Elementalist and Armor

We all know that elemental damage is useless, the top guilds prove that when they use elementalists exclusively for heal party. The armor is just too high against elemental damage. In pvp there are three options for elementalists vs fighter classes, shut them down, run, or die. Killing is really only an option using extremely high energy skills or exausting yourself. Neither is a good option because high energy skills come with slow casting times, and you can only take so much exaustion before your useless.

With nightfall 2 new professions will be introduced, both are strong against elemental and physical damage. Also the trend continues for elementalists to relay heavily on a secondary profession to have the slightest amount of usefulness.

One solution to this problem is add more armor ignoring skills, currently I can think of 2, one causes exaustion and the other is an area centered around caster which removes all conditions from foe.

The better solution is to revamp the way armor works, add more customizable armor, and seperate armor level into elemental and physical. Each class should have a base of 60 armor vs each. At that point the player should decide if he wants to be strong vs physical damage or elemental damage, not both. As it stands right now mesmers, necros, eles, ritualists, and monks are weak to both, they can become very slightly more armored vs either but not really both (Armor alone, no skills included.) Assassins are medium, and Warriors, Rangers, Paragons, and Dervish are strong to both. While the earlier relay heavily upon protection skills, the later not so much, I rarely see warriors bring any protection at all, infact the most common is that they bring the opposite - frenzy.

Make armor have attribute points, say 30 points for casters and 40 points for fighters, afterall it makes sense that they be a little stronger (keyword little.) They can then choose to have 60 vs ele and 100 vs physical, 80 vs each, or however balanced they would like. Then give the option of an armor mod, do I want 10 armor vs physical, elemental or 5 to each. Next an attribute point system for a mod for more hp or energy or armor. And then an option specific to each profession, or a situational mod like while enchanted or holding an item or something.

Biggest problem with the E is the class design. Instead of having elements as the attributes, it should have been the following:

- AOE (element spells which cover large areas and have 0 armor penetration) ex. Firestorm, meteor shower
- Strike/Focused (element spells which have 25% armor penetration and hit a single foe) ex. meteor, water trident, flare, lightning strike, lightning orb.
- Status (element spells which have a status effect on their target) ex. Blind, freezing, and knockdown spells.

Removing exhaustion from Meteor and Meteor Storm because of the recharge time, which is penalty enough. Knockdown spells and spamable spells with low energy cost combinded with low recharge time should keep it.

One of the thing back in the day during the first few open betas, is that Warrior's armor have extra weakness against lighting damage. So when playing as a Warrior in plate armor, its always a pretty scary sight when see a lighting orb come flying toward you.

I never do like how the elemeantal damage are treated in GW. It is just not appearent enough. In PvE, its "somewhat" okie, as fire damage will do extra damage to ice imp, and so on, but that extra bonus is still consider low. And in PvP, it feel almost useless too.

I do hope player's armor be more weaken toward elemental damage. All we see now are extra bonuse toward elemental damage, but never reduction. So the ranger's druid armor could be weaker to fire, Warrior's plate be weaker to lighting, monk's tatoo be weaker to cold, and so on (assume it will spread out in a balance fashion) (in some essense, be more like Pokemon)

uh yeah did u even READ the new ele skills? take a look at the earth line. then come back here

jack, never bring up pokemon that shit should have died years ago

I find the elementalist fire line quite powerful as for the elementalist air line. I have seen top guilds use fire eles recently. One used it to keep a continued stream of burn on the enemy while another was a combo of three cheap skills that he kept spamming on the target. Lightning elementalist are used in mixed spikes, normally the flag runner will carry it.

Earth and water lines have been neglected but water seems to have found a way into the world. Earth too with its wards but in a way I agree that some of the classes should have less armor to elemental attacks. Rangers should have the most and dervish should have it somewhere up there. But how much necros and mesmer do you see with armor for elemental damage? I rarely see any.

Im talking about how armor is too high vs ele attacks, not that they don't have any way to protect themselves, because there are combos eles can use in their own profession to live forever.

In the nightfall earth skills I see several ways to yet again protect yourself, not deal damage.

If you are talking about Sandstorm, no smart player would stand in that, ebon hawk is just a lightning orb with longer reuse, no AP, and causes weakness.

In other lines there are definately some good skills to bring down a mesmer, however it wont make more than an easily remedied scratch on a warrior or ranger.

Did anyone ever think that the reason elementalist don't deal much damage. Oh I don't know because the builds you use are poor or something. No offence but often when people say a profession doesn't work is when they aren't using it properly.

May I suggest offering a little more insight or something constructive. No need for the generic "noob" response unless you can back it up.

ele vs warrior.. ever heard of kinetic armor + armor of earth + stone daggers... u can kill a warrior with ease with jst those 3 skills...
throw in a sliver armor for some extra kick...

blinding flash makes a warrior completely useless
weakness inducing lighning attacks do weakness which pretty much makes warrior almost useless
(against a warrior with weakness u can easily win him with jst staff atacks)

imo warrior should be able to kill casters when they get close and casters should be able to deal more dmg from range

id rather increase the dmg from eleskills rather than mess with armor... already icy fiery etc weapons do ~50% (20armor difference) more dmg vs gladiator for example
but then again this would radically increase the number of elespike teams...

perhaps more spammable medium pressure dmg skills?

hmm