Curse

Sha Noran · Apr 18, 2006, 03:53 AM // 03:53

Flashbot>Curses Guy. Blind>Weakness. Aknowledged. Can't argue.

It just bothered me how black and white some of the statments you guys make are...

This is better than that.

That sucks.

That skill is stupid.

Just trying to point out that its not worthless. Maybe not the best, but not retardedly useless either.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 18, 2006, 06:26 AM // 06:26

I'll grant that the Curses guy you listed above is about the best you can do with a pure Curses character. The line has a number of good skills, but is pretty much an anti-warrior and degen hex line all the way through.

The problem is, the anti-warrior side of the build (what he's really brought along for) is outdone by a different type of character. When you're putting together a team you don't want the guy who just 'does the job', you want the guy who fills his niche in the best possible way while providing as many other things to the team as he can. You have to look critically at everything the character provides and decide whether it's really what you want, and whether it really fits into the rest of the build and the current metagame.

For this reason, you could write up a list of perhaps 15 templates and you'd have pretty much everything that currently sees play in high level GvG. Some skills are changed here and there, but it's hard to find a better anti-warrior character than the Flashbot. It's hard to find a better Ranger than a Cripshot + Apply Poison guy. It's hard to find better pure DPS than an Eviscerate axe warrior.

Anything outside of these few basic templates is relegated to either pretty specalized builds, or to pure spikes where you can run all kinds of things on you bar so long as you've got an effective spiking skill.

Ensign · Apr 18, 2006, 07:48 AM // 07:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

You mention at the end of your post a long list of things Curses can be incorperated into builds to do... why not combine those into one very versatile Curses build?

Because that character would be terrible. You can get virtually the same effectiveness out of that guy with only half of those skills on his bar. You only have the energy for so many of them, and they recharge quickly enough that there's really no point in having them all there. Why sacrifice a bunch of power and utility for more skills that overlap or even conflict with each other? Just take the best couple of curses, the ones with the most synergy with your build, and work them onto an otherwise robust character.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

it seems clear (to me at least) that he's a far more effective character than, say, a Fire Ele.

I think he's weaker, but they're poor for very different reasons - fire because it's a pretty narrow line and he's bluntly not very good at the jobs he can do, while a curses guy lacks synergy and doesn't have any jobs that he particularly excels at.

Yes, some warrior hate is nice, but it doesn't take a character's entire skillbar to accomplish that task.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Oh, back on that subject, has anyone actually looked at the new Ele skills? They're really quite horrid for the most part...

I'm sure there are some decent skills in there that I just don't appreciate yet, but for the most part color me unimpressed. A lot of new skills, for all professions, are 'just like existing options, only worse'. In the case of the elementalist, where half of your skills are terrible, being comparable to a bad skill is not going to get anyone excited.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mister Furious

I also think that the developers gave a lot of ele spells long cast times and exhaustion simply for flavor. It seems like they figured that casting a spell that caused meteors to fall out of the sky would be a really hard spell to cast and would probably make you tired after you did it, so they gave it a long cast time and exhaustion just because.

Of course the same logic would tell you that a meteor falling out of the sky and onto your head would probably hurt more than someone hitting you with a hammer...but I guess that latter part got nixed for balance reasons.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

The thing to recognize is that these characters aren't there to deal damage (aside from maybe throwing a spare spell into a spike.) They're there because elementalists have some decent spammable utility skills and because Ether Prodigy is such a powerful skill.

That basically sums up the profession right now. Your offense is abysmal, but your disruptive abilities are good enough that, at least when powered by Prodigy, they become attractive. Obviously the profession is playable and even strong in certain roles. The question I'm asking is if the profession is doing what they want it to be doing, and if they're ok with that being the way it is.

Peace,
-CxE

Mared Text · Apr 18, 2006, 08:24 AM // 08:24

My guild uses the following curses character.

1) Vamp gaze
2) Shadow strike
3) Life siphon
4) Parasitic bond
5) Draw conditions
6) Faintheartedness
7) Offering of blood
8) Res sig

It seems to work fairly well. I will say that I think that heal party is hands down the gayest skill in the game since it destroys the entire degen aspect of the game singlehandedly and has virtually no counters. The one counter it does have requires alot of effort to use.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 18, 2006, 08:35 AM // 08:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mared Text

I will say that I think that heal party is hands down the gayest skill in the game since it destroys the entire degen aspect of the game singlehandedly and has virtually no counters. The one counter it does have requires alot of effort to use.

Not entirely true. Heal Party, with its long cast time and high energy cost, comes with a lot of inherent counters. We saw in the RenO vs. iQ match just how much a single Distracting Shot can do to shut this skill down and turn off the massive healing it provides.

The biggest issue with Heal Party isn't a lack of counters, but getting into a position to use those counters. As a radar range spell, the opposing team can always just position their E/Mo party-spammer well behind the backline and make him effectively impossible to reach.

I think that having the ability to counter degen with a super-efficent heal is a good thing, but it shouldn't be an unstoppably good thing. I'd be curious if the spell would still see use if the range were reduced to "In the Area." This would make it much easier to reach the Heal Party guy and allow degen teams to force the opposition to group up, making them vulnerable to such things as AoE. It sounds like it might add an interesting aspect to degen damage, though whether it would work out that way in practice I don't know.

Heal Party is currently the only thing that keeps mass degen from being overpowering though. Healing Signet and spot heals will only take you so far when the entire team is suffering from a non-trivial DPS due to spammable degen.

Buzzer · Apr 18, 2006, 08:36 AM // 08:36

Diversion requires a lot of effort? What about Distracting Shot?

Mared Text · Apr 18, 2006, 05:28 PM // 17:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Not entirely true. Heal Party, with its long cast time and high energy cost, comes with a lot of inherent counters. We saw in the RenO vs. iQ match just how much a single Distracting Shot can do to shut this skill down and turn off the massive healing it provides.

The biggest issue with Heal Party isn't a lack of counters, but getting into a position to use those counters. As a radar range spell, the opposing team can always just position their E/Mo party-spammer well behind the backline and make him effectively impossible to reach.

You said it yourself, there are virtually no counters if the heal party guy is smart enough not to get close enough to the battle while spaming heal party to get distracting shoted or other crap. Basicaly the only counter is if the heal party guy is stupid and lets you do something to him. Depending on the enemys stupidity as a counter is no counter at all.

Quote:

I think that having the ability to counter degen with a super-efficent heal is a good thing, but it shouldn't be an unstoppably good thing. I'd be curious if the spell would still see use if the range were reduced to "In the Area." This would make it much easier to reach the Heal Party guy and allow degen teams to force the opposition to group up, making them vulnerable to such things as AoE. It sounds like it might add an interesting aspect to degen damage, though whether it would work out that way in practice I don't know.

It sounds like a good suggestion to me, at least this would bring the heal party guy into range of some of the stuff that can stop him.

Quote:

Heal Party is currently the only thing that keeps mass degen from being overpowering though. Healing Signet and spot heals will only take you so far when the entire team is suffering from a non-trivial DPS due to spammable degen.

Well maybe having strong degen will cause a shift in the current static gameplay... like, having more than 2 boon prot monks for instance. You can't tell me degen isn't counterable without a heal party spammer. It just isn't counterable if everyone runs the exact same builds they run currently. And if I may point out, degen has the inherent weakness that if the other team starts getting too degened they can just pull back to their base, wait 15 seconds, and all your work is gone and they are coming back out again.

Heal party is to degen as infuse health would be to spike if it could be used anywhere in radar range and it auto infused the person with the lowest health without having to target them. Simply put, in its current form is severly hurts (if not destroys) an entire aspect of the gameplay. As far as im concerned more variety in builds = good.

Mared Text · Apr 18, 2006, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buzzer

Diversion requires a lot of effort? What about Distracting Shot?

So your ranger and mesmer are gona run into our backlines and will most certainly get raped in order to try and stop a heal party spammer which may or may not work?

Ensign · Apr 18, 2006, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mared Text

My guild uses the following curses character.

That guy's a pretty typical power hexer (with two skills from the curses line, I might add). He's not bad at his job but he isn't anything terribly special either. Actually that makes him a sterling example of the profession in general. =)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Not entirely true. Heal Party, with its long cast time and high energy cost, comes with a lot of inherent counters.

There are a lot of things you might think would counter it but really don't. Distracting Shot does counter it (in fact that's the only good reliable counter to it), but Savage Shot really doesn't do much because the skill is so spammable. I'll spam it in their face if all they'll do is Savage Shot it. Other interrupts work similarly - unless you're going to camp it and hit every Party, I don't care.

Sure you can take a properly built mesmer and stick it in a Party guy's face and keep him from casting much at all, but that's true of most casters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

The biggest issue with Heal Party isn't a lack of counters, but getting into a position to use those counters. As a radar range spell, the opposing team can always just position their E/Mo party-spammer well behind the backline and make him effectively impossible to reach.

Well part of it is a lack of counters. "Getting into position to use those counters" almost universally means "getting into position to use Distracting Shot". If you don't have that a Party spammer doesn't need to hide himself in the first place.

As for him hiding in the back and pumping Parties, he can do that if you let him. What you need to be able to do is punish that team for effectively losing a guy to Heal Party. I know of a couple of ways to do this. One is to have a bit of degen in a build without any degen characters, and without degen being a key part of the plan. You want to have just enough to force that Party spammer back to go into party mode, then push on them with focused damage while they are down a man.

Another good way is, well, with warriors. This really just comes from how teams are typically built - the guy with Heal Party usually carries a lot of warrior hate as well. If you can force that guy to use Heal Party out of range, then you've freed up your warriors to go nuts.

Of course neither of those tricks work for a build that really goes heavy on the degen - they work for builds that have some mild degen components, but are otherwise warrior or spike powered.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I'd be curious if the spell would still see use if the range were reduced to "In the Area."

It would not. With a range that tiny it would be unrealistic to actually heal your party with it, you'd have to carefully position yourself to hit 3-4 guys. That'd barely be worth the energy and definitely not the skill slot.

It's a change that would wreck the skill for the wrong reason - it didn't hurt it because it forced you to cast it in the battle instead of the base, it neuters it because it would no longer actually do what it is supposed to. You can't wreck everything good about a skill just to change one aspect that might be a bit too good.

If the skill needs an AoE change it should be no harsher than halving the current AoE. Anything more significant than that would make it unrealistic to use for its intended purpose. But I'm not sure that's strictly neccessary now - the ability to hide the guy is meaningful, sure, but I think focusing on that ignores the bigger issue of just how ridiculously powerful the skill is on its own merits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Heal Party is currently the only thing that keeps mass degen from being overpowering though.

I can't agree with that. How would anyone know? No one has had to figure out how to counter mass degen any deeper than Heal Party because a single copy of that skill destroys it so thoroughly. Do you really think this game is so shallow that no one could find a way to effectively fight degen if Heal Party wasn't singlehandedly destroying it?

Or even if Heal Party wasn't as good? The complaint I have about Heal Party, at least, is not that it's good against degen (it should be) but that a single copy of the skill destroys it all by itself. No other aspect of the game is so dominated. For example, enchantment based teams. You can't put a single skill on one character to beat a team stacking a lot of enchantments. You can't even put a lot of removal all over the team to break through enchantments. You need a deeper plan to break an enchantment heavy team - interrupts on key enchantments, edenial and other shutdown on important maintainers, target switching to marginalize the short term enchantments, and yes, some removal to be used in key places to break the team. It's definitely doable but it's more involved than just putting some retardedly good removals on your bar.

Why should degen be handled the same way? If a team wants to dedicate themselves to spreading degen, shouldn't you have to use some combination of proactive disruption, shutdown, other efficient tools that are already there (condition and hex removal still make good trades against degen, and healing, especially Word, becomes very good when the damage is predictable), and yes, a bit of Heal Party on top of that?

But the case right now is just that Heal Party deals with the degen. It's also such a strong tool in general for incidental damage in a battle that every team needs a copy. Most good teams actually run two, just in case one gets shut down. Because it's that good.

Peace,
-CxE

Sephir Demange · Apr 18, 2006, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Quote:

Heal Party is currently the only thing that keeps mass degen from being overpowering though. Healing Signet and spot heals will only take you so far when the entire team is suffering from a non-trivial DPS due to spammable degen.

Actually, alot of skills that are out of spotlight right now would do alot to stop degen, though on an individual level. Things like Melandru's Resiliance, and Healing Breeze, and even something like (forgive me) Mending would be viable alternatives if the Heal Party skill were not what we know it as now. All the aforementioned skills are in the game, but are pretty much marginalized simply because the alternatives out there are so obviously better. As Ensign pointed out, why would anyone think up a counter for degen past Heal Party? There really is little point.

Sha Noran · Apr 19, 2006, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

It's definitely doable but it's more involved than just putting some retardedly good removals on your bar.

Gaze of Contempt {Spell} E:15 CT: 2 RT: 20

If target foe has more than 50% health, that foe loses all enchantments.

Necro spell, no attribute. Much like a Rend with no penalty. It may not exist yet, but come the 28th... retardedly good removal ftw!

Oh, and by the way, has anyone else noticed this skill yet?

Blessed Light {Elite Spell} E: 10 CT: 1 RT: 7

Heal target ally for 10...94 Health and remove one Condition and one Hex.

Attribute? Divine Favor. Derrr...

EDIT: Actually, took another closer look at possible retardedly good removal (I love that phrase) and came across this:

Order of Apostasy {Elite Enchantment} E: 25 CT: 2 RT: 0

For 5 seconds whenever a party member hits a foe that foe loses one enchantment. For each Monk enchantment removed you lose 20%...10% health.

Normally this skill would be stupid... but I've seen 105 HP Orders necs recently in higher level GvG, and a high level Blood Renewal would do nicely to prevent death to this skill. Just a thought.

SaintGreg · Apr 19, 2006, 06:28 AM // 06:28

Quote:

in fact [distracting shot is] the only good reliable counter to it

If your build has such a strong degen component that the other team sacrifices whole players to only heal party'ing to stay alive, I would consider scourge healing an effective enough counter. With two copies of a relatively high powered scourge healing and enough hexes to power through any reasonable amount of removal, heal party hurts.

With the relatively weak (if at all) self healing such heal party spammers usually have, that heal party spammer will at the very least have to be in range of a healing monk to be even modestly effective. This means either sacrificing two players at the stand, or more likely having the heal party spammer in the range of a monk - and also more likely to be in range of targetted shutdown.

Scourge healing isn't good enough to make anyone actually want to run such a heavy degen build though.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 19, 2006, 07:28 AM // 07:28

Scourge Healing would be a better counter if it weren't a Smiting skill. The smiting line is generally pretty crap, so if you're putting a smiter into you build for Scourge Healing you've undoubtedly gimped something else. Put Scourge Healing into Curses and maybe we can talk about using it as a serious counter.

Heal Party is limited by cast time and energy cost, but not recharge. To shut down a Heal Party guy you have to either use a shutdown interrupt like Distracting Shot or Power Block, or you can cut off their energy supply through something like Signet of Humility.

It's not a whole lot less counters than other spells have in theory (you can pump any fast-recharge spell if you have Ether Prodigy backing you up.) The problem is that in practice Heal Party is just as useful even if the character themself is so far back as to be untouchable by the opposing team. If this weren't the case, a degen build could simply ensure that it has a couple Heal Party counters packed away. As it is, the Heal Party counters you bring are a lot less important than they should be, because actually reaching the guy you want to counter is a huge positioning battle that gives the enemy plenty of opportunity to punish you.

Ensign · Apr 19, 2006, 09:51 AM // 09:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

[i]Gaze of Contempt...Much like a Rend with no penalty.

No penalty? It's written right into the skill itself. It can and will miss. Sure that drawback is less relevant if all you're doing is 321spiking, but it's extremely sketchy as a way to pull off that enchantment stack that shows up *after* you start targeting a guy. One of the reasons Shatter Enchantment is so good is because it punishes those reactive enchantments, and oftentimes it'll even kill someone who just recieved an enchantment to keep him alive. Gaze can't even touch people in that same circumstance.

Also don't neglect that 15 energy cost when comparing the skill to Rend. You can afford it, sure, but 15 energy is spendy.

It's certainly a good skill and I expect to see it getting a fair amount of play. Retardedly good removal though? Far from it. It's about on par with Rend Enchantments, better in some situations and much worse in others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

[i]Blessed Light {Elite Spell}

I'm not terribly impressed by that one actually. It only becomes efficient if you're removing a condition and a hex with every cast, and to make it worth your elite slot you need to be casting it often. There aren't a lot of builds that you want that doubled removal against, let alone metagames where supporting that is realistic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

(I love that phrase)

You love it so much that you're diluting the meaning of it. Heal Party is retardedly good at smashing degen. These skills are merely effective.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

[i]Order of Apostasy {Elite Enchantment}

Actually I don't expect the health hit to break a normal necromancer outside of really extreme cases. Enchantments are never stacked that deep - you're only going to realistically die if your team goes nuts and starts trying to pull Aegis off everyone, for example.

This Order is actually pretty comparable to Lingering Curse - it's a lot costlier to use due to the health sac, and needs a supporting cast like all Orders. The benefit of Apostasy is not the number of enchantments removed, in my mind, but the timing on the removals. While a Rend or Linger or Gaze of Contempt might strip someone clean of pre-prot, none of those address prot that lands after damage starts to arrive. Order on the other hand will rip off protection as it arrives, keeping the target free of enchantment based defenses for its duration. That's a much more dangerous effect than simple, one shot removal. Dangerous enough to make up for the cost and how much less flexible it is than a rend? I guess we'll find out where that's the case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

If your build has such a strong degen component that the other team sacrifices whole players to only heal party'ing to stay alive, I would consider scourge healing an effective enough counter.

You might think that from looking at the skill, as I did, but in practice it doesn't work out that way at all. The biggest problem is that Scourge doesn't threaten the Heal Party guy at all, especially if he's hanging out in the back. He's in complete control of the effect, not you. As long as he's not at risk of dropping dead from a Heal Party he can cast it at will. Another issue along these lines is that the first Scourge Healing doesn't count. The Heal Party heals the caster as well, and if that character is out of danger that self heal largely mitigates, if not eliminates, the damage from the first Scourge Healing. You need a second copy being maintained somewhere to even start to get anywhere, and in practice you need a 3rd copy to make that character care. Perhaps surprisingly, this problem becomes worse if the other team has multiple Heal Parties, since the healing from the other guy's Party will clean up your Scourge damage as well as his own.

A bigger, but more subtle problem is actually using the Scourge Healing. Getting and keeping 3 copies of Scourge Healing on a team is not a trivial job. It can consume all of a character's natural energy regeneration on its own. Your build still only has 8 characters to work with, and while you might gain a Scourge Healing to disrupt a Heal Party you also lose a character's worth of pressure that would otherwise make that Party more neccessary.

I can speak from experience on this one - the Scourge Healing experiments happened the same week as the tests on elementalist damage that spawned my initial complaints about the profession's damage dealing ability. A single copy of Scourge Healing simply doesn't do enough to matter - boonprots are too common and ignore the Scourge for normal heals, and removal happens often enough that the Heal Party isn't punished significantly. You need a second copy of Scourge Healing being spammed about if you want to make them stop using Heal Party. A second copy of Scourge Healing does accomplish this goal, but I'm not sure if the reason is because using Heal Party is too painful, or if a build powering out two copies of Scourge Healing is so non-threatening that Heal Party is no longer neccessary.

I'm not about to call the skill useless, but believe me when I say that it is much, much weaker in practice than it could ever look on paper.

Peace,
-CxE

SaintGreg · Apr 19, 2006, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

A second copy of Scourge Healing does accomplish this goal, but I'm not sure if the reason is because using Heal Party is too painful, or if a build powering out two copies of Scourge Healing is so non-threatening that Heal Party is no longer neccessary.

Point well taken.

The big thing I see is that with order of apostasy, it really does require a high level of curses. It only really starts getting effective when your curses is so high that you can't do much else. At 11 curses it does 10% health. If reversal gets removed instead of triggered, that could mean that in any one apostasy assisted arenal spike you could hit through maybe 5 enchantments. Suddenly dropping to 50% health is not something to be overlooked. It certainly could be worth it to make sure that the target dies, but its not a no-brainer.

Then again with 16 curses and awaken the blood you could practically use it to strip enchantments off anyone and everyone at will. You wouldn't have the energy for it, and you'd be doing nothing else though.

Ensign · Apr 19, 2006, 07:11 PM // 19:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

The big thing I see is that with order of apostasy, it really does require a high level of curses...its not a no-brainer.

Don't overstate that health sacrifice. It isn't like you'd just drop a random 25 energy elite onto a character and wish him luck. When you want an Order of Apostasy in a build it's going to cost you a character, so it's only going to happen when that effect is absolutely rocking. You'll find a way to pay those costs with a character largely devoted to the skill. It isn't going to be worth that cost of a character slot a vast majority of the time, though.

Peace,
-CxE

Sha Noran · Apr 19, 2006, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

No penalty? It's written right into the skill itself. It can and will miss.

You're going to laugh. I went back to read it when I saw you say this, thinking you were crazy, and found that I had misread it; I thought it said ABOVE 50% health, not below. Blah, forget that skill then.

Going back to OoA though, you said it yourself; it doesn't just remove the pre-prot, it KEEPS off all the prot. It might hurt, but I said in my original post where I mention the skill that you could run it with a 105 Curses/Blood build with Blood Renewal and barely feel it.

And it's not like your team doesn't KNOW you have the skill; they won't be attacking random targets at the time you throw it up, so only the enchantments on a specific target would be removed (ideally).

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

Then again with 16 curses and awaken the blood you could practically use it to strip enchantments off anyone and everyone at will. You wouldn't have the energy for it, and you'd be doing nothing else though.

Awaken the Blood could be your downfall; the 16 Curses, which would be lowering your total health sac'd, is a waste if you bring Awaken, which doubles the health you sac whenever you do.

SaintGreg · Apr 19, 2006, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

You're going to laugh. I went back to read it when I saw you say this, thinking you were crazy, and found that I had misread it; I thought it said ABOVE 50% health, not below. Blah, forget that skill then.

If target foe has more than 50% Health, that foe loses all Enchantments

You read it right the first time, it IS above 50%, and that's why Ensign is saying it has less effectiveness than it appears. If it read "if target was below 50%" nobody would use it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sha Noran

Awaken the Blood could be your downfall; the 16 Curses, which would be lowering your total health sac'd, is a waste if you bring Awaken, which doubles the health you sac whenever you do.

For 5 seconds, whenever a party member hits a foe, that foe loses one Enchantment. For each Monk Enchantment removed, you lose 20...10% Health.

Order of Apostasy doesn't have a health sacrifice, so whats the problem? Its like using awaken for shadow strike except you only increase the effectiveness of SS from 50 to 55, an increase of 10%. With OoA you go from 6% to (guesstimated - guildwiki data is incomplete) 4%, in increase in effectiveness of 50%.

Sha Noran · Apr 20, 2006, 12:09 AM // 00:09

I suppose it would just be lost health, not really a sacrifice.

Hmm... yes, yes I was right the first time. It wouldn't be that bad then in my opinion, since a good Evisc. will take a target from around 60% hp to 0... so if you timed it right, that would be a pretty nice skill.

Falconer · Apr 20, 2006, 01:29 AM // 01:29

A quick explanation of why I believe armor is a problem specificially for elementalists in game moreso than other classes in game. And a bit of a window into why I argue against the warriors AL more specifically. As well as the current way that damage types and elementalized weapons are handled. I'm not intending this as an argument so much as my view of past changes seen during preview events and after release, and my view on how these changes caught elementalists in the crossfire.

Right now effectively only 3 classes have to deal with armor in game. Warriors, Rangers, and elementalists (give it another 2 weeks til release and then we can add assassins and ritualists to that as well). Of those, warriors, rangers, and assassins have solid sources of armor ignoring +dam when they use their skills. EG: if you hit someone with executioners... you're pretty much assured your +40 armor ignoring damage even if the target has ludicrous levels of base armor. Same goes for ranger and assassin.

Mesmers and necros (and the oddball smiter) don't deal with armor because their skills simply ignore it by and large.

Also relatedly, in much the same way... healing ignores armor. View it as anti-damage or negative damage for comparisons purpose. Also commonly it recieves 50% to 100% more effect for the same amount of energy expenditure.

Elementalists using their skills on the other hand hit armor full in the face. Their skills look really good... 128 damage or so for a fireball, 140 for a lightning orb. But that's only good for nailing soft targets. In practice, that means that warriors and rangers are somewhat proof against these guys. As their big money nukes will only tickle for much more moderate amounts. Compared to the above... any other class using it's skills gets some pretty good assured damage. Elementalists are completely at the mercy of the armor system whatever they do though... if they wand they hit +elemental... if they cast... they hit +elemental. From a current game standpoint... if they can't spike or help spike a target out... their damage almost isn't worth considering given that their damage is reduced but the healing isn't and the heals get the same effect for half the energy and they have no dog in the DPS race... simply the utility to shut something down potentially until they are in a position to try and spike again.

In game, only one class was supposed to be 'proof' against elementalists and that was rangers (look at the history... they were changed from 80base +20 elemental to 70 base +30 elemental, not 70 base +20 elemental... draw your own conclusions). Warrior DR is an answer to lots of small packets of damage... well who was the #1 source of those... rangers (kindle and ignite being the two principal preps in use at the time). Elemental D-Dots don't even enter into that equation as most people move out of em too fast to matter. It's a way to take the edge off elementalized kindled arrows and the like without majorly affecting big damage like fireballs.

Now stop and think about warrior armor as a response to rangers... You need a lot of AL to account for the basic bow damage, if you're going to make the principal +dam sources from skill use armor ignoring. From this frame of mind... +35 damage from power shot on a 3s recycle needs a lot of armor to reduce, paired with other ranger effects and 5% expertise levels. Consider this when your basic bow damage including crits is roughly 40 ballpark. Especially when it was better to change your damage to elemental to skirt the warriors +armor using kindle or a simple elemental string.

This only makes the elementalist horse in this race lamer and lamer as you look at the above dynamic. As the ranger slips into the elementalists forte (elemental damage) simply to avoid the armor strength they're supposed to run smack into. (now the answer is to use a lot of +dam, from RtW, favourable, winnowing, OoP...).

*cue, day the universe changed baroque brass theme music, and exit stage left. One of those documentary type educational shows about how this led to that which led to the next thing and how we ended up with the world today*