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

couldn't "smart people" make their own assumptions being that they are 'smart'.

you could at the very least provide some detail as to why we should ignore him. As far as I can see he went through the effort to put together a post that makes a lot of sense, IMO...are you going to back up your claim that he knows nothing about conditions or are you just going to throw it out there and hope a couple of 'smart people' latch on?

Hehe, I wouldn't worry too much about anything that Ollj says Ferret. The kid's a formula one retard.

Most of the air skills are moot since its spiking ability is exceeded by that of rangers and warriors. Out of the entire line, the only thing really worth bringing is Windborne Speed (helps teamates kite and for altar maps) and Gale (knockdown for altar maps) and maybe blinding flash.

Nearly all of the fire spells are too slow (cast time and recharge) or too costly (high energy and/or exhaustion) or both. The damage is even less than the air line, but is aoe, which can have its advantages, but more often than not the opportunities to use them are too short lived.

Earth spells has wards which are big plus and some nice snares (Grasping Earth and Iron Mist) and armor spells(Armor of Earth). They have a decent finishing spell-Obisidian Flame. The pbaoe spells -crystal wave and aftershock make for good combos if you are willing to take your ele into the thick of things. The other offensive spells however are expensive pieces of crap with stupid long recast times.

Water, like many people noticed, is plagued with stupid expensive spells that have long cast times, recast times or both. Despite those problems, blurred vision is a nice spell, as is Maelstrom. Of the elites, WvH and Water Trident are the only ones that are pvp worthy.

The air line needs a good boost in damage and some more intelligent rebalancing of skills (chain lightning should not have been nerfed), fire needs to ditch either the long cast times or the high cost. Earth is actually pretty solid but probably can use some touching up. Water needs to have both price and cast times toned down.

If i could know with certainty what the AoE is of the skills I use, Id be happy.
Its not that you cant "figure" it. But Id with you could just SEE maybe and indicator on your minimap where your AoEs hit.
Metero Shower needs an update in discription or something.

For 8 seconds 12 exploding meteors strike the area near your target. The meteor explodes, knocking down and striking for 7-112 damage to any standing foe it hits.

I dont know if thats true, but a clearer discription would help.
But yeah, If I could stop guessing AoEs, I could use them more properly.

It looks to me that a number of water skills could use a reduction in either cost or recast time. Outside of that, they seem ok.

Almost every Elemental Magic Elite is crap.

Air Magic:
Thunderclap. A spell that causes mass knock down when someone is hit with Lightning Damage. Usefull if you have a Lightning Weapon, or do a spell like Chain. But other than that, you could just as easily run in and use Whirlwind for the same effect and alot less energy.

Lightning Surge: A spell that does 70 Lightning Damage after 3 seconds. But its also the only Lightning Spell in the game that doesnt have 25% Armor Penetration. Its a Hex, so the damage isnt even guaranteed if the Hex is broken. And it only hits 1 person, and this spell causes Exhaustion. Chain Lightning is such a better use of a skill slot and of energy.

Mindshock: Conditional Dual Damage that may or may not do less damage than Lightning Strike.. and it causes Exhaustion.

Fire Magic:
First off, there's only one elite, Mind Burn. Secondly, its another one that's just a Conditional Dual Damage. And even though the target can be set on fire for 6 seconds, you'll get more damage and hit more people with Rodgort's Invocation. And Rodgort's costs only 10 more, and recharges faster. The only thing Mind Burn really has going for it is the very short cast time.

Earth Magic:
Obsidian Flesh: The % of slowing should be conditioned depending on your rank.

Water Magic:
Mind Freeze: Again, the conditional problem. And this one is worse. Because Water Magic's normal 66% slow down is part of the conditional side of this spell. If you dont have more energy than the enemy, they dont slow down. You are more likely to do more damage with Shard Storm than Mind Freeze.

I find it a bit lacking too, and pretty much the onyl spells I like is Lightning Orb and Armor of Earth.

Energy isn't much of a problem for most elementalists anyway with energy storage, artifacts, and usually at least one attunement skill. I spam Envolate, Lightning Javelin, and Envinerating Charge (which causes weakness, this along with Entrophy really messes up warriors and rangers). It is all about timing so that one skill will have recharged by the time you are done casting another one. Spaming Lightning strike though is pretty useless since it's technically outclassed by Flare since Flare has no recast time and can be spammed faster.

So the consensus is that there are two problems:

1) Elementalist skills cost too much for what they do

2) Elementalist skill lines have no depth (only a few truly worthwhile (offensive) skills per line.

To this I'll add another:

3) Elementalist skills are completely crippled by high armor.

Note that almost every other class has a way around this. The bonus damage from physical attack skills mostly ignore armor and many add an armor penetration % to the base attack. Warriors have strength. Necromancers, monk, and mesmer damage ignore armor altogether. Theoretically you can balance this by making the base damage higher to compensate, and on paper that's what Anet has done, but almost all the big damage skills have horribly long recharges and and/or cast times.

I don't know what can be done about this short of a complete rebalancing of elementalist skills. Since this is unlikely I suggest a quick fix, add armor penetration to elementalist spells for each point above 12 in the related attribute, say 2.5% per point.

Couple problems with this. The first one is the big damage comes in parts and in multiple augmentation sources for the physical attackers, making the upfront versus over time arguement difficult at best. Many forms of attack that ignore AL are conditional, but some of them are not. Another issue with going bigger is that when you face a low AL, is the one shot death scenario which does not promote good gameplay in this format, even though with the cast, cost and recast times suggest that damage up front spells were overbalanced versus over time. Even if the spell damage goes bigger and the cast times stay the same or get longer, they are still hamstringed by things like protective spirit, reversal of fortune, and others much more than every other form of attack.

Either you ramp up the current skill sets to be more chainable to compete with the physical attackers, which as a byproduct makes them more efficient as well; or you create other skills that compliment the elementalist skills that ramp up the damage in the same fashion that their physical counterparts have. Alot of the skills are sub-par within the same class lines, so perhaps a little of both is in order, but its hard to say considering there hasnt been much talk lately of what is going on over at ANET.

I dunno earthquake aftershock is some heafty rape at 16 earth if you can hit it all and obsidion flame isnt bad either. but yeah some ele skills are quite lacking and use 20% enchanting grip with elemental attunement

16 earth eq is 105 aftershock is 105+72 combine with warrior spikes thats some heafty damage

Eles are definitely somewhat weak in PvP. Easy to interrupt for the most part, damage reduced by armor/stances/enhancements and high energy costs/recharge times. On PvP most spells that are used are fastcasting (Obsidian Flame, some lightning spells, Flare, Immolate, Ice Spear, Water Trident) or have some other good things going for them (Meteor with AoE and knockdown, Fireball with AoE and 7 sec recharge). Nobody in their right mind uses Rodgort's Invocation, Searing Heat or equivalents because they are too unwieldy and so easy to interrupt.

Cut recharge and cast times on big nukes and damage eles might be more viable. Spiking does work of course (with multiple eles) but having only couple eles on balanced build for damage doesn't work that well.

Its not hefty if you hit an armored target or a protected target. Then you are looking at sig of judgement with holy strike damage, if not less. Yes aoe vs single target comparison, but you arent dealing with exhaustion or energy costs either.

Well I have this to say. There is a way to combo Obsidian Flesh that if you could actually move with any speed, would be totally unfair, since it causes immunity to spells. So although I'm an earth ele, I'd hate to see a bunch of FotM builds based on Earth.

No, I don't think elementalist skills are lacking.

I do in fact use searing heat... even rodgort invocation... why? like I got any other choice for an all AoE nuker? besides... PvE monster don't run =P

Now PvP? You got to admit smiting will do more than you ever imagine... and maybe just meteor shower for HoH.

I just think of majority of ele skills are for leveling.

I agree that a lot of elementalist skills are lacking (especially water). And the location based AoEs don't do enough damage for their cast/recast/cost.

Lightning strike does more damage than Lightning Javelin at 16 Air Magic, for 5 less energy. Why then, would you *ever* use Lightning Javelin? If you want to be less efficient, go right ahead. Also, I'm not quite sure what the hell "envolate" is, but I'm sure it isn't a skill. Maybe you meant immolate...?

No, it isn't outclassed by flare. Flare is complete trash.

Wait, haven't you seen the flareway video? Dude, thats soooo the next FOTM.

But I'm not lvl 20 so javelin does do more damage where I am in the game. I did mean immolate. It was 3 am when I wrote that and was tired. Also, I haven't gotten to a point in the game yet to unlock lightning strike. Nor do I use Flare. Flare is trash. But it would be better for spammers then using lightning strike (a skill I probably wouldn't use because I see no redeming value in it). I focus mostly on messmer skills, thus any attack inturpts are good for me, thus my use of lightnening javelin, which will probably be replaced by a better skill when I've unlocked one I like (it is also often replaced with backfire or power leak in PvP).

We're talking about pvp.