Time to fix the Elementalist

Wouldn't you agree that if PBAoE spam becomes truly as popular as people suggest it might, the ability to toss a Ward vs Foes and spam Heal Party will become all the more important? Certainly, not the most fascinating part of the Ele skill arsenal but nevertheless a use of sorts. Do you think that better energy management will solve some of the issues involved? And by better nrg management I don't mean anything radical like adding extra pips, more along the lines of new nrg management skills (that don't cause Exhaustion for a break).

Max on regen is +10, isn't it?

Maybe just have energy storage work like the attunements do now, only for elemental spells...

QFT.

also dont forget that straight buffing the skills will turn good old imps/golems/titant/etc into death machines.

Dear Ira, DEATH MACHINES is supposed to be the definition of a true elementalist: nasty raw damage. And yes, id love to deal the same damage with my ele than imps and titans but the difference between NPC foe eles and PC eles are gigantic:

I deal 141 dmg with a Lightning orb at 16 Air magic whereas the level 24 ele boss Chung the Attuned hits for 324 damage with his Lightning orb, we both on a 60 armor foe.

I hit for 21 dmg with a Meteor or a Star burst at 16 Fire magic vs any Mursaat boss, even the "soft armored" necros and mesmers.

I think the most elegant solution, if you want ele's to be damage threats and not heal-party spammers or support characters, is to add an armor penetration bonus linked to energy storage.

Why not just have ele runes that increase damage output, warriors got absorption runes after all.
Or put player elementalist on par with monster elementalist in damage output.

As it stands now, the Derwish will take the position as best AOE dealer , making Elementalist even less frequent as desired party members.

But then again in a party of 4-8 there is only so much room, people will discriminate in attempts achive optimum result or "best" group. A party of 4-8 will now be composed of...?

I apologise beforehand for repeating myself over and over again, but here is my proposal that echoes SpeedyKQ's:

Replace the 3 extra energy points per rank granted by Energy storage and have instead "Elemental wisdom" with an extra 3-5% damage OR armor penetration per rank when using elemental spells.

Regarding energy management, I humbly submit this for consideration

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10017623

I also like the armour penetration suggestion. However, to avoid it being a monk-style 1 class primary, I think it should apply to all Spells that do element damage, such as Ritualist spells.... and Dervish spells :P

Having said that tho, I really think recharge times on Ele spells should be looked at. Balance issues aside, its just not FUN to be locked out of doing things for so long. I dont think any damage skill should have a recharge longer than 60s, and many of the 30s recharge skills really need to be changed to 15s or 20s. Sure, modify the damage to keep them balanced (probably not necessary) but they should be available more often.

If you want armor penetration then use air magic. Why changed their primary for something that already exist?

Stop complaining about an ele's dmg. The problem with the ele is recharge and cast times on skills. They have to be in the mid line to use those skills. That puts them in postition to get owned by a mes or ranger. You use a high energy skill, get interrupted, and now you are out the energy and have to wait the long recharge. Oh btw, you didn't do any dmg.

With their current set up for GvG they are the best flag runners. This also puts them out of range for heal party to be interrupted or shutdown. They also carry wards, snares, blind, ect..... Set it and forget it skills.

There is nothing wrong with the dmg from ele's the other classes just own it because of the paper rock system of GW. Just like every other class in GW is the same it can be beaten by something else.

Hella, i guess you mean Ward vs foes because the damage dervishes dealt in PvP beta event wasnt really scythe based but magic based.

The sad point, as it has been mentioned everywhere is that since eles do not deal real damage their role is limited to be a support player that spams Heal parties, snares like Deep freeze or wards.

Real damage is what we ask. Against early foes like chars we do rule, but once we get to the desert the things get complicated vs Enchanted swords and bows because their armor pwns our biggest spells. In that case only Immolate or Mark of Rodgorts can save us because the degeneration they cause.

Yes, exhaustion is really a pain, but the real issue of energy is that we drain ourselves out as a desperate measure: we do not deal enough damage so we keep casting to overcome the lack of one bazooka spell with several machine gun spells that are expensive, slow to cast and with huge recharge times. Let me precise it with an example:

I cast Meteor shower on a couple of Mursaat bosses and i realise i am dealing 21 damage per meteor, then i cast Rodgorts invocation and i see the two yellow 24's, "omg!" then here i come with Mark of rodgort and i end up with a "wand spike" because i have less than 10 energy, all spells recharging, and i see that the burning deals tons of more harm than my raw spells.

That is exactly the problem. The elementalists are one of the best support classes ingame: flag runners, snares, wards, HP spammers, KD and Blind. Yes indeed, they are really impressive doing that, but they are a total fiasco as damage dealers:

A Lightning Orb at 16 Air magic deals 106 dmg and has 25% armor penetration. Against Jade armor deals 92 dmg (not bad i must confess) BUT against a Mursaat boss it deals only 38 damage: the same amount of damage a Vampiric Gaze deals with only 7 ranks on blood.

You know, it's funny, when I first started playing Guild Wars (about 6 months ago) I thought Ele's were one of the best damage dealing classes in the game, and I thought Mesmers were just lame. 6 months later, my opinions have completely reversed. Ele's are (unfortunately) one of the worst classes (and Mesmers are pretty cool).

I can easily match an Ele's damage output with my Warrior. That's pretty sad, but do you know what's worse? ANet made it that way on purpose. They "balanced" Ele's by reducing their ability to deal massive damage. But when I can deal as much, if not more, damage with a class that has much better armor, why would I use an Ele?

Yea, Ward vs Foes, thanks for pointing that out. See... I don't know if it is really bad that Eles are mostly used for slows and blind/weakness spam in PvP. I mean... it is pretty impressive to be able to keep something slowed and blinded (or weakened) for prolonged periods of time all the while pumping your whole party with mass heals. Sure, there is no fireworks involved but the benefits of these are obvious.

As for the PvE side of things, when Ele damage doesn't work anymore you can do a couple of things: switch to PBAoEs which are generally higher dam so they compensate for higher armor, play Earth and use the non-elemental skills, focus on conditions and hexes spam, or do KD. I mean, it used to be that Eles did kill anything with the Echo nuking be4 the AoE nerf. Sure it was great but it wasn't rly anyhow logical for Eles to unload a ton of nukes and wipe out a whole bunch of high lvl monsters within seconds. This said, I find it funny that the highest dps AoE- Mark of Pain- never belonged to Eles.

Yeah, but there really isnt anything in the ele lines that "overpowers" by force or manipulation like the other professions do. If the "real" strength of the ele is to not be in a fight, there is a much larger problem than many individuals are putting forward. Personally i dont agree with that observation, because that would be more of a ritualist/spirit thing to me.

elemental atunement, immolate, fireball, rodgort's invocation, meteor shower, glyph of lesser energy, glyph of elemental power, res skill
that's my pve ele set up, I only pvp with my necro and warrior so I don't bother with a pvp set up

maybe if they lowered the exhaustion to 5 points rather then 10

Hella, i have a guess of how did that work that way: against warriors and rangers after Dorks you deal 60 dmg with a single meteor, so if foes do not flee and you cast 2 meteor showers it is 60x6= 360 dmg + KD, which is a nice damage considering the 50 energy cost and 20 exhaustion. Now the foes flee and spread to minimise the effects, which is good because AI should mimic real behaviour, but in than way a Meteor shower only hits one foe, and only once, so 25 energy, casting in 5 secs, cooldown of 60 and exhaustion is not a fair trade for 60 damage.

If Meteor was a 60x3=180 single hit vs high armored things would be different: 3 secs cast and 30 secs cooldown.

Again, the point is that, due to the lack of damage, the Eles have been forced to play other builds in order to use cleverly the extra energy granted by ES, which should give a bonus on elemental spells.

I won't post any 'quick fixes'. I really begin to tire of continually writing the same thing only for it to fall on deaf ears. All I will say is this...

I think everybody can at least agree on that. Anet know what they need to do to improve them. They made this game. Came up with some of the best builds. If anyone knows, they do.
If they do not do anything for the cunjurers in the next chapter, I would then reason that they just don't give a damn. Simple as that really.

I was wondering why the elementalist henchies in Prophecies are Fire based and sucked, but those in Factions are earth and air based and they are really decent. Well here are my guesses:

1. Mind burn is really decent fire elite (except for the exhaustion factor) because you set the foe on fire for 7 secs (that is 14x7=98 dmg) plus the 63x2=126 fire damage. Versus a Jade armor it deals over 150 net damage.

2. In Factions there are monk foes in almost every spawn, so fire is easily coutered. In that case direct damage (Obsidian flame), the double hit of Stone daggers (the first one possibly neutralised with Reversal of fortune but not the second one) or an air spiker are more useful.

3. Against the melee foes a warder is really valuable. Add Unsteady ground and Churning earth and you can clear the area because foes do not stay there to receive the whole damage, they flee.

4. Fire storm always arrives late, but even if it comes in good time is a joke because foes just take one step right and voila!

Just imagine Mind Burn without exhaustion: it would be a nice elite worthy to be echoed, and in that case the fire elementalist could really be a fearful goddess of damage.

PLZ PLZ ANET remove exhaustion, or make it only 5!

That is one idea i'd like to see being executed... it'd give the elementalists the needed buff (as well in strength as popularity, hopefully), and it won't disable any fast cast elementalists in PvP

If ANet will do that, i'm gonna start my own elementalist, 100% sure of that.

Just a little mathematical exercise:

Warriors have ~20 energy and 2 pips
Rangers ~30 energy and 3 pips
Monks, Necros, Ritualists, Mesmers ~40 energy and 4 pips
Assassins have 4 pips but ~30 energy, why? because their skills are very expensive, 10 energy, and they are meant to use them continuously.

How many pips should a ~70 energy caster have? Yes, 7. I know this is absurd, it would make Ele the best primary profession, but Energy storage as it is now only helps secondary profession spells (Heal party spammers or Arcane healers) or allows us to have a better e management against exhaustion and E denial.

How could we improve the elementalist?
How could the elementalist cast continuously?

Maybe the ranger has the answer: Expertise. It keeps the ranger using 10-15 energy skills: think about trappers setting non-stop 10-25 energy traps with Mantra of resolve on; remember the premade R/A build "fangs of melandru"; or think about touchers, a real threat even better than a primary necro using the same skills. I quote:

"For each rank of Expertise, the Energy cost of all of your non-Spells decreases by 4%. Several skills, especially those related to Energy costs and skill recharge times, become more effective with higher Expertise.'"

What about this idea of "Elemental expertise" or "Elemental wisdom" instead of Energy storage:

"For each rank of Elemental wisdom, the Energy cost of all of your Spells related to elemental magic decreases by 4%"

In that way we could cast better than we do now: with 10 atts a Meteor shower or any 25 energy spell would cost 15 energy.

Finally, i echo the proposal of a rune for extra elemental damage. But please post how much extra damage should minor, major and superior runes grant? 10-20-30 ?