Lightning Strike, Orb and Hammer

Lightning Strike, 5 energy cost, instant hit.

Lightning Orb, 15 energy cost, easy to dodge.

Lightning Hammer, 25 energy cost, instant hit.

Can we PLEASE sort out these frigging energy costs. They're just stupid. It costs 5 energy for a bog standard spell. 10 more energy to do twice the damage and miss. And another 10 energy to have no chance of missing the target.

Why can these not cost 5/10/15 respectively? 25 energy cost for a single hit... why? If fire eles were any use in PvP/GvG i'd much rather use Rodgorts Invocation, at least i might hit something else for the same energy cost. Sadly air is only used because it has Blinding Flash and Windborne Speed. Everything else it has is a bonus, but the energy costs are just ridiculous.

fast casting me/e with lighting orb + lighting strike is quite powerful, so i do believe its more then just a speed buff reason.

Balance dear boy, balance.

Personally it doesn't bother me much because I bring Strike, Orb, Hammer and Arrow I think it is. I know, not very fancy of a skill set, but it works :P

While I do agree that lighting hammer needs either a shorter recharge or lower energy cost, orb is fine as it is. With orb, you're paying for crazy spike potential. The standrard lighting strike + orb + enervating charge + blinding flash has an awful lot of spike potential. Those spells are one of the few areas of elementalists that don't need work.

Now, if you were to start a post about vapor blade...

Thats what I use, it's not strike it's Charge. I feel like Weakness helps you out alot when your throwing out those Hammers and Orbs repeatdely.

HA much? Fire/earth eles (warders) are the most common eles running around HA. And some do bring Rodgorts.

IMO Lightning Hammer DOES need to be lowered to about 20 energy. Atm its not very usable in any serious GvG/HA. I think Orb is fine as it is. It has stayed the same since the nerf on air spike where they either increased recharge time or highered the cost (I cant remember) and it still has its uses today.

If you compare Hammer to Ob Flame though, I think Ob Flame is quite better even though it has a little less dmg (118 max). Its cost is 5e,2sec cast, quick recharge, but causes exhaustion. If you dont use any other exhaustion skills the exhaustion isnt as noticeable as the loss of 25 energy.

Sadly the only reason people bring Lightning Hammer is just because EP is the best energy management for your on the go spike assists. You could guarantee this spell would cost 20 energy... IF Anet let spells cost that much. But seriously, 10 addition energy cost just for the benefit of it never missing is not balanced. Its just yet another reason why Eles wouldn't be used if Blinding Flash or Heal Party spamming didn't exist.

I think the cost is too much, but the recast is the real problem. With dual attunments it is easy to spam even 25 energy skills, but 10 more energy is alot, and lightning hammer can't be used enough to be important. I think Anet vastly overlooks recast time in the actual cost of a skill, a skill that you can only use half as often and doesn't miss isn't any better than a skill you can use twice as often and have a chance to miss. At it's current recast (and I know it is more than twice as much) Lightning Hammer is only worth 15 energy, if the recast was 10 seconds or less than it would be worth 25 energy.

Lightning Orb is spamable but is a projectile, Lightning Hammer cannot miss but cannot be spammed, for the same damage, that brings them to equal cost, Lightning Hammer needs to be cheaper or have a better recast time.

I think recast times are the worst part about most skill imbalances through the game, someone at Anet needs to realize that recast time is a more significant cost than energy. As said, you can cast Rodgorts at the same recast for simular damage on an enemy and all nearby enemies, but Lightning Hammer hits one at that same 15 second recast, fire skills are better at damaging groups, lightning skills are ment to be better at spiking single targets, Lightning Hammer is lacking is spamable equivalence to Fire magics AoE.

lets see theres a reason its like this. light strike doesnt do enough dmg to warrant an energy raise. if you raised it, it would be useless.

orb has a chance to miss, thus the lower energy cost, but is higher than light strike due to the 25% armor penetratio nthat strike doesnt have.

hammer is the highest energy cost due to the 25% armor pen and the never miss chance. so its basically orb with strikes ability to never miss.

I agree with Yichi on how they are balanced, though I think Lightning Hammer is a little expensive, if not in energy, in something else. If they added a few more points of damage possibly.

actually strike also has the armor penetration

lightning hammer is not to expensive and and it can miss,
running it with duel attunements works just fine.

Until you get shattered, drained. I don't really consider eles to be that balanced or fine as some people here believe. 20/10/5 would be a slight and fair buff. Not that it would be enough on the overall picture.

If you agree with Yichi than you are wrong with him.

Lightning Strike is exactly half as powerful as Lighting Hammer, they do the exact same thing, cannot be dodged, and 25% armor penetration, the only difference is twice as much damage on Lightning Hammer and Lighting Strike is 3 times faster recharge (as well as half the cast time).

In 15 seconds Lightning Strike can rechare 3 times, and deal 123 damage with 25% armor penetration. Lightning hammer will recharge once and deal 82 damage with 25% armor penetration in a single hit. Even though dealing more damage in a single hit is worth more cost, with a 15 second recharge, it is a straight trade off of more damage in a single hit vs more damage over a period of time, and the difference in cost is 5X. 5X for a skill that is only twice as powerful.

Honestly, if you include the fact that orb can miss, it should really only cost 10 energy, and Lightning Hammer should only cost about 15 energy, twice as powerful, 3 times as expensive as Lightning Strike. But reducing the cost of Orb is a bit too cheap, it is effective because of it's strength and spamability.

I say that Orb should deal 12.5% more damage, and stay at the same cost and recast, and Lightning hammer should be reduced to a 10 second recast, and cost 15 energy.

As said before, I think Anet has some serious flaws in calculating the significance of recast values, making many skills extremely deficient.

I think lightning orb and strike are good enough as they are, and hammer is the only one needing a buff. I think lowering the recharge time a bit should give it more usability while still keeping the balance.

Get Hammer to a 5-sec recharge and I'll be happy.

BTW, in a way, Ob Flame is actually 10 en in cost, due to the exhaustion. You could always negate it though.

No, no Hammer at 5 energy. I dont mind it at 25, it could only assit a bit if it dropped to 20, anything below that is just wrong.

lol 5 energy hammer would be to l33t of a spell :P

Yeah rodgorts invocation vs hammer .... 25 energy spells...

lightning hammer wont cost that much if you use Glyph of Lesser Energy with it

that seems the most resonable

Your logic is flawed.

As covered by countless threads, Ele damage is good for one thing, Spiking. If you are running a mixed adren spike build with Eles assisting the chances are you can only afford one slot as a spike assist, and that is going to be Orb every time. There is no need to buff that further.

This is also why Lightning Hammer is 25 energy, any less and you would see it used instead of Orb. At the moment it fills a nice niche in pure spike build, and it is fine right there.

Lightning Strike fills a very weak roll, despite looking strong on paper. It is usually either a spike follow up, or... just not there.

My logic isn't flawed, and your statement proves you don't know jack about elementist as well. Elementist most effective roll isn't spiking, it is his diversity in damage types, from spike, to AoE, to Imparing. The fact that you would actually assume Elementist is only good for spiking only proves you don't know how to use one effectively.

Lightning Strike is very effective, it's low recast and cost make it an easy spam skill, often when enemies use protective spirit 15 energy for an orb is a waste, but you can still put a steady 40+ damage on the enemy making it difficult to maintain that enemies health, and absorbing a great deal of energy and attention from the monks, leaving them vulnerable. In combination with 2 other Lightning spams, you can put just as much damage on the enemy as they can put healing, with dual attunments you will break their energy long before you run dry.

Lightning Orb can be cast every 5 seconds as well, that is a significant cost value which makes it a spamable skill. Reducing Lightning Hammer at 15 seconds is only 1/3 of the damage over a period of time, with 10 more energy cost, outside of the advanced enemy or bad cast which misses on orbs, Orb outstrips in damage greatly. 3x the recast and 10 more energy is useless, it cannot be used enough to outweigh the value of Enervating Charge or even Lightning Javalin for damage over time plus added defensive effects for still under half the cost and only a fraction of the recast.

As for other Elementist uses which your too blind to recognize, Fires ability to dominate an area with repeated knockdown at a location, Burning damage which overcomes Damage blocking enchantments, and general group damage which can put out high figures on groups and packed units like melee and Ritualist with spirits, as well as minions, Waters ability to snare groups of units keeping melee fighters at a safe distance, slowing them more than any other skill making it possible to escape even if crippled, and Earths defensive strength and ability to deal group damage, knock down, armor ignoring damage, and unremovable location defense making it easy to survive certain attacks. And lightnings ability to shutdown melee as well as hit for high figures.

If all elementist was good for is spiking, they would have been totaly replaced by Necro Spikes. I have alot of grievances about Elementist, but they are good for more than spiking, and JR doesn't know jack.

Irrelevant. The fact that you always take orb doesn't necessarily mean that the skill is costed fairly. In fact looking at the rest of the air line it's obvious that you take it because it's your only option.

Wow, that's infinitely worse than orb being used in place of lightning hammer now. At worst you're continuing the status quo, but at least with Kaiser's changes we have a chance of injecting some sanity into the balance of these skills.

For the record I wholeheartedly agree with the OP's changes.