Choice of Ele in SF after patch ?

Many people have said that since AOE is nerf, nukers are useless..
I've tried air spiker n Water deep freeze nuke with essense bond on tank for SF. [E/Mo].
In my opinion, fire nuker is still the better even though it is tougher in Grenth footprint, once kegger grab a keg , things still go fine and fast.

I haven't tried earth yet, any elementalist out there who tried all those builds think likewise?
By the way my new build of ele is as follows E/mo

Fireball/Flare
Incendiary Bonds/Rodgort Invocation (lower recharge and does burns)
Meteor shower
Maelstrom (still useful vs monk boss in SF)
Mark of rodgort
Fire attunement
Essense bond (on kegger for energy)
Glyph of renewal

Using mark of rodgort and spamming fireball/flare does faster dmg with less mana than air spike, since both deal with single creature.

As a Stance tank or Monk, my preference will be to go with Eles who don't use AOE spells. The use of AOE doesn't only do less damage as the guys run outside of the effect, it also causes the tank to be hit less, thereby limiting the effectiveness of Essence Bond and other spells, like my personal favorite, Shield of Judgement.

They run from sustained AoE not burst AoE. So Fireball, Phoenix and such work well, and most PBAoE work well.

I play an earth elementalist to great success. The only problem are Taskmasters who will shatter your enchantments. I am trying to capture Obsidian Flesh to cope with them. I like earth because you can protect yourself and others while still dealing decent damage.

Bring 2 Necros - 1 Curses/Blood, the other Minions/Blood:

Curses: Spiteful, Enfeebling Blood + whatever you want, key is that he/she also brings Blood of the Master * Veratas to assist in keeping minions up.
Minions - Veratas, Blood o Master, Lifesiphon, Both high lvl raise spells, Spiteful (att lvl 6), Blood Rit

The Necros keep each others energy up as well as monks, both using Spiteful on diff targets and keeing the minions alive.........easy trip....don't need Ele's (sorry not trying to make ele's less useful in this area....I play one as well)

Quote: Originally Posted by Volarian

Playing with my minion master, it is nice when monks heal the little critters, but i dont expect it. I think it depends on who you play with, not what their char happens to be. :P

Quote: Originally Posted by Cam_Payton

or I could just find an ele group, and gg.

Fire nukers still work fine, especially in conjunction with a good minion master. Being able to chain together 4 meteor storms has become a good skill set to bring as you can keep knocking down foes before they can run away. I have found that minion masters with bone fiends can dish out a good majority of dmg to groups well, but ele are still very necessary when it comes to bosses. If the MM is low on or has no corpses, then the ele is your only chance at killing a boss faster than he can heal.

Speaking of bosses, when there is just a boss left and all the surrounding enemies are dead, a good tactic for a nuker is to get the group to get close to the boss and box him in. This allows the nuker to nuke away without fear of the boss fleeing (also works well for getting the double dmg with phoenix when you are standing close if you use that skill.)

Admittedly, I have never farmed with an ele in SF, and have only farmed there with my necro since the update, but I have done so succesfully with a fire ele on many occaision and know that fire is still a viable option for SF farming.

Quote: Originally Posted by 2_fingers

Quote: Originally Posted by 2_fingers

Not too sure about burst AoE being safe, I've had enemies run from me after an inferno, before I can follow up with flame burst.

Like the earth eles or air spikers myself. Earth can keep up wards and use stuff such as crystal wave,eruption,aftershock. And with air they can do lots of quick spike dmg killing them off quickly.

Quote: Originally Posted by Makkert well look at it this way: a good master takes care of its minions, eh? yes, but there's a limit to how much u can keep alive. Verretta sac, and Blood of the master only go so much. A necro with heal area works too but at times we cannot sustain the energy requirements for all 4 spelss to go constantly - i.e. multiple corpses. If a monk helps out while there is no battle going on - that is there's no one to heal, a short burst of 10 energy isnt exactly so difficult considering that you most likely bonded the warrior and have energy when it matters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elsydian Not too sure about burst AoE being safe, I've had enemies run from me after an inferno, before I can follow up with flame burst. If u use 2 rapid burst in close succession, they disperse. If u wait say 1sec or 2 before releasing the second one, they do not disperse.

i have no problem keeping my minions up w/ lvl 16-17 sacrifices:
blood of master (120-122) + verata's sacrifice (regen) + 120hp heal area

i think it's ridiculous to expect a monk to heal one's minions. it's nice, but it shouldn't be expected. monks can't fight the degen in the end anyway, the only skill that would be effective for a monk to bring would be heal area for the minions.

the only issue i've found that makes it tougher to heal the minions is when i have 16+ undead, as then my heal skills can't reach the ones in the tail end. then what i do is, move, they all group in behind me, i hit "x" to spin around so they try to cross paths thru me to get to where they are "supposed" to be behind me again, then use heal area or blood when they're all tightly packed around you trying to rearrange themselves. do that once or twice and your entire army will be good to go.

when you have about 20 minions it doesn't really matter if 1 or 2 die, i use the +10 energy per off of death to cast heals for he rest my army. a noble sacrifice from my pet indeed.

also heal area heals keeps me up after i sacrifice health. i also pack taste of death for when i'm being spiked in battle or if things go bad.

SF requires

1 warrior (Takes the beats and does some damage)
2 monks (Healing and protection)
1 fire nuker. (Does huge damage)

We only take eles that are fire, the AoE change didn' really effect it to much as the warrior has them agrro'd and AoE's are really just used on bosses, with all 4 players holding him in place for max effect.

Quote: Originally Posted by 2_fingers

Quote: Originally Posted by Elsydian

Quote: Originally Posted by XvArchonvX