Make Eles a threat in PvP again!

Outside of Searing Flames, we're not all that much.

Eles take a very specific build to be a threat in the DPS area. Nuking and DoT skills are not as useful in PvP where the smart enemies don't bunch up. The huge energy pool means squat when 80% of the good skills are 15+ energy, with a long cast time (that screams 'Interrupt me!") and a high recharge (which says, "Ok, I got my hit. I'll go get coffee and come back in a minute.").

They want to keep having these "Test Weekends", well, I got a new test for them. Energy Storage as an increase in regen rather than capacity. Maybe one extra pip of regen per 5 ranks in the attribute. So max out at 3 extra pips. I think the DPS threat might be comparable with 6 pips of regen and the newly balanced 'spam' spells in the Ele lines.

And yeah, almost requiring enchantments to keep that energy up long enough to be a threat... whose brilliant idea was that? And how many ways to hurt enchantment reliant people are there? Yeah...

It might not be so bad if the bloody attunements had a lower recharge. But 45 seconds? Yeah, put it up, cover it with Aura... and it can still be stripped by even an incompetent enchantment stripper leaving you with 30 seconds or more to recast. Yeah...

So, here's my suggestion if anyone at ANet is watching this thread. Either change Energy Storage to Energy Mastery (as increased regen) or lower the recharges on attunements. PLEASE!

I find Eles very effective outside of GvG. I especially hate the E/As or Me/Es or A/Es that use fast casting or teleportation to make those high-damage localized spells effective.

Just bringing a series of spells that do damage isn't going to help anyone. You have to create a build around using the spells, and not expect them to do your work for you.

Awww... so now you cant pwn,cant you? lol you forgot how your ele can be hexed with backfire and SS... 3 spells and your dead !

ele originally has 4 pips. add with 3 and it's 7 !!! that's overpowered!!

who said ele is not a threat???

All I can say is...wanna scrimmage?

Eh... what? Eles are alwasya threat!

All my builds, ALL of them are buffed up in every nerfing update.
Who needs more energy regen whn you have more than 100 energy and Energy Glyphs?

Aha... Ahahahaha, the bad players always give me a laugh.

Ontopic : Personally I think that ele's are still deadly, not in the sense of big yellow numbers, but snares. Water Magic (as of late) is my favourite element.

With skills such as : [skill]Icy Shackles[/skill] [skill]Deep Freeze[/skill] [skill]Frozen Burst[/skill] [skill]Water Trident[/skill] [skill]Freezing Gust[/skill] [skill]Blurred Vision[/skill]

Snares will provide more pressure for your team by stopping monks and midlines from kiting so they are more susceptible to your frontline, Water Trident is perfect for chain knockdowns and blurred vision great for shutting down melee for hexes aren't as easily removed as conditions.

Is this a joke thread? When I HA all I see are a bunch of cookie cutter ele builds that pound the shit out of everything.

Elementalist is always a threat when I am playing my necro. Not so much as a mesmer because, well, mesmer shut down any spell caster. On top of it, when I am playing my ranger, eles are barely ever a threat but that is because they do reduced damage and I pretty much ALWAYS carry two interupts. Ele elites are weak, I admit to that, but the regular ele skills are fine in my opinion. Buff the weak elites and an ele may be a bigger threat.

If ele's would get a regen of +1 every 5 ranks, other classes are going to get way overpowered. Think of a monk with a regen of 7 :S. You can easily outheal the missing of divine by spamming a bunch of 5-energy skills, you won't loose energy because the regen is too fast.

I make my own kick ass builds, and they rock plenty of people. All classes can own if the player is smart.

i have your soultion!
dont use fire magic in PvP.
it sounds like you haven even seen the air, water, and most of the earth skills.

[skill]Savannah Heat[/skill]

Jesus... so, none of you read 'Why Nuking Sucks" then?

Ok... one at a time.

You seem to have missed the point of the thread. I suggest reading 'Why Nuking Sucks" and then come back here. In short, the point is we never really did.

Mmmm kay. Glyph of Lesser has a 30 second recharge. If you're not having to rely on the attunements (and that's a great idea with all the enchant hate introduced in Nightfall), what will you do for the other 20-24 seconds?

Same here. If you're not in a guild that does HA/TA regularly, good luck finding a team that will take you when you say you're a water build. I don't have that problem now *points at guild tag*, but I remember when I had to try and PUG those areas.

Um yeah. You must have skipped the whole part of, "Nuking and DoT skills are not as useful in PvP where the smart enemies don't bunch up." Mind you, that skill can be great in tandem with a water Ele...

As for, "+7 regen would be overpowered" and the like... are you considering that at a 1 per 5, we're talking having used either an Energy headgear or a Superior rune for that, with the max points? Then any Ele will likely also have a maxed out primary element. That leaves a lot of missing Health...

And as for Primary Attribute abuse... whatever. You still can't apply runes to secondary attributes, and no one complains about say... Expertise being overpowered, or Fast Casting.

And again... ANet likes all these test weekends. Can we really say until we try it?

I kind of doubt Eles will ever end up with the same kind of DPS a melee class can deal. Nuking damage is less threatening, but also harder to mitigate. Sure, spells can be inturrupted, recharges are long, but you can't spam blind or cripple on them to stop them. If you give them too much damage, they overshadow Warriors and Dervishes.

This is the way it should be, imo. I'm not really in favor of the vision for a high damage Ele because it plays a bit like IWAY - your damage is in your build, not your skill. Look at the SF teams - they roll teams not necessarily because of their skill, but with their build. With a warrior or dervish, your effectiveness is dependant on personal and team skill. A good warrior will know which targets to hit, when to hit them, and he'll be more effective if his team can keep conditions off him. Shitty warriors will Frenzy too much or overextend, and perform badly. An nuker like an SF ele, on the other hand, will still be effective in the hands of a noob, because as long as you're pressing buttons and you're not dead, you're dealing around the same damage as a more experienced player would be doing.

Actually, Elementalists are very deadly in every aspect of the game.

Air: Well, everyone already knows that Air Spells can spike, blind, boost, and KD. It is one of the most used attributes in GvG.

Earth: With the new skills in NF, such as Sandstorm, and the ability to spike with one single skill, and also the Wards and Grasping Earth, Earth is a pain to the opposition.

Fire: Don't even say that nuking sucks in GvG based upon what a thread stats. Mind Blast and Savannah Heat are seldom but casually ran in high-end PvP. Searing Flames is only seeing play from Ttgr as a spike, but still deadly. Also, it got buffed for flag-running purposes(Flame Djinn's Haste) And the DoT skills got buffed as well, making them very synergetic with Gale.

Water: Best snares ever. A Water ele alone can make and melee-er, monk, midliner, and flagrunner cry out in anger. The damage and snares got highly buffed, causing more grief to the opposition.


Btw, changing Energy Storage will just make Ele's into secondary gas-stations again. That's it.

That's obviously not viable. I've been an advocate of it reducing casting costs of ELEMENTAL spells for forever, though. Almost everything elemental is costed under some sort of assumption that an attunement is up.

Channeling is sort of at what a damage elementalist should be. Nice that they decided to pair that attribute with a healing one in a class. It's almost like they totally don't want "degenerate" builds at all. Putting the only viable direct spell damage line next to healage. Brahoo-broooham.

Water it is, I guess. Hydromancer as core class gg bla bla.

Blurred Vision is a REALLY good effect - I feel like it needs a much smaller recharge time, though. HaXes with recharges beyond 10 seconds begin to really be a burden on your bar in PvP. PvE wise, Blurred tends to not even recharge before you want to cast it again. Enfeebling Blood tends to do better for raw mitigation, in those instances.

I do have a Ele/Mo where I only use healing breeze to heal myself. The rest is pure firemagic but none of them is a skill to nuke. What I use it a few burning skills combined with huge dmg. Then I got a skill which does like 2x more dmg when someone casts (for example healing) and Searing Flames and a hex.

So what I do is cast the hex, and while it's counting down I cast a skill which does 100dmg and gives me 10 energy, then imolate him, searing flames, then when he tries to run or heal, boem 2x times 129dmg, imolate, skill for 100dmg and 10 energy again and searing flames before imolate ends. And this cycle takes down Assasins, Warriors, Monks, Mesmer and all other chars except those dervish wich loads of ele earth magic skills easely down.

Even when I start casting when a Assasin hits me for the first time, I can kill him as long I have Fire Attunement on and that healing enchancement of the ele (forgot the name) which I always keep up the whole match.

But it's not a build to run into a fight and PWN, it's more, let the Tanks run in, follow them and unleash hell when in range. Burn burn baby and let's spike.
I can even manage to run the cycle off with just 15 energy and keep it cyceling. And in overall I have 70 energy, so basicly as long Fire Attunement is up I have no worries, else I just recast it.

It's a very nice build and people do hate it since I keep them burning all the time while dealing loads of dmg to put some stress on them. I still need a bit of tweaking but well it's my nice testbuild. In RA it works like a charm, but then I replace the healing breeze with a res, and basicly have no other support for self healing, but well who cares if you take out ppl in less then a few secs.

Seeing as how GW is balanced around GvG, let's not go into RA please.

Many of the shortcomings pointed out in that thread are largely irrelevant now. Several skills, namely searing heat and savannah heat, are commonly used in HA to apply insane DPS for a short period of time. If you do the math on flare now, you find it's exactly the same DPS as a warrior under IAS. Granted, a warrior can have buffs stacked on him, but eles are quite capable of dishing out damage now.


Glyph of lesser energy is, by far, the best non-elite energy management skill in the game. Seriously, it's that good. Were


Same here. If you're not in a guild that does HA/TA regularly, good luck finding a team that will take you when you say you're a water build. I don't have that problem now *points at guild tag*, but I remember when I had to try and PUG those areas.



The key is to nuke things when they don't have the option to spread out, for instance at a flagstand, altar, or while snared.
The idea is stupid because it doesn't take a genius to start using those seven pips of energy to spam heal party and aegis. This would essentialy be a free ether prodigy on every ele's bar.


Can you really say it's a bad idea to shove potato chips up your nose until you try it?

Before you comment, I read the entire thread, thanks.
The point of 'why nuking sucks' is not to point out eles suck. The point is to point out that their direct damage sucks when compared to warriors. If you read past the OP, Ensign actually says ele's are very good at other things.

Eles are very much a threat in PvP. You know the typical balanced build consists of 2 warriors, 2 mesmers, 2 monks and 2 eles? You have water snarers with Trident or Icy Shackles, you have fire eles with Searing Flames or Savannah Heat, you have earth warders, and you have air runners. Elementalists do have their use, and since Nightfall they even have their use in dealing direct damage.
Glyph of Lesser Energy got a huge buff. It now equals almost three pips worth of energy.
Enchant hate? How much enchant removal does the average team have? Avatar of Grenth was nerfed, remember? You'll find a shatter or a drain on a mesmer, but nothing more. If you're unlucky you'll find both.
I'm pretty sure an ele with 13 in his element and 7 regen would be more effective than an ele with 16 in his element and 6 regen. In a lot of cases, the attribute doesn't matter that much. 70 dmg from Water Trident is nice, but who cares. It knocks you down at 13 water magic too. Storm Djinn's Haste? yeah, those 2 seconds are going to make a difference.
And every class would go ele primary. You noticed how HA's favorite backline is (was? haven't been there for a while) a rit spirit spammer , a N/Mo and a N/Rt? Why are they Necromancer primary? For the minions? No Wai. They're necro primary for the extra energy. Giving eles extra regen is the same thing, exept less conditional.
Fast Casting doesn't really compare to Energy Storage. Expertise would compare to your new energy storage, exept that it only lowers the cost of specific skills. Your new energy storage would effectively lower the cost of all skills. And really, people complain about Expertise being overpowered all the time. It's held in check by the overpriced ranger skills, but it is overpowered. When people find a way to use skills from their secondary with Expertise, this comes out. (remember Thumpers?) Your idea would do the same, exept it would be much easier to use skills from your secondary.

I agree that ele's always get the rare end of the deal in GWs. But im not PvP'er so im not going to comment on that.

But concerning interuption;

Glypth of concentration or some other mesma skill which prevents interuption.

Hahha you guys are funny, Eles underpowered? ahahah nice joke

I guess the OP doesnt realize they can snare and rape/violate a target in a few seconds. Not to mention some of their skills work with each other (water hex + air spells)

Sorry but the OP really is correct... people saying this is a joke thread obviously have never played in high level gvg. Just saying "lol" is harmful to the discussion.

For spike, warriors and assasins are better. Due to the .75 aftercast that less experienced people forget about, they think a 1 second spell is X damage per second when its in reality close to half that. Warriors and assasins have no such aftercast, have deepwound, and IAS.

For pressure, Hexes and conditions are better. Reaper's mark is basically 5 energy for 300 long term damage, mantra of persist + remorse/phanstasm is just about as good. Eles have splash damage with fire which is extremely inneffective because high level gvg always has people spread out.

For Shutdown, air and water are decent, but bulls charge warriors/bash warriors pack better KDs with high damage. The only thing worth mentioning is bsurge really, but this sucks because of mending touch.

For efficiency, elementalists are a joke. Monks have signets LoD, RC, ZB etc etc, necromancers have reaper's mark and signet of lost souls, mesmers have inspiration, paragons have leadership... what do eles have? High energy and attunements. The high energy is worthwhile in RA but worthless in 10+minute gvgs, and attunements get stripped very easily. Ether prodigy is silly for everyone but runners cause it gets stripped and wow it hurts when it does, prism and second wind are interrupted like crazy.

I.e. people complained when divine boon went from 2 seconds to 10 recharge. Whaddya think would happen if they changed it to 10 energy 2 seconds cast and 45 second recharge? Honestly, SAYING ELES ARE NOT UNDERPOWERED IS A JOKE.

As said earlier, increasing energy regen would only make them battery primaries for other classes, I propose that energy storage works like expertise. A % energy return not from skills in this case but from elemental spells. That, or change attunements to, and I'm not kidding, 5 energy 1/4 cast 10 recharge.

Note: Despite the above changes that would occur, I would still never use elementalists. they're too vulnerable to interrupts. So what I propose is not gamebreaking at all.

Yay for Gale!

yeah lets keep this thread on track of high level gvg with 2 sup runes and a big spike me target over that characters head.

Eles are used in top gvg and ha teams all the time not only with savanna heat and other high damage fire skills but also with air air/water and earth.

This is not a problem with eles being underpowered its a problem with how teams are created. You seem to be saying water eles are good but pugs don't know about it so lets buff eles.

Its lucky that those pro warriors/sins/paragons and rangers have nothing to stop them... oh wait blind/wards/aegis chains/sod/reckless haste/price of failure etc.

Now i know that there is prob an equal number of caster hate things out there im not saying casters like eles have it easy, but they don't have it as bad as you are making out. Eles have a lot of use in both ha and gvg (without 2 sup runes btw )

Well the note was just a personal preference, I was just pointing at that this wouldn't make them all powerful, far from it. You know how it is, some noob on the forums then says "ZOMG THEY"D BE TOO UBER NO WAY BLAH BLAH.." if you don't have some little disclaimer. Changing attunes to make them reappliable simply puts them on par with easily reapliable monk and mesmer effects like mantras and low recharge maintained enchants.

Please explain how Water Trident, Freezing Gust, Blinding Flash, Searing Flames, Lightning Hammer/Orb, Mind Blast, Immolate, Deep Freeze, Heal Party, Aegis, Storm Djinn's Haste and more, who are already used a lot with 4 pips, would not be overpowered if the character had 6 or 7 pips of regen.
Or please explain how skills from every other profession, skills that are balanced aound 4 pips, would not be overpowered on a character with 7 pips.

That's correct. read my post and you'll find I disagree with his solution

Honestly, the only midline caster that feels particularly strong right now is a Curses Necro. Water snares are still nice but I hate how Water Eles don't deal any damage; Fire is getting better but you're only as good as Mark is (Savannah Heat is really just a bad team detector). Air is as good as blind is, and Earth needs to kill things before it'll be considered more than a solo farming line. Dom is still reasonably robust, but it doesn't have anything really sweet besides Diversion anymore. Diversion spam + spiking = Mesmer?

Casters still have a few overpowered skills, and they'll slip into robust builds in order to take advantage of those. Otherwise casters exist for hex builds and not much else.

Peace,
-CxE

Scourge Light of Deliverance ~~

Is this a fair comparison of Channeling versus Elementaling damamge in general? ->

[skill]Spirit Burn[/skill]

[skill]Lightning Orb[/skill]

[skill]Immolate[/skill] [skill]Liquid Flame[/skill]

[skill]Obsidian Flame[/skill] [skill]Ebon Hawk[/skill] [skill]Stoning[/skill]

[skill]Vapor Blade[/skill]

Burn's had its recharge bumped up to 8, but even still fire's the only line that seems to be heading to Channeling's tier of damage. Which might be okay I guess, since raw damage is all those attributes have to offer...

Honestly, I have to disagree here. The strength in water snares is not that they deal damage, but that they allow others, namely your melee, to deal exponentionally more damage than they would without the water ele.
Savannah Heat is a bad team detector, but it's also a match winner against the archers at VoD, much like glyphsac+MS is, with the difference that it's more usable during the 20 minutes before VoD. If that's worth devoting your elite slot to is most certainly debatable, but it's more than you make it.
Now that Gale is nerfed you're sort of right about air, though dual attune Lightning Orb/Hammer spammers seem to be the only/one of the very few direct damage midline template(s) at the moment and every flag runner uses Storm Djinn's Haste.
Wards for whatever reason aren't widely used in this metagame, but they have been in the past and they could be in the future. If AoE's (like Savannah) should be nerfed wards will be a nice unremovable way to screw up assassins.

Thank you. I didn't think I was the only person that saw this.

Sure, sometimes I like being captain support, but occasionally, I'd like to just kill things.

Now, I'd like to see the recharges on Ele spells lowered, maybe the energy costs a few lowered as well. (I mean, ok... SH got lowered to 5, but it has a 25 recharge? What's the point? You can't spam it.) But while Izzy keeps upping the damage, he seems to hate changing recharge except when it doesn't help...

"Yeah, I'll lower the recharge on Exhaustion spells! Brilliant!" ~Izzy

As they seem to not want to touch the cost/recharge issue, maybe we need to look at a revamp of Energy Storage. Regen is one option. Perhaps a 'reverse expertise' where it gives a refund (less than attunements) on each successfully cast spell... (1..2 MAX, otherwise that would be insane with attunements), or the real obvious solution that Izzy can't seem to find... LOWER THE RECHARGE ON ATTUNEMENTS TO 15 SECONDS! I mean, they lowered the recharge on the Conjure line, which most people still don't use, but left the recharge on attunements alone... WHAT?