Time to fix the Elementalist

Step 1: Remove exhaustion from spells it has no business being on.
Step 2: Make Elemental Attunement, Air Attunement, Fire Attunement, Earth Attunement, and Water Attunement skills.
Step 3: Decrease cast times on the wards, some of the spells, and attunements.
Step 4: Rework Meteor Shower so it hits in the first second rather than the third.
Step 5: Never, ever touch them again, otherwise the whole thing starts over again.

Rits, in general, need a huge overhaul. Right now, they can do one thing and one thing only, Ritual Lord spirit spam. Restoration isn't good enough to replace a monk, channeling is utter garbage. Ritual Lord is such an incredible elite (it's not even an enchantment) that it eschews all other elites for ritualists.

Rits have some excellent spike skills which rival (and on occasion outdo) elementalist spike skills. But this thread isn't about Ritualists, now is it?

i dont know about you but my rit can solo UW , i think that team 2 did a great job on making the rit personally.

Exhaustion is part of the elementalist, I suggest removing it only on certain spells like - Mind freeze, Mind shock and Mind burn.

All ele elites suck due to their exhaustion effect (except Ether prodigy):

Mind X
Lightning surge (and no armor penetration? haha)
Double dragon (use Star burst instead, better recharge)
Energy boon
Ride the Lightning (better use deaths charge)

Who uses them? do they really exist?

Mind X should deal total damage and the extra effect regardless to the energy you have and do not cause exhaustion in order to become attractive. I have never seen someone running them in PvE... well just Mind burn once, a guildie willing to test his new toy, and then he exhausted his whole energy, 90. We all had a nice soirée waiting for his energy to recover. He has never used MB again

My main char is an elemental, with grandmaster explorer on both tyria and cantha and protector on both. So I know my skills and I know what it can and cant do.

Ive started thinking a good new skill for an elemental would be a creature skill.

Not a minion or a pet.

But the ability to summon a Titan or varied element. Ice, fire, earth and air.

And all the obvious skills to heal them and/or res an ooba-titan. But you could only get them AFTER you complete the titan quests in tyria.

That would also incourage people to actually do the titan quests.

But elemental skills at the minute are just stupid.

We do have ALOT of good skills, but most of them have side-effects or take AGES to recharge or reqire stupid amounts of energy.

BURING SPEED for example. I thought, great, a running skill at last. I used it for ages and then realised... hang on... its killing me. No wonder my health is going down.

And most of the new skills that were added in factions cause creatures to scatter and are virtually identical to one another.

i saw quiet a few ideas around exhaustion. I think the best one was to counter exhaustion with ES. Something like reduce exhaustion from spells by one point for each two points in ES, so at 12 ES single exhaustion spell would only exhaust 4 points of energy instead of 10.

Excellent idea!

Just quoting:

Mysticism (PRIMARY DERVISH ATTRIBUTE)
Whenever an Enchantment ends, you gain 3 Health for each rank of Mysticism and 1 Energy for every 2 ranks of Mysticism.

For balance 1 point reduced from exhaustion every 2 ranks of ES would be great. Cmon ANET, what ele does not run a exhaustion skill? We are the only profession with exhaustion skills, please make us " exhaustion proof "

Thinking about it now [oh god it hurts!] I am suprised eles can't summon elementals which we see in game like Ice Golems. My ele focuses on damage so much, if something hits him he is most likely going to die/run away nearly dead. Would be nice to have a tank working for us,

Fire Elemental - Fire Damage, fast melee speed, very prone to water attacks, has Spell Inferno.

Ice Elemental - Cold Damage, medium melee speed, very prone to fire attacks, has Spell Blurred Vision.

Lightning Elemental - Shocking Damage, very fast melee speed, has Spell Lightening Touch.

Earth Elemental - Earth Damage, slow in melee speed, brilliant defence to melee/elemental, able to cast Spell ward against foes.

Energy Wisp - Unable to attack, merely floats around following you, giving you an extra 3 energy per 3 ranks in Energy Storage.

There would be a mininum of 10 skill points in either element to be allowed to summon one these. Energy Wisp would be 8. Recharge of either 4 elemental skills would be 1 minute 30 seconds, Energy Wisp would be 45 seconds.

*Shrug*

If anyone suggested this already sorry!

So you play gvg and hear a call that base is under attack. There is an assassin killing your NPCs. Thankfully you have 15 ES. With 5% armor penetration per rank this would be 75% armor penetration. Assassin attacks you, you blind him and hit with inferno for 297 damage followed by fireball for .... etc. You really can't expect them to raise damage across the board like that. You want to deal crap loads damage and be able to keep people permablind perhaps snared. Especially giving spells armor penetration would be a stupid idea, as the armor is practically the only protection against elementalist damage. That would be like giving warriors 3% less chance of target block or evade per rank.

You intentionally bring up endgame pve bosses up all the time. Well you can stop lobbying. ANet will NOT balance ele on bosses. In fact other classes with damage affected by armor don't do any damage either. Assassin hits for 3 dmg on those lvl 28 bosses. As you said you still do 92 dmg on non-boss jade armor. Try using ranger or assassin against jade armor. No damage at all, no bleed or poison possible.

I thought the point was that warrior, ranger, necro, assassin, etc all did damage that either ignored armor or was able to be stacked on top of the damage that they already do (which is reduced by armor). Ele's don't have any damage stacking skills, really, and they only have a couple armor ignoring skills. Seems to me they are less effective against anything with more armor than practically any other class.

Spura's reasoning in both instances is sound and true. Energy storage can't give armour penetration, nor is it going to boost damage in itself. The change that needs to come over that attribute is that it needs to become a better energy management skill so ele's can continue to cast throughout the battle and not burn themselves out (so to speak) after a few skills.
If the attribute isn't going to be reworked (as would take too much effort), the logical conclusion is to go with my suggestion (and that of others as well): make the attunements SKILLS!
With all the enchantment stripping that goes on in Guils vs Guild and even now in far too many PvE mobs, ele's are crippled by an inherent counter to them in the game itself. There's a fine line between balanced and beaten, and ANet's repeated nerf stick has crossed it. And with the appearance of Dervishes, those occasional original builds that make elementalists still worth playing are going to be completely useless as what they accomplish can be outdone by this new profession.
If serious buffing isn't done to the class (whether through new skills or revamping old ones), its going to continue a menial existence as a flagrunner/heal party spam/blindbot, bereft of any due glory.

you know, i am verry strong with an elle in pve and pvp, and i stil use the same build, and you know i think the elle's wont die when nightfall is released, but your right about one thing, sometimes you have skils that dont even have the worth of having exhoustion... though i use fire magic, one of my favourits for elle and skils like meteor shower ok... exhoustion is agreable, meteor is fine to becouse it hase knock down bonus and fast recharge time, and you said that some skils need to recharge faste, meteor shower has 60 sec recharge i think thats agreable for a very strong skill, meteor has a pretty fast skil recharge, and i think thats worth of exhoustion, but now i'm only talking about 2 skils:P, 2 of my favourits though.. and its all how you put your own build together and i wont think they will die, becouse there one of the strongest proffesions you can get

I would personally like it if they would make a unique staff or offhand item that gives +energy regen pips at the cost of energy. Right now I have 71 energy at +4. I would gladly take a hit of 20 energy to have +2 regen by an offhand item or a rare staff. This doesnt just go for elem, but many other classes as well. As far as the class specifically, I use a combo of fire and earth magics. I have armors from earth which can be (if done right) almost as good as a warriors armor set. The real problems come in when there are mesmers in every PvE group that DE my buffs and it takes 30-60 seconds for them to come back. Far to many times I end up with no armor due to mesmers. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldnt just turn those slots into dmg dealers. However, when the mesmers are dealt with, I can keep my armors up until I run out of energy and against everything without armor piercing, I can hold my own indefinetly. I've only tested this build in PvE and not PvP. It may not be viable in PvP.

Anyway, that was my 2cents. I dont mind elem the way it is, but I have found favor with my necro who has less trouble overall in PvE then my elem. It's not a weak class or insufficient class, it just needs some better weapon types to go with it such as +regen at the cost of raw energy.

No offense, but anything in PvE can be done just by rote memorization. In PvP, there is no such thing as a channeling rit or a healing rit. It's all simply Ritual Lord spam.

Rits communing is the only thing rits do well. In order to come closer to monks and still not surpas them i think moving teh weapon spell cap up to 2 weapon spells would be excellent. This would allow basic weapon combos/ more strategy. While giveing resto a little more prot.

Even if Mind X didnt cause exhaustion, there'd still be no reason to bring any elite that isn't energy management.

Hey, I love my elementalist, I play him really well.

So if you want to make him more powerful, well, fine by me.

*claps* Bravo
This i have certain concerns over. I would prefer to see them made into stances, so there is some counter beyond killing the ele.
Wards...i disagree with your solution. The longer cast time is there as a counter to the ward. Their only counter beyond AoE from an ele, making them too hot to stay in. I'd prefer to see small reductions in spell cost, uptime and recharge for wards, making them more playable in the certain situations you need them (however, this opens up spell spam concerns as well). That should also help you stay mobile with the new dervish frontline AoE spammers. many spells, however, do end up with 2 seperate costs--mana and castime/recycle--making the ele quite restricted on the surface. @Anet: pick one nerf or another; stop double nerfing ele skills and much of the complaining with fall to the wayside.
I still maintain that the best way to handle multi-proc nuke is to have it follow target instead of a one time drop on the ground. This would solve many of the damage issues inherent to the ele class and make it more versitile in actively preventing cluster ganks. One of the only spells i don't think should be this way is actually your example: Meteor Shower. Your solution is inovative, but really only works for that specific spell.
Which should never, ever happen. You know better Ristaron; skill balance exists both to keep the game (and its different characters) balanced with one another and also to make players proactive about seeking new skill combos and building their own character. i'd personally hate to see the ele revert into an IWAYesk nuker with one pre-build set of skills turning the entire PvP community against it.

By and large, though, QFT.

Sidenote: i welcome the Dervish to the metagame and hope that Anet is easier on the nerf bat than they were with the ele at the games inception. Other eles should as well. In the name of keeping classes balanced, Anet can't drop a character of the Dervishes' obvious power and versatility into the game and leave the ele as is. Doing so will not kill 'just another' secondary proffession that you can get with an expansion; it kills off a core proffession that you're supposed to get with every game. My point to this is speaking to the nay sayers--those people who insist that the Dervish may spell the doom of the Elementalist--and reminding them that if there ever were an FoTM class, its not one of the big 6.

*sigh* that post of mine asking for 3-5% extra armor penetration was not very recent, or at least thats not my current train of ideas.

Well i dunno anymore about further suggestions but i want the ele doing more damage and the extra % on armor penetration or damage or something was a first thought. But what it makes me cry is the fact that our only armor ignoring (ranged) spell causes exhaustion. Yes i agree the comparison vs bosses is not the correct measure, i was just complaining because put 5 eles and they will never kill a mursaat monk, but take one mesmer and voila! conditional damage > raw damage...

Fortunately i have found here good ideas here that made me think and change my mind... cool! thats the purpose i came in here, for listening and comparing. Well here i post my favourites:

* summoning a elemental being
* Attunements as skills
* Remove exhaustion on damage elites
* A skill that "locks" enchants, i mean that prevents them to be removed

And one that just came to my mind:

* Eye of the tornado: ward that prevents ranged attacks to hit, ie the Ward vs Melee version that counters projectiles. Certainly necessary versus inters like rangers and the upcoming paragons.

The very essence of all things is change, and eles do need structural changes because ES is no longer seductive for eles but for other professions: at Unwaking waters i prefer to monk as an E/Mo than emptying my energy for very little damage.

****

-I had a sad dream-, said the dervish
-what dream?- asked the paragon
-an elementalist was singing "i want you to notice when im not around"
-oh cool song, but whats an elementalist?
-an elementalist is someone that does damage with elements
-you use earth and wind, so then you are an elementalist
-no, im a dervish, an ele... bah nevermind, the past is in the past
-whatever, lets go farm some greens, you aggro them and blow them away while i inter-spike

attunement as skill isnt bad idea!

haha! i liked this

Yeah, my favs as well. There was a thread on Elemental beings awhile back. This feature would make the E a Summoner/Mage, a better support class. As long as they are elite skills that would work. I would like to see Elemental beings either added to the Rit or E, or a summoner profession.

Is there a Ward Against Spells? I know there is a Ward against Elements, but if WAS does not exist, it should. Have it Energy Storage, and have it give foes a 75% fail chance on casting spells in the area. Would ease the Touch Ranger problem a bit.

I like the idea of making E immune to exhaustion, while leaving it for other classes. The only spells which should have exhaustion for Es are the spamable ones, such as Obsidian Flame and low energy cost knock down skills. Meteor and Meteor shower should not have it due to recharge time and energy cost.



[QUOTE}
-I had a sad dream-, said the dervish
-what dream?- asked the paragon
-an elementalist was singing "i want you to notice when im not around"
-oh cool song, but whats an elementalist?
-an elementalist is someone that does damage with elements
-you use earth and wind, so then you are an elementalist
-no, im a dervish, an ele... bah nevermind, the past is in the past
-whatever, lets go farm some greens, you aggro them and blow them away while i inter-spike[/QUOTE]

LOL. So true.

agreed!! maybe D2 is a game you should try ..i hear their caster is mad powerful

I disagree. The Ethereal being summoned should not be like Flesh Golem but like a Bone fiend and if they were elites that would just make them useless: indeed, tell me, what ele does not run an elite that improves energy management? Ether Prodigy, Elemental attunement, Glyph of energy. What else do we run? I run Glyph of renewal sometimes to cast a Meteor shower each 20 secs. Anything else? Well, not me and not all the eles i have played with/against (unless they are trying out their new capped elites or they are NPC's).


Well, Touchers use Vamp touch & bite, both SKILLS NOT SPELLS, to make a profit of their expertise primary attribute. But i agree that if the ele is meant for support and not for raw damage (and all points out towards) there should be wards vs projectiles and spells as well.

@ KAIDA

We have asked exhaustion off for Mind X, NEVER for Gale, Shock or Earthquake. Do we cast exhaustion spells like mad? Well, no, hehe. Maybe once when i just got a new spell but nothing more.

You use Gale at the beginning? Nice start, no? but then you dont use any ele magic, do you? Have you ever used ele magic? I guess you, as a necro, deal enough damage to be tempted to Gale like mad an enemy after you have spent almost all your energy casting and her health bar is still over the half.

Snares (foes slowed)? Yes, the ele rocks for the Water line, all the people here has acquainted that. I am surprised you post it because i havent found a single complain on the water line.

PvEs and sinergy? Ok, just tell me if the inertia of a single NPC mage is enough for damage. Jade Brotherhood guys for instance: with 2 mages stomping, 1 mesmer removing hexes, one rit healing and 2 triple choppers, thats a good combo, i think it twice before charging such a balanced group, but a mage alone is crap.

I tried once to mimic the Kurzick elementalist build and it was not effective because i was the only ele and i wasnt guarding a post, so wards and Unsteady ground were not of much use. Same with Ice imps, Sand elementals and every NPC ele ingame: they rock because they are more than one.

I agree we cannot just nuke like mad. Fortunately, for the sake of balance and fun, we cannot be just trolls casting at will (well, you can if you are lvl 20 facing chars at Fort Ranik ). The complain is that Fire is not a good line because its ratio damage/energy is not attractive at all and we are tied to use only the the elites of energy management due to that pitiful damage/energy ratio.

the most insane elementalist combo from NPC i have seen is the saltspray dragon, 1 of them is weak, but when 3-5 of them use ride the lightning and spam AoE, thats a problem.

This is my personal view on elementalists, please take note I haven't read the whole thread, but most of it (as its 10 pages and I don't have the time).

I think that elementalists are fine as they are in PvP, but a little unused in PvE.

I do not have a elementalist, but when I PvE I always try to get a elementalist in the group, though I agree they are not as "nessicary" as a MM or others.

Right now, in PvP elementalists are an excellent choice. There are warder Earth eles, Starburst/nuker eles, and blindbots are making their way back to HA. In GvG, Water eles and blindbots are the most chosen. For people complaining that eles (or just fire eles) are useless in PvP, get over it. Fire eles are some of the most common in HA.

I agree that some of the older AoE spells (Searing Heat as an example) need to be buffed. 25 energy for a moderate AoE that will most likely only hit a few numbers due to scattering (PvE) is ridiculous. There needs to be more AoEs that KD or cripple so they are more effective. The water line should get a few more high damage AoE snares with moderate recharges as well. And also the Mind _`s should not cause exhaustion, as well as a few other skills (Double Dragon).

Well I for one would be more worried about 1-3 warriors Death Charging me and using Eviscerate > Executioners than 3-5 eles using what you propose. Sure it's may not be instant (adrenaline issues) but it'll hurt a LOT more over the following few seconds.


I honestly don't think anyone is saying they are useless. They're just not very good at what they're touted as being. Damage dealers. At least compared to some classes.

The main bone's of contention are:

-Damage
-Energy
-to a lesser extent, Defense (fragilty of enchantments, esentially the life-blood of the class and general health-care)

When around 80% of your skills are damage oriented you'd expect proficiency at exactly that. That is just not the case.

I think Elementalists are still viable in PvE and PvP. I run a fire and air elementalist in both.

Let me make some remarks.

No one is saying that the elementalist is totally useless. Fortunately ele players have found the way to play in very decent and clever ways the profession and they are still getting invites for parties. But what we complain about is that you bought something that does not satisfy what it was supposed to: "the elementalist is the damage dealers ingame". It can be seen even in PvE:

When you say "i need a damage dealer in the party" you could think about an ele, and you wont be dissapointed because ele is popular profession and the players have become very skillful managing their skills. But if you say "what is a must in the party" then warriors come to mind [ok no warriors in a party is idiot], then healers [doh ok im coming to the point...] then... what? If i am looking for masters id choose:

1. MM
2. SS
3. Assassin
4. Ele

I am happy that elementalist are still "viable", but you need to give the whole credit to the players because the skills per se are not very outstanding.

Your list should look more like this

1. War (x4), 1 N (orders)
2. B/p Ranger (x5)
3. MM, /w others or SS
4. Mesmer, /w others
5. Assassin
6. Anything else
7. Ele

Minus Sign,

Very good counter arguments on a few of my points (especially with attunements being stances, which I would have also suggested if 'skills' wasn't already the common idea, don't want to swarm the devs), I do hope you realize I suggested all the best possible solutions so that ANet will do it's typical 'half-ass fix' and repair the class to a decent level, which is one or two of them.

And the Meteor Shower point was mainly because I have a beef with that spell not being as useful as it should be. 1st second hit isn't meant to do anything more than get your energy's worth out of it. As is, the moment you cast it you have all the melee mobs running at you and leaving the bubble, decreasing the total damage the first wave could do from 540(90x6) to 180(90x2).
That is, if you cast it like is only sometimes a good means to: before you've actually aggroed the group.
If I was aiming to break the system I'd demand them to remove the intelligence from AI and have the monsters not move from AoE at all like it used to be.

Point being the same as that of the thread: fix the elementalist class.

Make attunements into skills instead of enchants and raise the amount they give back slightly for the individual attunements. Lower ele attune to make up for it, or keep ele attune as an enchant.

Well you are forgetting that those same dragons you speak of are lvl 20+, i think its 24 if i'm not wrong, and damage in guild wars scales higher with higher lvls as compared to that of attribute points. Trust me, the so called insane elementalist combo the saltspray dragons use, if you tried the same combo, you are going to be doing way pitiful damage in comparison to what they do, i'll be surprised if you can even kill anyone in pvp with that combo, as you will need to spread attribute points across both air and fire, making you hit for even less damage, not to mention the aftercast on the combo. It feels like an insane combo only because of the higher lvl of the dragons, not because of the skills and certainly not because of the damage those skills do at lvl 20.

The opposite is much safer - make them all stances, and make a point of Elemental Attunement becoming a stance as well. This kills dual attunement, since you can only have one stance at a time... Which in turn lets you buff the 'discrete' attunements to 50% return.

That solves several problems: You now have the option of a non-elite energy management (Water Attunement etc. @ 50% return) which is decent enough that you can support a damage elite but isn't as good as an elite energy management (which is fair enough). You also remove the specter of dual attunements fuelling insane energy engines, allowing Elementalist skills in general to be buffed.

...Finally, it pushes Elemental Attunement into a role as the e-management for elementalists who use more than one line of spells, like it's clearly designed to be! As opposed to just being strictly better than the line-specific ones like it is now.

The idea behind exhaustion is that it goes hand in hand with high energy pool of elementalist. Getting rid of it would make my assassin very very very happy as I would be able to gale and shock to my heart's content. The point of it was to make other classes than ele less able to spam the ele skills with it, because they have smaller energy pool. I think that current exhaustion mechanic is too hardcore even for someone with 70 energy in pool. So I think the thing we want here is weaker exhaustion. No exhaustion at all would make Me/E glad too. 5 exhaustion would be nice but there is a better solution. I think they need to make exhaustion expire faster. Right now you lose 10 exhaustion in 30 sec. Which is great for warriors who only have 2 pips anyway and as such don't give much crap about exhaustion. Making exhaustion recovery 10 per 20 sec would make one able to spam mind x spells as fast as they recharge(except mind burn) without accumulating any exhaustion if you don't use any other exhaustion spells. Perhaps 10 per 15 sec would be better(2 pips). It would enable ele to spam such skills twice as much and because of large energy pool, ele would be able to fire a lot of exhaustion skills in a burst and then recover twice as fast.

Even better idea would be to make exhaustion recovery proportionate to your energy pool. So instead of losing 1 exhaustion per 3 sec you'd lose x% of your energy pool of exhaustion per y sec. This would make characters with high energy pools recover exhaustion faster than characters with small energy pools. If such a change is made, recharges on skills like Second wind are in order to prevent them from being overpowered energy engines.

i still like the idea of ES reducing exhaustion by 1 for every two points in it...

That is why Exhaustion is a very elegant mechanic when applied to cheap repeatable effects (as a secondary limitation on the recharge time). So Obsidian Flame, Gale and Shock are all examples of Exhaustion being used right.

...But there's no gameplay reason at all for "big effect" spells to have Exhaustion, particularly the ones that have insanely long recharge times already! Meteor Shower, for instance, clearly only has Exhaustion because someone in the creative department thought it would be cool.

Those are examples of exhaustion when best used by something other than a elementalist. Sersiously, the hard cap on the upper limit for energy takes away the elementalist's primary attribute effectivly. Sure it gives more room to wait out the exhaustion, but thats merely called downtime when there is nothing else worthwhile for the ele to be doing. Then when you contrast it to other profesisons like mesmer or warrior, you have other skills that are worthwhile using and do not have nearly the same kind of drawback and just use the exhaustion mechanic to ride out periods where they could not chain shutodown style skills on their own. In reality skills like gale and shock merely become playable because they do not have the real +40 energy cost that the exhaustion simulates. Obsidian flame would be useful, except that it cant be used to sustain any kind of offense, unlike virtually every other profession in the game.
This is the other side of the coin. The big spells only stack exhaustion with the other skills that are worth using. This merely adds insult to injury on mostly unplayable skills. To be honest, the entire profession needs to be re-defined either to do damage, or have more of a global style situation control. Individual damage and situation control specialists already exist and trying to compete directly with them could cause issues. With the size of most elementalist aoe, only npcs will caught regularly inside it, while players will move and spread out as neccacary. If the trend for overpricing is to continue and the focus needs to shift from the normal being point and fire skills to suppression style abilities which would make elementalists more unique.