Mark of Rodgort: Mediocre at best

It has come to my attention that many players are drawn to the skill Mark of Rodgort when playing Elementalist.

[skill=big]Mark Of Rodgort[/skill]

It seems ok at first glance, but there are a number of issues fundamentally wrong with it.

The first issue to look at is energy compared to the skill's effect. 15 energy is expensive. Energy storage helps buffer this to an extent, but key to any spell is efficiency. Certain skills at 15 energy are incredibly efficient. Blinding flash can negate well over 150+ damage (more without condition removal), heal party heals for 400+ health divided amongst 8 players. Mark of rodgort, at 15 energy, should do something equally impressive if it as good as these other 15 energy spells, right?

Unfortunately, it does not. There are a few reasons that cause this problem. The duration of the hex is excellent, 30+seconds is not bad. Unfortunately, you need to continually trigger the burning for it to be worth it. Unless the entire team build is built around the skill, it's unlikely you'll be able to trigger the skill on more than one foe consistently. You can trigger it with skills such as fireball and liquid flame, but that's dependent on 1) the hexed foes standing close enough that you can hit multiple targets with the spell, 2) that the hex is not removed on one or both of your targets. Furthermore, liquid flame is on a 15 second recharge, and fireball on a 7 second recharge, meaning that triggering multiple targets occurs incredibly infrequently for an incidental +56 damage (after 4 seconds have elapsed).

Also, getting the hex on a reasonable amount of enemies can be a a pain in the ass (for lack of a better term). The aoe effect of the hex triggers on adjacent foes only; adjacent being the absolute smallest area of effect available. With AI updates, enemy npcs space out enough to avoid that effect in most cases. Meaning at best your spending 15 energy to hex maybe 2 (more if you're lucky) enemies with a skill that hits for an incidental 56 damage if you can trigger burning on both. And Unless you're in a party with multiple elementalists and have some coordination, it is unlikely to continually trigger the burning on multiple foes for an extended period of time, which also makes the skill undesirable for pug groups.


The damage, over time, is nothing impressive either. If kept on a target for 30 seconds, that amounts to 420 damage over 30 seconds, if simply left to wanding the target over and over again (this is ignoring spells that trigger it such as flare/fireball/etc, as well as the damage from wanding). that's about 840 damage per minute. A warrior autoattacking does far more than that over the same period of time. Given the choice between a mark of rodgort elementalist and a warior, I'd take the warrior every single time.

The skill, overall, is outshined by everyone's darling Searing flames.

[skill=big]Searing Flames[/skill]

The aoe is bigger, the burning is able to hit multiple targets for 7 seconds (an effective 104 damage over time), it has a secondary effect (100+damage depending on attribute level) on the skill, and has a shorter recharge. Many people have noted using mark of rodgort on a bar with Searing flames; this seems silly, considering you already have a skill that triggers burning to a larger area for a longer time. It also requires no further upkeep, meaning you don't have to wand anything to keep them on fire. Since just about every good player I know uses a +5 energy sword, they don't have to worry about wanding anything. Additionally, with a burning-engine as efficient as searing flames, the rest of your bar should be used to get that skill off as much as possible, meaning you'll have a few additional damage skills, a rez, and then a bunch of energy management to keep the skill going. Sacrificing a skill slot for a skill that, for the sake of this argument, is a lesser version of searing flames, is a waste.

I'm sure there are many things I missed during this write-up, but I feel I covered enough bases to make my point.

Explained well, but I wouldnt term it as bad, even though its overrated. I've used it very successfully in 2 team builds. (1) Conjure Flame Barragers with one of them running Rodgort, in multiple places...Sorrow's Furnace, Urgoz etc. (2) DoA - 2 SF Nukers + 1 Echo MS Nuker with the MS nuker using Mark of Rodgort. The MS Nuker can afford to give away a slot for it, while the SF Nukers cant, and what it does is ensure that the SF spam will result in AoE damage spikes rather than AoE Burning. This may not seem significant at first, but I go with a 2-monk, no rit, no paragon offensive team build which relies on killing them before they kill your tank - so speeding things up helps.

I changed the title because it was a bit harsh, as it's not absolutely terrible and unplayable (as your exceptions pointed out, it's ok in narrow enviornments).

p.s. obs flesh tanks are the best in DoA.

Yeah SF pnzors joo, but it's elite, mark isn't, and mark can still be used to steadily pressure a target to death, and if played right, a couple of Derv's toting fiery scythes can reap flame and blood on the battlefield.

One thing about this skill is hillarious...
Earlier I've been using it waaay often, 25 energy, fast casting and recharge... with Fire Attunement, Elemental Attunement and Aura of Restoration it was quite a valuable spell, not for it's direct effect but for the 90hp Aura of Restoration can give me after using it and the attunements made sure I won't run out of energy (total cost of it was... 3 energy I think).... well ya, this build isn't the best possibility, disenchant and interrupts = death.... but without it in AB i was able to solo 5 warriors at once ^^ [I don't even want to know what kind of builds they had].
So... after Nightfall the energy cost is too low for me to be used for healing, apart from that the area effect is quite nice, but still, burning isn't as good as good ole direct dmg ^^
The point - even when they improve the skills I feel nerfed....

It's not a bad energy management & pressure skill if you have a fast recharging glowing gaze (e.g. a mantra of recovery mesmer). But in high level pvp, I agree .

I remember a glowing gaze, mark of rodgort, mantra of recovery, ether phantom & drain delusions build that works quite well at generating pressure.

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Thanks. I wasn't paying attention to the differences in AoE between MoR and SF.

Except for that not so trivial detail, it would indeed be the case that MoR adds to the energy efficiency of most popular fire builds.

And should it ever be the case that even with the new AI people actually bother building groups that pin enemies down with multiple interwoven Meteor Showers, MoR will probably be a valuable part of those builds ... unless, of course, 1071 or so points of damage is already enough to kill the aforementioned enemies.

I have to say, that in many high level areas, where I MS can find more use than SF (or as in DoA where it finds use along with SF), I don't think there are many skills that really fit in conjunction better than Mark. Since the buff, anytime I run as a MS nuker, I always have Mark and Glowing Gaze on my bar as well. Although I admit that taking a MS nuker over a SF nuker is really only advantageous in certain areas later in the game, I don't think I'd ever run MS without Mark again unless there is some wierd skill change that nerfs it.

As for using Mark in any build without MS, then I would agree that the skill is overrated since it's not really worth using unless you can keep permanent burning on your target without having to stand there and wand them the whole time. Perhaps it would work well with Savannah Heat, but I don't think that skill has really found much use anywhere yet. Also, as said by Anarkii, R/E Barrage rangers with Conjure Flame and GoLE make good use of this skill.

I would argue however that perhaps one of the strongest nuker backlines for DoA would consist of either 1 MS nuker with Mark and 2 SF eles or 2 MS nukers with 1 SF ele. This allows the SF eles to constantly get the damage bonus from SF rather than having to spend 15 e over and over again to reapply the burning. Toss in Earthbind into the mix and you have some heavy KD with strong constand DPS and constant burning.

Okay, I have to disagree on this one. Mark isn't a terrible skill-not great-but not terrible either. Let's look at your criticisms.

1) Cost: 15E. Considering just single target damage, you need to get about 10-13 seconds of burning for this to become more efficient than most nukes in the fire line. Absent removal this is quite doable.

2) AoE: Most nukes in fire line do not have robust AoE. So at worst MoR is in the same boat as most other fire skills. However Mark has the advantage that you only need to take advantage of the AoE once, cast it once on a (say) a bunch of NPCs training on someone and then fire away-after that it doesn't really matter if they separate out of adjacent range because they're all hexed. With a 1s cast its not so hard to take advantage of such situations as they appear.

Would it be better with nearby AoE? Of course. But the AoE does have some value as it is now.

3) Searing flames, and poor synergy thereof: Let me state for the record that I agree with you, searing flames is pretty much the only elite worth a damn in the fire line. So why would you take MoR with it?

a. Constant burning means constant 119 damage triggers (at 16 fire). Searing flames by itself does ~37.33 dps, since roughly one out of every 3 casts will serve to restart the 7 second burn. SF + MoR will do ~53.67 dps. Consider in a searing flame build you do want to mash the SF button as much as possible, which means you have very little time to cast other spells. If you want to pump up your damage further your only two options are MoR or liquid flame because the time burden they impose is small.

b. More reliable energy management with glowing gaze. It's annoying to cast GG only to have the burning run out just before it hits, in long battles you want to get that GG trigger every time. Also, GG will give you energy even if the target isn't already burning (as long as you GG a marked target), which is a nice perk.

Now that said I don't think mark is a strong skill in any sort of organized play, simply because of the prevalence of removal. But if it sticks, and if battles last a reasonable amount of time, it can be decent.

Why use MoR? Well, it's an energy management skill with GG

Let say you have fire attunement on,

you put MoR hex on the target (cost 15e get 6e back), then cast GG(cost 5e, get 12e back), then you spam 2 SF (cost 30e, get 12e back), cast GG again. The target and foe(s) adj to him will definitely almost dead and you still have almost full energy in your bar.

Then cycle through the next target on and on.

MoR works wonders on Bosses when combined with other skills, eg. Meteor shower, or flare spam, or even with congeur flame and simple wand attacks for long burning periods.

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Immolate/GG isn't a huge energy-gaining engine. (It's a net gain of 1 energy if I did the arithmetic correctly.) It's more like two shots of damage for free, every 7 seconds. (HSR is unlikely to apply if you're keeping the two skills synced.)

GG/MoR is better, of course, ASSUMING you get a number of GG shots in for each MoR. That depends on whether targets stay alive, whether there's another one after the first one dies, whether they dehex (unusual in PvE, actually), whether they're bosses who have the hex end early, etc.

Let's say you get 4 GGs in for each MoR. That's 35 gross energy spent, 40 energy returned from GG, 13 energy returned from Fire Attunement, 212 points of damage caused, and 16 seconds of burning caused for 224 more points of life loss. 5 GG -- which is about all you can hope for in half a minute even with HSR weapons, makes it a net gain of 25 energy, plus 280 points of burning and 265 points of damage. The energy part is exactly like a GoLE. So the question is how good you think GoLE is, and how you think 32 seconds of burning/minute plus a few hundred points of damage is as a use of a skill slot.

Oh yes -- you can get bonus burning from giving your hero physical damagers fire weapons ... and you probably get a very small amount of burning from wanding by the henchie/hero monks.

mark of rodgort is definatley better than searing flames IF you use it with fire attunement AND elemental attunement----the two attunements together gives you unlimited energy, making all skills cost about 2 energy. you can spam this over and over and over again and have 90% energy left. mark of rodgort is extrmely effective by only casting it on a target and then spamming flare. its a great skill. compared to searing flames, it *bassically* does the same thing, except MoR isnt elite and it has a recharge of 5. you can even use glowing glaze with it like you would with searing flames.

Of course, there's also the possibility of going Dual Attunement AND taking the GG/MoR engine. But I haven't figured out what to do with all that energy that makes sense. Although I did head out from Beetletun with a comedy build that used the energy to power Animate Bone Minions ... Probably there's a boss or three somewhere on the continents that could seriously be farmed that way, come to think of it, but offhand I don't know where they would be.

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