Time to fix the Elementalist

With the introduction of Nightfall and specifically the Dervish, Anet needs to fix some of the issues that Elementalist have when it is released or the Elementalist will be none played profession ever again.

Issue #1 - Skill recharge needs to be lowered on many skills

Issue #2 - Casting times need to be lowered on some skills as well

Issue #3 - Aftercast on PBAoE spells needs to be removed

Issue #4 - Casting cost on some skills also need to be lowered to put them more in line with their effect

Issue #5 - Exhaustion should be removed from some of the skills that it is currently on, really, what where they thinking

If Anet was to do something about these areas that have been needing to be addressed, then the Elementalist would still be a viable primary profession to choose.

Elementalists are viable, its just that they have a very narrow range of truly useful skills. I'd like that to change personally so I somewhat agree with you. Especially on the cast times, some of these spells have ridiculous cast times (Meteor Shower anyone ?) and recharges.

Viable? they are only used in pve cause people in pve are dumb and in pvp as blindbot. They are no good at doing what they are sposed to do.

the cast and recharge times are just the worst......not to mention the energy required

I'd rather Energy storage give me more energy regen pips than a bigger pool, really..

Yeah, the energy required for some skills is rediculous. The point of having the large energy pool is so that Ele's can continue to cast throughout a battle. With the energy costs so high (and exhaustion), they can't effectively do their job (nuking).

And their damage output could use a boost. If they don't lower casting times, ANet should at least boost damage. That would be cool.

Exhaustion=FTL

Favorite pass time of the GW community when there is nothing better to do: rework Elementalists. The only thing that I believe needs to be worked on is better nrg management skills (that do NOT cause Exhaustion, mind you!). Everything else is within reasonable good skills/bad skills, nature of damage (elemental), nature of profession (fragile but powerful) limitations.

Elementalists are perfect the way they are... people use them in the championships and WIN, if you dont win, newsflash for you : boo hoo hoo.

They're fragile, but hardly powerful. I mean, pretty much they only skill that is actually worth of the elementalist profession in terms of damage and big explosions is Meteor Shower. I think some of the other pure damage skills need to be buffed a bit if the "powerful but fragile" image A-net painted is to be kept.

However, I do agree that if energy management is fixed, there really isn't that much of a need to change most of the skills, just slight tweaks here and there.

If elementalists were changed to anything more then they are now, they would be broken.
Spike city. When you can slap target X for 100+ damage every 8 seconds with ONE non-elite skill, that's good enough. When you can slow a target past 66% for over 10 seconds with three different skills, that's good enough. For 10 energy you can strike 3 people for over 100 damage each. What are you complaining for? For 25 energy you can maintain burning for over 30 seconds if your smart enough. Thats 420 damage. Use your heads, not your magic. You wont be able to just walk up and nuke everything in sight and expect to win. Throw some strategy into your skillbar. Go observe the skills PvE monsters use and how they synergize. It's really a good place to start learning.
And don't even complain about exhaustion. One of my necromancer builds uses gale as a REQUIREMENT to begin attacking an opponent and it doesn't have exhaustion issues. Instead of clicking every skill when it gets done recharging, try picking out tactical targets and striking them with the right skill at the right moment. You'll save energy and exhaustion this way.

I agree with Kaida. Mostly, people are just too lazy to string skills together tactically. Although there are some things that need to be buffed out. Personally, I think Air Magic is much too strong compared to the others. If you can hit a target for over 100 damage using one 10 energy skill in Air Magic, and only get 50-80 out of one10 energy skill in Fire Magic, what's the point of any other Element? Just use Air, and kill everything in your path in under five seconds! Otherwise, I think the Elementalist class is perfectly fine. Personal opinion.

I think the damage is fine with the skills. The recharge and (most) cast times are fine too. Fire damage is AOE and so it does less damage on a single target, but can cause a lot more trouble when used against groups. Pretty nice. Exhaustion is manageable, but I generally take very few skills that cause exhaustion - pretty much only Shower when in PvE. Probably some of the ones that have Exhaustion now could have that gotten rid of, but it's not a major thing.

It's just the freaking energy management that eats me up. Energy Storage, as of right now, is useful ONLY for spiking builds. Boy, I can blow things up for a few seconds, but then I have to wait FOREVER for my energy to be back up again. Of course, I could use dual attunements, but that's 2 skill slots being used up just to keep me in the fight for a reasonable amount of time - not to mention that they get stripped so easily that in some places they're unusable. Prodigy? Whooo! PvP skill. Yeah, I can put it on a few seconds after it gets stripped. But then it gets stripped again, and again, and AGAIN... Exhaustion city, anyone....

Which is why I'd like Energy Storage to increase regen pips. 50 Energy would be fine for an ele with more regen.

Some of you are missing the point of this thread. As of right now, elementalist play a very specific role with very few of the skills being viable particularly for PvP, all of which revolve around ether prodigy and heal party. With the way the elementalist plays now, it is a support character instead of the big damage dealer it was toted to be. I have no problem playing an ele and being effective with it and it fits in with the current metagame. But, with Nightfall, the Dervish is going to be able to do things that the ele can do but better, which actually should be the other way around. So, if there is a class that can do what another class can do but better, your going to use that instead. That is why Anet cannot put off fixing the issues the Elementalist has when they release Nightfall. And for those of you saying learn to play, I do have a very good grasp of this game and have been playing since release and until recently been in a GvG guild that averages between 100-30 rank. And if need be, I will post specific changes to the skills that I am talking about for those of you that need everything spelled out for you.

The damage is fine. Kaida is right, anything more than what it currently is will be over the top. Meteor Shower is hardly the only viable damage dealer in the Ele line. I mean, come on, you can't possibly say that with a straight face. I'm personally a huge fan of Earth, always played a Geomancer. Obs Flame and Crystal Wavex2 are great skills. In fact, the monster skill I've probably hated most in Factions is Unsteady Ground. If people are going to complain about Eles and not want to be viewed as whiners, than skip to the part that actually makes sense- energy management, not damage (count the skills that do over 100 damage... seriously), or fragility (many proto skills available to Eles, use em).

@wren e:
Ok, a major major flaw of all arguments about Ele damage is comparing it to another prof which operates by entirely different mechanics. PLUS Dervishes will get their fair deal of nerfing. PLUS you don't even know the full line of skills available to Dervishes and Eles in Nightfall. I've heard the Ele vs Warrior argument before. Comparing 2 spell casters is bad enough. Comparing a spell caster and a fighter makes 0 sense.

Do you even watch HOW they're used? Do they use elementalist damage skills for damage? NO.

To explain what I'm saying better, here are a couple lists.

Things Elementalists are good at:
Fire damage/knockdown in PvE to large groups.
Wards.
Blindbot/slowdown in PvP.

Things Elementalists are not good at:
Doing anything with air/water/earth related to damage in PvE.
Doing anything related to damage at all in PvP outside of fast cast MESMER airspike.
Doing damage in general.

To sum up, are they good at support? Yes. But are the skills that do damage useful? Nope. If you'll watch PvP a bit more, you won't see elementalist builds set up as part of a balanced team to do damage, and that's the ONLY thing I'm saying is bad about elementalists.

but I like the fact that my elementalist has 76 energy...

The majority of the self buffs are pretty garbage as well. Alot of the "useful" elementalist skills are only "useful" because there is no direct comparison in any other profession untill the dervish and even then only in the form of grenth's fingers aoe snare.

Depending on what changes between now and the release of nightfall will determine if there is a valid use for the ele skill set as it is currently. Alot of it is "warrior" hate and has nothing to do with the way the dervish wants to operate.

I believe ensign summed it up the best with this one sentance.

With all respect to Ensign, if the new metagame revolves around a massive gank of PBAoE, say hello to the elemenatalist as a slow hexer, Aoe nuke with Aoe KD and wards (I foresee a nerf to the dervish holy damage enchants), not goodbye.

I'd like to see new skills added to the ele line with effects along the line of Burning Speed's tail end attack. If you can cast an AoE hex on a target that follows the target most of the ele problems would be solved. Just casting most of these skills eles have now is ground control. So for those skills I'd like to see the radius of their effect increased.

This will increase the damage eles seek by increasing the amount of time players are in Aoe and the number of players effected by such spells. Just increasing their damage per proc is like putting a bandade on a broken bone; nice sentiment but its not the fix you need.

The dervish can do things that the ele can but a little different. In fact I loved mystic healing. Very very cheap and worth the energy. Between that and Balth avatar Dervish is a great flag runner.

This is going to keep happening as GW becames older. You are going to have new classes that will be better than the old ones or start doing their job in a different way.

We only have 8 slots on the party to fill. Eventually there will be more than 8 classes. Some classes will be left behind others will remain cornerstone of builds.

Right now as heal party is the most efficent healing spell on the game. The ele is going to be there to support that. They are also the best flag runners because of this strategy. Ele's are going to go no where from GvG until something changes heal party.