Time to fix the Elementalist

Wait, what?

Sarcasm. Simple when you think about the entire post...

"With magic derived from the very foundations of nature itself, Elementalists can inflict more damage in a single strike than any other profession."
- http://guildwars.com/gameplay/professions/elementalist/

For those who are complaining about the elementalist having low hit damage, you misread it. Let me write it here for you again, in bold, to point out what you missed:

"With magic derived from the very foundations of nature itself, Elementalists can inflict more damage in a single strike than any other profession."
- http://guildwars.com/gameplay/professions/elementalist/

A SINGLE STRIKE. For those of you saying Warriors/Necromancers/etc. have a higher DPS, it's probably because they do. The elementalist has the single highest damage of any other spell in the game, and they have multiple copies of those spells.

Let's see here. I'm going to pull the most damage spells/skills off of the elementalist. (All attributes are at level 16).

Elementalist:
- Lightning Orb: 132.5 damage (-armor level)
- Mind Shock: 132.5 damage (-armor level)
- Obsidian Flame: 118 damage (Bypasses armor level)
- Double Dragon: 238 damage (-armor level)
- Fireball/Meteor: 119 damage (-armor level)
- Inferno: 142 damage (-armor level)
- Mind Burn: 126 damage + 98 burning (-armor level for first number)
- Shatterstone: 121 damage (-armor level)
- Vapor Blade: 127 damage (- armor level)

This damage, keep in mind, is on a single target. Many of these spells hit for damage "in the area". Can anyone here care to put up any arguement as to a class in which can match this damage in a single attack/spell? (un-nerfed Dervish don't count :P)

I think my point is proven. Some of you need to continue to read and pay attention. The elementalist hits for the highest damage in the game, PER STRIKE. Stop complaining about damage.

You need take your own advice. An eviscerate does on average ~80 damage + 100 point DW, the bulk of the damage is armor ignoring. No elementalist spell can match that (and no, double dragon doesn't count, it's not a single strike).

DW would hardly count as a "single strike" since that condition can be applied at any point in the target's lifespan. It's not actually counted as damage as far as this test is accounted for, since, the elementalist could be attacking a person whom already has deep wound, at which point your eviscerate is only hitting for 80 damage every 10.6 seconds for adrenaline build up (7 seconds if using an attack speed stance).

If you DO want to apply the Deep Wound with Eviscerate, your arguement is still lost since Mindburn hits for a total of ~224 damage with burning.

Instead of trying to prove me wrong on a single instance, try putting a little more thought into your post next time and a little less childish arrogance.

Dervish can, on a scythe skill that dont need to be nerf because of it condition to trigger. Banishing strike, deal 90 holy damage to all nearby foes for each summoned creature you hit. so thats 90 * 3 = 270 holy damage that ignore armor, this is from a skill that shouldnt need to be nerf because of it usefulness in GvG and PvE. The affected area is Nearby foes.

So you're arbitrarily redefining what damage is in attempt to prove your point-sorry that isn't going to fly.

Deep wound is damage. It can kill. It's conditional, but so are things like mind burn and mind shock. What deep wound can't do is dps, but hey, you've already admitted that elementists don't do that as well as warriors.

Lol, you actually think an 8 second burn is somehow comparable to an instant DW? Get real.

Not much thought required when your post is basically a tiresome exercise in pedantry that completely ignores the substance of the discussion.

Kaida, I'd like to point out your argument is null. The evidence is right in your post.

- armor.

You realize that PvE mobs in level 20 areas (when you pass Kaneng or Crystal Desert) strip about 80% of that damage. Better yet, have you tried attacking a ranger boss with elemental damage (especially in prophecies)?

Realistically the only one listed in your post that will deal listed is the Obsidian Flame,which gives you exhaustion and has a 2 second cast.

Even a monk using banish with some points in smiting would deal more damage to PvE mobs when their armor takes most of the damage.

This is why necros (and some mesmers) are so popular now. Because both do armor ignoring damage while providing utility. Not to mention life steal is so much better than elemental damage versus monk bosses.

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To the OP:

Elemental attunement is now in the energy storage line and think the other attunements ought to be also. I agrre with you on that.

But some flaws: there's NO 20 energy skills (look in guildwiki, there is not one 20 energy skill) and many of your changes make the elementalist overpowered.

I agree with these:
- Remove exhaustion from Mind spells.
- Shorter casting times times on Glyph
- Shorter cast times in general
- AoEs that need targets
- attunements --> SKILLS (like warrior's cunning, critical eye) and linked to energy storage (also should have energy gained scale with energy storage)
-energy storage should decrease exhaustion by 3 or 4% per rank, or at least make it recover faster (Elementalists are the only ones with exhaustion anyway)


Elementalists don't need OMG GODLY damage, people need to grow out of Nuker/tank/healer models, especialy since there is going to be more classes every chapter and they will have counters to this team build. Elementalists just need tweaking on attunements, AoE, and glyphs mainly.

The main problem is not the damage, it is mobs having crazy armor that doesn't affect anything but elementalists and physical damage dealers.

Numa Pompilius said "the reason it stinks is that it's not armor ignoring", and this is probably the core reason for this thread.

More energy is not the answer, neither is more regen. You then have more secondary class skills being spammed. What needs to be revamped is energy storage and attunements.

This is true, at least as far as PvE is concerned. IMO the armor mechanism for high-level PvE monsters needs to be re-worked. Ele is the only class in the game that is almost completely stumped by armor (barring a couple of skills). Not only does this create imbalance and screw the class's effectiveness, it's also quote counter-intuitive from a role-playing point of view: it doesn't make any sense to me that sword-swinging Warriors and arrow-shooting Rangers are less affected by armor than an arcane spellcaster.

The PvE solution could be as straightforward as reducing the rate at which *elemental* armor scales for monsters beyond level 20. This is simple to implement, simple to balance (adjust the scaling rate to make a Fire Nuker's overall damage comparable with an MM, for example), and would have absolutely zero impact on PvP balance because of the beyond-level-20 factor.

In principle, I agree with you entirely. But in practice, certain Ele builds are still damn powerful in PVE, increasing their damage by much would be overkill due to the fact that mobs cant deal with AOE damage properly.

Totally unlike how they react to Spiteful Spirit.

Didn't A-Net kinda sort out the "mobs cant deal with AOE damage properly." as in they all run away from it?

Hence us Ele's got a little peeved.

In theory right, but you need to play an ele after Droks in order to enlighten yourself: MINUS ARMOR IS THE KEY. Let me help you a little bit:

1. Pick up a Mursaat boss and hit with:
Meteor= 119 dmg @ 16 fire - armor = 21 dmg
Lightning Orb= 106 @ 16 air + 25% armor penetration - armor = 38 dmg
Necro with Vampiric gaze @ 12 blood = 52 dmg

2. Pick up a lvl 20 foe with 60 armor:
Meteor=119 dmg
Lightning orb = 140 dmg
Rodgorts invocation=127 dmg
Mind burn=126 dmg if you have more energy than foe, otherwise 63 (lets count single hits and no conditions)
A Mesmer @ 16 illusion deals 142 damage with Ineptitude and @ 16 domination deals 147 damage with Backfire.

3. 100 armor:
Meteor=60 dmg
Lightning orb = 83 dmg
Rodgorts invocation=64 dmg
Mind burn=64 dmg
A warrior with Executioners strike @ 15 axe can hit for 91 dmg and with Final thrust @ 15 sword for 97 dmg.

Yes, eles have the highest numbers in theory, but in practice Elementalists do not deal more damage with a single skill than a Warrior or a Mesmer.

QED

You Know What Anet Wants To Make Better Ai I Want Anet To Make All Mobs Run From Every Class In The Game! That Makes It Fair!

sadly AI realted to AoE is pretty far from being sorted out =\

The Elementalist is almost like the Assassin ,except to master an assassin you need skill, whereas to master the ele ,you need brains.

The biggest problem with all these 'bad profs' builds come from idiots from crappy MMo's like ragnarok online ,runescape or even world of warcraft.

A few tips on how to use an ele :

1.maybe,just MAYBE fire magic doesn't ftw
2.Theres a reason that we can combine professions.
3.Be innovative ,somke builds which haven't yet been nerfed with an ele are actually unstoppable .

As an explanation to what i said in point 3,

An E/W owned me.

edit: whatever, but no class will ever be better than the necromancer and/or teh mesmer.

For PvE, the fire ele still has a place (though it takes a bit of skill to do it effectively).

For PvP, just look at most of the high ranked guilds/matches and see how many eles are used for damage dealing (as opposed to flag running/heal spamming and the occasional water snare)

I love my ele, and play her almost exclusively, but when it comes to RA (my only PvP so far), I've had more success running a degen/anti-melee mesmer setup than anything else

A few buffs/de-nerfs would be most welcome.

Something i wanna share...

I just made a Mesmer and when i met Vassar, the mesmer trainer at Foible's Fair in Pre-Sear, he told me this:

"Elementalists may frighten lackwits with no greater concept of combat than striking someone with an oversized mallet, but any Mesmer worth his salt is far a greater threat than a robed bufoon who likes to play with fire... I wll teach you a few skills [he gave me Backfire] that should help you dispatch them far better than the brute force an Elementalist would employ. Then you will know what it is like to wield real power".

I thought the problem was that eles didn't even frighten the lackwits?

Out of about 100 elementalist skills, only 12 of these, the maintaining AoE spells, will cause PvE mobs to scatter. Other than that you'd have to be throwing out some pretty fast non-maintain AoE on a targeted area to get the mobs to scatter, which an ele isn't gonna do because of cast times. I can use zealots fire and set it off every 3/4-1 second without causing the silly troll mobs to scatter. You'd have to be casting a non-maintain AoE ele spell faster than every 3/4 second at least 3 or 4 times in a row before your mob is gonna scatter. I don't think that's possible for an ele. And even if it was I'm not sure if other things work the same way zealots fire does to trigger the scatter.

Are mobs scattering for you? Because I've never seen mobs scatter from repeated blasting of non-maintaining AoE spells...ever.

There are plenty of elementalist skills that won't cause mobs to scatter, and a lot of those are AoE. I'll count all the non-scattering AoE spells if you want, but I'd rather you waste your time doing it.

What i was thinking was that at least in ele's if they have more than 12 in energy storage then they should at least gain +1 energy regen it'd help a lot even if they had exaustion with them well that's wat i think...

that is a strange way to count... How many AoE spells are not causing scattering? How many of those do the damage worth half of their energy and recharge time? Get a clue, ok?

Well, sucks to be you.
I can consistently reproduce scattering effect with just fireball+flameburst combo. I have often came across the case when MS followed by fast cast on Rodgorts (20% from ragos staff). Basically every fifth MS+rodgorts+fireball combo causes mobs to run. You don't see that very often because there is usually more than one ele involved and KD covers up for this effect, but when i'm nuking alone I see that all the time.

a simple advice to those coming up with MORE REGEN ON ELE ENERGY BAR.
Kindly, zip it. I would hate to see another profession using ele primary for secondary skill usage purposes.

I gotta admit. The example of an ele climbing a coconut tree and chucking coconuts at u, when compared with meteor shower spell's behaviour, matches quite well. *sigh*

Sucks to be an ele, but alas, i love to suck i guess.

wouldnt completely removing exaustion fix eles? Just that change alone would make a lot of cool builds better, Say Dragon stomp followed by churning earth, then spike with OB flame, It works now, but you cant really keep it up, Without exaustion eles COULD keep up with warriors, (as they should) my 2 cents

As Xploiter pointed out, more energy pips would just make more E/x playing their secondary profession and just using the huge energy pool and the extra pip(s) of their elementalist line. My call is better rebates using attunements and a bonus on elemental damage instead of 3 energy points per Energy storage rank.

I agree that exhaustion is very aggressive and should be removed from all spells except Gale and Shock. If ANET does not want ele spike using Obsidian flame then just modify it to 10 energy and 10 secs recharge instead of exhaustion and a tempting 5 secs recharge. And the Mind X without exhaustion would be nice, but now only the henchies and the foes use them.

Or, just make Elementalists immune to Exhaustion.

That way, other classes can't spam Gale or Shock, but Eles still could.

About exhaustion:
Energy Storage: Energy Boon, Ether Prodigy
Air Magic: Chain Lightning, Gale, Lightning Surge, Mind Shock, Ride the Lightning, Shock
Earth Magic: Dragon's Stomp, Earthquake, Obsidian Flame
Fire Magic: Meteor, Meteor Shower, Mind Burn, Double Dragon
Water Magic: Maelstrom, Mind Freeze
No Attribute: Second Wind

- Ride the Lightning (wtf why exhaustion, nothing special), Double Dragon (its sucks b/c of exhaustion), Chain Lightning (this needs its energy cost and recharge bumped up to 15 or 25 instead so fast cast me/e can't use it often), Mind Skills (Why???, you need a large amount of energy to get the bonus, exhaustion is counterproductive), & Second Wind (right, lose energy pool even more, gain energy) don't need exhaustion really
- Lightning Surge needs a 25% armor penetration
- Earthquake/Dragon's Stomp/Maelstrom/Meteor/Meteor Shower have on-hit effects = exhaustion

You see the trend is to give every knock down skill exhaustion, and almost every low recharge energy management skill elite status.

They ought to keep exhaustion, but give energy storage some effect on it, like a certain %age less everytime you have exhaustion. (3% faster recovery per rank?)

EDIT: and all of you that want regen just make the problem worse. You're just going to see rank 16 energy storage e/mo heal party & extinguish spammers, e/me with conjure nightmare, and other e/anything with 25 energy skills not form the ele skill lines.

Another thing. What needs to be done with attunements is having them scale with energy storage, like Healing Touch doubles divine favor. They need to make it that you gain 2-4x the energy storage level = energy gained back instead of a flat rate.

I think there's two paths to take:

• Path 1
  
  Take Elementalists down the road to being the nukers they're touted as. Increase AoE for spells, and decrease damage. If elementalists are to be slanted as damage dealers, then recharge times and cast times need to be tweaked. The AoE buff is crucial to make nuking viable in PvP, with larger radiuses making it valuable for crowd control and adding to the amount of damage a spell inflicts on a fleeing foe.
  In terms of path 1, the way elemental damage is calculated needs attention. An elementalist against a level 24+ deals piteous damage. Compare to:
  • Warrior (Best DPS)
  • Ranger (arguably hardest damage dealer to disable, plus ready condition application)
  • Mesmer (Chaos damage ignores armor)
  • Monk (holy damage ignores armor)
  • Necromancer (dark damage ignores armor. Life stealing also ignores protection).
• Path 2
  Adknowledge that Elementalists are being slanted more towards utility, and give them the skills to pull that off. GWN is a good opportunity. More wards, useful energy management and glyphs, allowing them to be viable primaries ~and~ secondaries.
  Glyphs could stand to have their cast time halved. As is, they're used in only a handful of situations, because the 1.75 seconds it takes to use them mitigates the effect.
  Elementalists have a lot of promise for large effects that aren't just damage. If their damage is to be substandard to the other classes, I'd rather not have 25 of their 30 new skills be just damage dealing.

As for other suggestions, I think a new elementalist rune would go a long way. I don't know about everyone else, but I find I wind up with:

Superior [element] on head.
Minor Energy Storage on chest.
Superior Vigor on gloves
No rune on legs.
No rune on feet.

Seems like there's room for something.

That is a very good idea! I have asked to increase the energy rebate using attunements in order to have 80% back without the use of twin attunements, but after your idea i rephrase my proposal:

Now the X attunements give you 30% of the energy cost back. If you add an extra 2% of the energy back for each Energy storage rank it makes 2x13=26% extra, which is 56% extra. That would be enough to get rid of the twin attunements to cast continuously, would give us the chance to free our precious elite slot for a change when using a single element, and will buff the elite Elemental attunement when we use 2 elements (50+26=76%).

Someone has proposed a "rune of elemental power" that adds a % on the damage you inflict using elementalist's spells. I think that would be great.

EDIT: sorry for the wrong quoting

Redwinter, to be honest I don't think the Elementalist needs more runes. Runes shouldn't be necessary to play a profession. For first time players, it it likely they will not have money to buy it anyway (especially if there is no HP decrease, which increases the cost exponentially).

I myself did not purchase superior absorption runes, I had to find them because it was in the 100K zone when I started off last year.

Cynn Evennia, you quoted Redwinter and put my Username.

A lot of these changes, like removing Exhaustion from the lineup, or totally renovating the primary, would be a lot of work, a lot of tweaking, and weeks or months before the elementalist was a thriving class. (I say that because it's still viable, just not flourishing, like tulips in my garden).

The rune is a simple way to implement a change without an undue amount of work. Warriors got one, and it really flows. You can have a strength, tactics, weapon, health & absorption rune. Flows 100%.

Regardless, I think that Anet should just have a meeting, and talk about the Elementalist design philosophy. If they're to be nukers, their damage needs to flow better. If they are to be utility, then that's fine too, but we need more skills to help that along.

Id love to hear the official philosophy and then a commitment to fulfill it... sigh*

Just a thought.

The problem with elementalists is the "scaling" factor on damage. The damage dealt in terms of health % of a foe is awesome at low levels where one hit means boom shakalaka! but its a shame at high levels (foes above lvl 20 i mean). On the contrary, mesmers and necros keep dealing the same damage because their spells ignore armor. It makes me feel that the elementalist is excellent wiping out low lvl mobs, like an "anti-ant mop", but when it comes to fight a boss then necros and mesmers say "stay aside lil bro its time for real magic". Dont you all elementalists feel the same? at least Vassar, the mesmer trainer at presear, agrees with me.

Im afraid the people that call us all "eledramatics" see us as children playing with fireworks that whine when the big ants do not die as the little ants used to: well its true, why casting a Meteor shower vs moving foes if it hits for 21 dmg? better let big bros throw a Wastrels worry for 68 damage or a Vampiric Gaze for 63 damage.

Nevertheless, the Air line with its 25% armor penetration makes things not so hopeless, and if i face lvl 20 foes or humans i have some nice builds that deal very nice damage with fire magic, so not everything is lost for the Elementalists, we just need a little bit of make up here and there, for instance a hand on damage vs high armored foes, less exhaustion and a buff on attunements.

Here's what I wanna see, summon elemental
yeah you heard right. fire spec? cast summon fire elemental. a big frickin tank what makes the bad guys hair catch on fire and stuff.
Ice elemental attacks could cause some slow, air would get armor penetration of course and earth could have a chance to kd on hit

Hahaha you made me laugh like mad! haha... in the good sense.

I agree, a skill like Summon "elemental" would be cool and incredible. Thanks for the idea it made me fantasy and think on possibilities.

I dont like an ele playing MM so me one "elemental" at a time is ok. I think that only one "elemental" skill is adequate, either Fire or ES. If it is fire make set touched foe on fire for x secs. If its ES make it deal damage and give you x energy per hit landed.

In a second thought the fire elemental is the option: Summon Ignis Fatuus (will o the wisp in latin). Some people asked for a skill that mimics Mark of Rodgort (set on fire) without being a hex so your proposal is the exact solution. PLEASE DONT MAKE IT ELITE or no one would use it, as almost no one uses any of the elites that are not energy management skills or glyphs.

You should be able to summon an Ignis Fatuus from nowhere and it should be a common spell, not an enchantment. The Ignis fatuus should not have health degen as minions have but it must not be able to be healed.

Summon Ignis Fatuus
Energy Cost: 25
Casting Time: 3.00
Recharge Time: 30
Description: Summon a level x Fire spirit. The attacks of this spirit deal no damage but whenever it hits a foe that foe is set on fire for x secs.

It seems ele is forced into one element pve-wise, the most useful and damaging in my opinion, fire. Meteor/Shower with sup rune+glyph=18 fire attribute, starburst and fire dots do incredible single and aoe dmg with interrupts[kd] why choose the other elements? Sure they have blind/defense/slow/other interrupts, but other professions do those as well and better, they'll want a support damager behind them. I've gone through the missions and found the only things that got my ele killed were, poor tankers who didn't 'bung' the flow of the enemy properly.

Exhaustion did not affect me much, fire off met spells then spam fireball/starburst/fire dots and repeat. All it did was make sure I carefully chose the right moments to do my nuking and til then do single target damage/non-exhausting. I guess it stops me just aoe-ing away and not really looking at whats going on. Other fire eles probably struggle due to wrong skills/attributes/runes/equipment like my favourite lvl20 'newbs' who just firestorm [drives me mad!] In all, I've probably used about 10% of the ele skills that's available, doesn't seem right to me.

I can't comment on elementalist pvpwise as I'm not a pvper.

rits(channeling) need even more help than eles is all i can say.

Though I've only just signed up, I've been lurking here for many moons. Still, please be gentle

I prefer the elementalist as a the massive damage dealer, at least in their primary role. All of the classes are given many different ways to be useful to a team, which I applaud. However, an elementalist that ranks somewhere around fourth or fifth in damage output amongst eight classes just doesn't seem right to me.

I would like to see something like the adrenaline mechanism implemented for elementalist spells. Obviously, not adrenaline, but some kind of charge that builds up over time (or perhaps with spells cast, or energy points used). This would have to be balanced with the energy pool and exhaustion mechanics. The "charge", once full, would then up the armor penetration, meaning the same spell with the same specs would suddenly do a lot more damage.

To keep this from being totally overpowered, of course, would be the amount of time/energy output/what-have-you required to get to full charge. This keeps with the massive-damage-in-limited-amounts concept of the elementalist.

There are several ways this could be implemented, none of which I've sat down and really thought through. So, rough ideas only:

1) The charge mechanism could be a skill/spell and take up a slot on the ele's bar. It would have instant cast, and once it was full, you'd hit it off before the spell you wanted the extra armor penetration on. That way, you could use any of your elemental spells whenever you want, but you would choose which spell and when to add in the armor penetration.

2) The charge mechanism could work very similarly to adrenaline, in which all damage spells (or whatever subset this mechanism was applied to) charged at the same time, and required differing numbers of strikes of adrenaline-equivalent before it could be used. This would make frontloading damage very difficult because of the build-up needed to make the high damage spells usable.

I'm sure there are othe ways as well, but these were the ones I thought of.

Thoughts, anyone?

Lady Revanche

makes me wonder why did anet even make the class?


even alot of the armors are made agisnt the elemental class

the foes run from nearly all of the elemental skills

The only effective fire build I have seen is the Glyph Of Renewal/Energizing Winds Fire Chain Burner.

The Ele is good, they just have to boost some of it's elites and skills (Ether Renewal ...not as the old one, but at least a little, Glimmering mark, Second wind...many of them are inferior compared to Ether Prodigy).