Time to fix the Elementalist

Elementalists have huuuuge energy + Attunements
I got no problem at all, to be honest im almost always on max ene (Dual Attunements ftw)

Then ill come hit you with my dervish :P

The energy cost of spells is far too much to seriously consider running an elite that isn't e-managment. Therein lies part of the problem.

And I guess you just avoid the areas where you'll get stripped? Attunements work while they're up, but they're absurdly fragile.

Somehow I doubt that. Maybe YOU wont play elemental again-


Like what? This is nothing but whining without examples.


Like what? And I disagree anyways- they are powerful spells and SHOULD take a good 3 seconds to cast. Maybe you should have played last year, at the beginning, when elementalists were the ones that were too powerful.

Didnt they already do this?

I could agree on a few cases- especially the Water Group- because its the least used...

They were thinking that those spells are more powerful, and i think it adds a dash of realism to the game...

Elementalists are still one of the most popular classes to play, along with rangers and warriors. Somehow I think that there are many people who dont really agree/care with your opinions... with all due respect of course.


My theory is that they need to buff water magic... because the rest is just fine the way it is. So, as far as Water Magic- yes I will agree with your post....

But as far as Nukers (fire&air) I think everything is fine the way it is.

As far as earth goes- exhaustion and after-cast is very important considering the magnitude of the damage on these spells... although I wouldnt mind some casting costs dropped... seems like every good earth skill is 25e+exh... and necessarily so.

Im not trying to be a jerk, seriously... but I really disagree with you that people are going to stop playing Ele's--- they are still the best nuke class hands down and they always will be.

I would say for SOME skills i agree- but like I said- only for the water magic- air and fire are powerful enough as it is.

In PvE, the real nerf on eles was the AOE scatter effect. Remove that and eles are fine in PvE again. Keep it and you need to introduce spells that don't rely on AOE. AOE in fact becomes quite useless.

In PvP, eles are and have always been useless. They need some real thought put into them. They are probably the most unbalanced (unfortunately on the useless side) class there is.

*sigh* Dear Horseman im afraid you havent read a single post in this thread except the one you tried to destroy.

Skill recharge: almost every skill needs this buff. Meteor (30 s), Meteor shower (60 s) and Attunements (45 s) just to point out the most important ones that come to my mind this very instant.

Casting times: 3 secs is ok for you? I disagree, elementalist asre the slowest casters ingame. And besides, 5 SECS is insane and thats the casting time of a Meteor Shower.

Exhaustion: it makes you use an spell once every 30 seconds, thats the time you need to get rid of the exhaustion efect. Better put higher recharge times than penalizing for using the "nice" spells.

Eles as popular class: Yes, the E storage grants you tons of variations, thats why they are popular, but it has no advantage at all in damage.

Fire and Air are fine: read the damage output people have posted here, but since i doubt you will do here i come... How much damage do you inflict on a Mursaat boss with your warrior? Well my most powerful fire spell deals only 21 and Lightning orb with its 25% armor penetration deals 38! is that "fine" for "the best nuke class" when a necro deals 63 dmg with her Gaze?

Dear, Meteor shower is just a cliché. Its a very famous spell but its effectiveness comes from the KD effect, not from the damage.

Sincerely, have you ever played an elementalist in Ring of fire?

your post clearly indicates that YOU don't play it NOW.



you haven't made any examples either. All you've said is "eles are fine, stfu and get over it". No they are not. To deny that you must be a fool or just like to argue about obvious things.


Same question to you: Like what?
What are the "powerful" spells eles have? Effect how many of those worth even half of their recharge time and energy cost?

They were overrated by the myth of uber damage. Most people got over it, but you didn't.

No.



Funny thing is that Water spell do about the same direct damage as say Fire. The reason why they suck because of the lack of useful secondary effect like burning and KD. The Freeze could have beed useful if it affected attack speed (or maybe skill activation time) or had reasonable cast time to make sure melee attacker isn't already smashing your face by the time you finished hexing him.
Which brings us back to Fire, which is supposely "fine". So if Fire doesn't do more damage than Water, that means Fire is used for it's secondary effects as support rather than primary source of damage. Which brings us back to point #1: Eles suck as damage dealers.


Realism, my dear friend, is when lightning strike causes instant death on impact regardless of thikness of armor you wearing. Don't bring realism here, ok?


Again you've said nothing to prove yourself. Your whole argument is based on the fact that elementalists are still used. But that is the issue with misleading game manual or character creation process that makes people think that elementalists are slow and fragile, but powerful damage dealers, which is only true in slow and fragile part.
I still play my ele alot, but that is because I've put lots of time and effort into her and not because I enjoy the fact that having her weilding a bow and two interrupts makes me way more dangerous to opposing team than full load of ele damage spells.

In PvE my ele runs a major fire rune and Elemental Attunement. I never run out of energy before I've blown through a mob of enemies (with help from Stefan and Alesia, the game's tanks/distractions).

In PvP, my ele is easily one of the most useful roles in the party. And that's saying something, as we generally run a very smart build.

Elementalists have their uses, it's up to the player to find them.
And they're not always 'heal party spammer' or 'blindbot'.

please the elemtal needs to be work, anyone whos says the don't is nuts take dam good look at sf,hoh,ra tell me how meny elementals there really are.

how meny elemetals playing a nuker roll in pvp?

elementals are far from doing what they are ment to be doing it is fact!

another thing how would you like it if all other classies had monsters runing away from. If anet did it to the elemtal class they should do it to all the other classies make monsters run away!

I love the "Well, my Ele is awesome, so it can't be a bad class" argument.

Look, I admire those who enjoy playing the ele, and believe me, I am not insulting or attacking you. But the fact remains, they are not the damage dealers they are supposed to be. So you can take out groups of mobs, so can my Necromancer, a W/Mo, etc., etc. The question is:

Wouldn't you like your Ele to be able to actually do MORE damage than that Necro or Tank, like they are supposed to?

Well my solution to the problem was to just stop playing an elementalist. I want to deal damage, I want to kill things. I want to see players dying left and right in my cyclone of impending doom. Elementalists just dont do this for me. Elementalists are a squishy target that drop like a little school girls when hit by the big bus of doom. A single hammer combo can maul my elementalist down in 3 swings while a warrior can tank like 25. I spend half the time casting to deal damage that is negatated by the simplist spells like protective spirit or RoF, which could be casted 5 times by the time my chant is over. I wanted to deal pain and not set up magical circles of love while running from the executioners axe for the whole battle; only to die when I gamble to cast my next big spell that hits 2-3 people for a whopping 50 damage. Granted I play a warrior now and simple attacks like triple chop in alliance battles deal more damage than an elementalist can ever dream of. Eviscerate and Executioners Strike on a soft target is insane damage, even when compared to something like obsidian flame.

My giant axe goes into someones head and they die, I like that. Elementalists are just way to overcomplicated in their systematic behavior and the benefits don't out weight the price.

People who are arguing that damage isnt an issue with an elementalist obviously hasn't played another high damage class like a warrior or even a ranger (thumper/touch/spike). You have to understand that its not the single number that matters the most but the DoT.

DoT is everything (unless a spike is organized, to which necros and rangers are much better at). How much damage can you stack over time? In the 3 seconds it takes the elementalist to cast one spell I'm hitting you with my axe every 1.33 seconds or faster and dealing a solid 20-45 damage. On top of that those three hits already half charge my adrenal skills while your still casting one spell thats going to do what? 50-70 at most? I can deal more damage in your casting time than you can do with your final spell. On top of that evis/exe combo nails you for almost 300. In your cast time I can double or even triple your damage at the cost of 0 energy.

Because of bad DoT elementalists are very inefficient at killing things. Sure you can piss me off with spells like blurred vision, blinding flash, water hexes, weakness and wards.... but thats all you can really do besides run and spam heal party (All of which are minor annoyances in comparison to the disability a mesmer is capable of). Doesn't sound like an honorable role to me. Besides there are many counters like plague touch, extinguish, martyr, and spellbreaker to counter elementalist defenses (Not to mention a simple shatter enchant rends just about all of your defenses useless save for a ward.).

Everyone likes to kill stuff... even mesmers. Mesmers trick you into killing yourself, which is great. Rangers find crafty ways to kill you in ways that you could never imagine (touch, thumper). Warriors drive big steely weapons into you and who can argue with that? Necromancers, kill you and themselves but offer solid damage that negatates armor and is hard to stop. Even MONKS kill things with AoE smite in team builds.

And here the manual states that the elementalist deals more damage than any other class? Then why do all tourney eles run chicken and set wards and snares?

Like I said... a powerful spell caster should have people running in fear when the meteors start dropping. With a 5 seconds cast the spell should be devastating. People should see the cast coming and go OH CRAP GET THAT GUY with interrupts because they know its going to hurt. Current elementalists are nothing like that. The only things keeping this class alive are wards, water hex, heal party, and Eprod. I don't see to many flashbot blinders now due to conditions being easier to remove with boonprots and extinguish spammers. Of course theres still the flag runner ele... because thats what eles are good at, you know running. With a cast time of 5 seconds there shouldnt be any reason why ele spells like meteor shower shouldnt totally incapacitate targets dumb enough to stand in the AoE.

Watching an elementalist cast a meteor shower is like watching a monkey climb up a palm tree and start chucking coconuts at you.

The most effective damage dealing elementalist build I've played is one that uses ether prodigy to spread -8 degen on everyone (via mantra of persistence + conjure phantasm + images of remorse).

Think about that for a second, and realize what the problem is here.

Mark or Rodgort and slinging flares is the best ele degen, along with conjure fire and wanding. Of course one healing breeze/troll/just about any kind of health regen is enough to really null the damage down to nothing.

elemetals and energy is concerned I hear people are making nacs with energy close to elemtal class! how is that balanced or fair to the elemental class!

Bizarrely it seems everyone EXCEPT the elementalists want to buff the elementalists.

Like Lordhelmos says, that's because most people who want to be "death dealers" have moved on to other classes.

But I still have an Ele/Mes in "pre-Cantha" that I'd like to kick ass with someday...

Yeah its just not satisfying to not be able to kill people... I mean that is the point of PVP right? If I wanted to be a saint or party savior I would be a monk, but the ele has a really stange niche. At the start it seems good but after actually getting a feel for how many flaws the class has it becomes unsatisfying because you feel so limited in what you can do. Other classes have a variety of options that they can use in order to kill or dismember other classes, eles are lacking. I just don't find any satisfaction in running away from the enemy and spamming heal party, or to sit there and pop wards all day while everyone else is having fun bashing skulls in or picking apart the enemy piece by piece with debilitating hexes. It just feels like your stuck on the sideline.

Then everyone is sitting there talking about how cool it was when that guy was running away and you axerated him in the back of the head before he got to the res orb, or how this idiot spellcaster kept killing himself by casting through backfire.

What can you say as an ele? That you slowed them to death? Yeah I pwned the enemy team so hard, hiding behind that rock and casting heal party... they soo couldn't find me meep meep meep...

Funny how many people think water is lacking and fire and air are fine. Water is the most useful line the ele has, hex based snares are so much harder to remove than cripple, which is immediately removed with draw conditions or something. Air is only useful for subpar spiking, and fire fills a role a warrior does better, pressure, and a warrior can both pressure and spike.

Thats why i ask to have Obsidian Flame free of exhaustion. Cmon its our only armor ignoring spell, let us use it at will ! 10 energy cost and 10 secs recharge would be fine to compensate the non exhaustion.

conjure phantasm + images of remorse= -9 degen
mark of rodgort + fire wand spike = -7

Its ironic that the Energy storage attribute makes the elementalist one of the best supporting class ingame but it is useless for damage builds. Kinda sad to see that an E/Me goes Illusion or an E/Mo goes Smiting in order feel she is putting some pressure and/or dealing real damage.

I must confess that twin attunements is a very nice choice, one of the few ones available, and we can keep casting at will. So not everything is wrong with elementalists, but due to the long recharge times on attunements this build is very fragile in PvP; it rules in PvE though if there are not enchant removal foes around like scarabs or shatter mesmers.