. Eles included. In the position game, warriors dominate. Other classes can chip in and help, but warriors run the show. Elementalists, for whatever reason, have their skills set up for them to be best at position manipulation. The Ele skill list is full of stuff potentially useful for that purpose, moreso than any other class. The problem is that most of it doesn't work, for pretty much every reason that you can imagine. So, if you buy this explanation, you can imagine my conclusion; rather than the Warrior taking over the Ele's damage-dealing role, the Warrior has actually taken over the Ele's position-manipulation role. As a result the Ele is "underpowered." Of course you may disagree with that in the first place. I think the problem is more that they are shunted into very specific and narrow roles moreso than the other classes... Solutions -- aside from the obvious "fix the skills" (a long discussion itself), one can also easily imagine new Ele-appropriate skills that would not only make them as good or better than warriors position-wise (the classic Walls of Whatever, swap position with target position, etc), but also increase the importance of and ability to affect position in GW in general (IMHO, a good thing, it would only lead to more strategy, more builds, more emphasis on the skill of the player). Unfortunately, RPG/MMORPG designers are pretty scared of that kind of stuff as you cannot even begin to balance it with numbers on a spreadsheet. Last edited by anduck; Mar 16, 2006 at 04:55 AM // 04:55.. |
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Mar 16, 2006, 05:09 AM // 05:09
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#120 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Aug 2005
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The problem is very simple. Every character has ways to inflict pressure on the enemy team, in the form of degen, conditions, energy denial, hexing, or straight up raw damage. The elementalist and warriors have the same form of pressure, direct damage.
Unfortunately the warrior is very good at inflicting damage, and the ele is rather bad. This means elementalists simply have no offensive role. That doesn't mean they have NO role, but it does mean that the bulk of their skills are left by the wayside. In short, the elementalist is like half a profession. |
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