Does any one else feel that Elementalist skills are kind of... lacking?

I have been PvPing in tombs for quite some time, and although I'm not a top-rated player by any means, (just earned rank 6 a day ago, if that means anything anymore with IWAY builds running around.), while trying to make a build of my own I noticed something- It's kind of hard to stick in an Elementalist running something other than wards into a build.

When I'm looking for solid damage or damage spiking I usually turn to either axe warriors or the dps ranger builds out there, which kind of pre-empts most of the air line and all of the fire line. A pair of axe warriors or a pair of rangers just seems to be more effective than a pair of fire or air eles. Having some spell damage is nice for getting around wards and aegis, but it just seems awkward devoting a slot in a build just for "emergency damage" when I can have a solid mesmer or necro build in their instead.

In the earth line, wards really shine, but nearly everything else either has some clunky cast time, awful recharge or exhaustion inducing. Armor of Earth is a very nice armor spell and is something I tag onto a warder if there isn't anything else to fill in from the secondary class, and along with the wards and possibly Obisdian flame, thats all I really have. Wave and Aftershock can be admittedly very useful, but the situations that you can use them in can be rather limited. Iron Mist is a very useful snare, but is really high on the priority list for being removed, and as an elementalist you kind of lack in cover hexes.

In the water line, ward vs harm looks pretty nice, as does water trident. Malestrom and shard storm, kind of shine above the rest, and everything else just seems overpriced.

About the attunements - Elemental attunement by itself leaves you with 15 seconds of down time + 2 seconds of casting, which means it has a bad habit of running out when you need it the most. And if you pair it with one of the elemental attunes (fire,air,earth,water) that means you are sacraficing 2 skill slots (and you usually bring res along) and one is an elite to boot.

So from looking everything over, Earth really shines above the other 4 elements in terms of PvP capability and utility while fire and air is outclassed by warriors and rangers and water just seems pricey.


Maybe I'm going about this all wrong - any suggestions? Maybe I'm missing something vital?

Water is seriously lacking in all aspects. The others I guess serve one purpose or another. Earth is good, since it provides defense as well as offense.

Water lacks in the Tombs. It definitely shines in GvG, however. In fact, all the elements shine in GvG. Earth and Water just aren't very popular choices due to how their defensive properties don't flow well with the average Elementalist "I do high damage" mindset. Explore the unexplored, people.

Anything water can do, earth and/or air can do better, pretty much. That makes the entire skillset kind of useless from my perspective. Aside from slowing people down (which doesn't have too much practical use to base an attribute setup off of), what's water got going for it?

Blurred vision? Blinding Flash
Any defensive spells? Armor of earth and/or obsidian flesh (a combination of both makes and elementalist very strong)
Maelstrom? Only useful for disruption--you don't need any skill at all for it to be any more effective.

The only thing water's got going for it is Ward Against Harm, but I definitely wouldn't make a hydromancer just for that. If I want damage, I'll go fire or air. If I want defense (and a decent offense) I'll go earth. So what's water for? Most of the skills I see are pretty useless, other than to keep the elementalist alive :|

The thing that all of the elementalist lines are lacking is depth. There are only a certain number of skills that you actually have to work with; this is ofcourse due to the fact that the rest are complete and utter trash.

Most skills are garbage effect and overpriced.

Really only earth for defensive measures (wards, AoE/Kinetic in rare cares) and snares (iron mist/grasping earth) and water for snares are the uses for eles besides ether renewal.

when you scan through the entire elementalist skills... there will only be 1 or 2 skills that is interesting... everything else are high price luxury or ineffective toy that is all too straight foward...

water is good... in its own way...
-it make excellent blanket hex
-mobility/field control
-decent recharge
-decent on energy
-work better with other classes in specialize build
and bad in its own way
-not the greatest in anything

you have to admit water was shinning too bright back in BWE before the water nerf.

I agree for most parts with the OP. Earth is VERY useful in PvP, the other skillsets don't really cut it. I love playing my ele. But everytime I took her into PvP my afterthoughts were "my ranger could have done that just as good if not better". Some Fire spells deal really good damage, but given the energy costs and/or recharge times, I think the damage output per second is higher with my ranger. Rangers don't get interrupted while shooting, most nice ele damage spells have awful long casting times. Also my ranger usually doesn't get ganked by the enemy and has superb survival capabilities in comparison to an ele. How is a Fire ele supposed to defend herselves? Not at all, unless she takes the Earth line as well. A ranger can slap Whirling Defense on and happily continue firing arrows while the warriors ganking her hit thin air trying to whack her. Air Spikes are nice, but if they got a competent prot monk, this won't get you very far, too. Also the exhaustion thing is awful...

I would prefer my ranger over the ele every day of the week unless the group build is specifically designed around eles.

water skills that cost 25 energy does 20 dmg .....

Eles are definitely lacking in their skills. They're almost always either A) a smiter, B) a prot, C) a warder. Their DPS isn't even close to what a Ranger or Warrior can do.

...AND interrupts spellcasting in an area for ten seconds. Maelstrom's damage is an afterthought, not the reason for casting it.

If you measure everything's utility by DPS alone, you're not going to get very far in this game.

The problems with the Elementalist lines become obvious with a few simple comparisons. Not to other classes' skills mind you.. but to their own.

Let's start with an easy one. Fire Storm vs. Searing Heat:

Fire Storm
Damage: 5-24 per second for 10 seconds in an area (Maximum: 240)
Energy : 15
Cast : 4
Recast : 30

Searing Heat
Damage: 5-24 per second for 5 seconds in an area, +3 seconds of ignition at the end (Maximum: 162)
Energy : 25 + Exhaustion
Cast : 3
Recast : 30

Anyone want to make an argument for why you'd ever use Searing Heat? Keep in mind that even if Armor is reducing the hit damage to 25% normal amounts, it's still 60 from FS vs. 72 from Searing Heat.


Let's try another pair: Shard Storm vs. Mind Freeze

Shard Storm
Damage: 10-54
Snare : 66% slower for 2-5 seconds
Energy : 10
Cast : 1
Recast : 10

Mind Freeze (Elite)
Damage: 10-34, plus 10-34 if you have more Energy
Snare : 66% slower for 2-5 seconds
Energy : 10 + Exhaustion
Cast : 1
Recast : 10

Wee! Let's Exhaust ourselves to increase our damage potential by around 20% and then make half of it conditional! YES! What?! It costs us our Elite too? Well.. okay, it's still awesome! (not)


But finally, my favorite one: Lightning Strike vs. Lightning Javelin

Lightning Strike
Damage: 5-41 (25% Penetration)
Energy : 5
Cast : 1
Recast : 5

Lightning Javelin
Damage: 15-43 (25% Penetraton), interrupts target if they're attacking
Energy : 10
Cast : 1
Recast : 5

Yep! You're paying 5 Energy for a conditional (and a condition that makes it almost useless at that) interrupt. Oh, and you need LoS and a projectile hit too now. "But it has higher minimum damage you noob!" Actually, that higher minimum damage is a penalty.. it means the rate of damage increase per skill point is less (since both have similar maximums), so at 16 Air, they probably do equal damage, or possibly, Strike does more. :x

The only argument in favor of the losers in any of these pairs is if you want a similar effect without waiting for the recast so much. But that's a pretty lame argument if you ask me, especially given how much worse the losers are. I'd rather use Glyph of Renewal + the good version for just about all of these.

These are only the surface of Elementalist problems: if you compare them to the skills/capabilities of other classes (something I'm unwilling to do here since my experience is almost entirely with my E/Me, thus I would have even less of a clue what I'm talking about :P), you could probably find even more issues.

You can come up with some pretty devastating combos with an Elementalist, especially adding in an appropriate skill or two from a secondary profession. They also have the easiest time causing knockdowns, which can really help out when used properly.

The problem is, as mentioned, those good combos use up about 25% of the Elementalist skills... because the rest are worthless. All the damage over time AoE's (except Meteor Shower) don't do enough, water magic in general is overpriced and the bonus effect of slowdown doesn't stack well, all three Mind spells barely beat the effects of non-elite, non-conditional, non-Exhaustion causing counterparts, there are too many overlapping self protection spells between Earth and Water (I mean honestly, how many armor bonuses do you need?!), and some spells aren't even balanced with others in the same line, let alone other attributes or classes (like the mentioned Strike/Javelin, or the hilariously bad Lightning Touch).

Well, I was thinking about deep freeze, and moveing out of a mealstorm is not hard as you can spot the storm fairly fast.

I love all the water spells, but it does not feel balanced compared to air/fire (& other classes that can do what water ele does better). Some lower recharge rates would be nice.

smart people ignore TheFerret because he has no clue about conditions.

Intelligent people ignore Ollj because he has no clue about the rest of the game.
Ollj, if you disagree with what TheFerret wrote, I'd love to see you actually address it.

Please enlighten me, how do you see Searing Heat as effective?
How do you plan builds around Lightning Javelin?
What is your argument for taking Mind Freeze over Shard Storm?

Okay, then, as "20 damage" seemed like a blatant reference to Maelstrom. Deep Freeze does more like 50-60 damage with decent levels in Water _and_ causes AoE slowdown for 10 seconds. It's not the greatest 25-point spell around, but then again, that's what Glyph of Energy is for.

At different times, my PvE Ele has played around with Fire, Fire/Air, Earth, Earth/Air, Earth/Fire, Air/Earth, Earth/Water and Water/Earth builds. All of them have been useful for certain play styles and circumstances, and that's just taking into account primary attributes; plugging in skills from a secondary profession can complement an Ele's spells.

Are there some real clunkers among the Ele's skillset? Sure. Now name a class that doesn't have some useless or redundant skills.

You know, the one thing I always wondered about Meteor Shower is what takes the first "hit" of the shower SO FREAKING long, and how despite the good ten or so actual, graphic meteors strike, only 3 of them actually hit and cause damage...

Oh, and Lightning Touch's redeeming factor is that it's not a spell, and thus penetrates spellbreaker and obsidian flesh, oh and it has the conditional damage, and a fast recast.

Of course it's always been painfully obvious that elementalist skills are sorely overpriced for how little effect they seem to have, when juxtaposed to skills of the same cost for other classes, this is why so many elementalist builds have resorted to using other class spells, with energy storage abuse to fuel it.

As for using Searing Heat, uh...uhm...maybe you could have a E/W ViM build to use the fire with, erm, yeah.

For Lightning Javelin, uhm, I guess if you're like one hell of a psychic, you could interrupt like an Eviscerate, or a distracting shot or something like that, booyeah!

And using mind freeze over shard storm, it's that uh....you...don't need a projectile to hit? *shrug* Therefore, it's ftw.

I'm curious too. What did I write that so effectively proved I have no clue about conditions? The only condition mentioned at all is the Ignition Searing Heat causes. 14 damage per second for 3 seconds, ignores armor. Anything else I need to know?

I accounted for this in my comparison of the skills versus extreme armor too. But just for you Ollj, I'll lay out the math on my Fire Storm vs. Searing Heat comparison when working against high armor.

Fire Storm vs. Searing Heat, assumptions:
- Target is standing in both for the full duration of each.
- Target's armor is reducing damage by 75%.
- Target does not have the Ignition removed before it runs its course.
- Caster of both spells has 12 in Fire.

Fire Storm: (6x10) = 60
Searing Heat: (6x5)+(14x3) = 72

60 vs. 72. Exactly what I said in my post above. Notice how, since I actually DO know how conditions work, I did not reduce the 14 per second from Ignition, since that is unaffected by armor. :P

Since that's the only part of my post where I needed to know how conditions work, I'm assuming this is what you had a problem with Ollj. If not, please tell me what I was wrong about and I will be happy to explain or correct it as needed. Even crude and rude criticisms of the type yours was of have value if the substance is correct and I learn something from it, so I'm all ears.

Including the conditional damage, Lightning Touch still does less damage than Lightning Orb for the same amount of energy. It takes two times as long to recharge as Orb, and requires touch whereas Orb is ranged. Lightning Touch does do AoE, but if you're looking for PBAOE, use Flame Burst which does about the same damage for the same energy, is not conditional, and recharges in 4 seconds.