Elementalist Spam Skills

Yep. Another thread devoted to those oh-so-lovable nukers that can either make or break your day. What I want to talk about, however, are all the skills Ele's are capable of using... While, of course, relating it all to Fire Attunement.

Whether it be the might of the ocean, the fury of the wind, the protective bonds of the earth, or the undeniable power of the flames, all four elemental attributes are granted a "spam" attack that can be used to deal a good amount of damage over a short period of time. I'll post these "spam" attacks here, just in case you're unaware of them.

AIR:
[skill]Lightning Strike[/skill]
EARTH:
[skill]Stone Daggers[/skill]
FIRE:
[skill]Flare[/skill]
WATER:
[skill]Ice Spear[/skill]

Let's start with Lightning Strike. While it actually has a "recharge" (and thus might not be considered a "spam" attack), it has 25% armor penetration. However, even at 5...41 damage, the skill does not compare to the spell Flare.

The spell Stone Daggers is actually pretty equal with Flare. While each stone only does 8...28 damage, together, they can cause a total of 16...66 damage. Like I said, pretty equal.

Flare, out of all the elementalist skills, is quite possibly the most damaging "spam" attack. With Fire Magic set to 0, Flare does a brilliant 20 damage and can go as high as 56 damage (with Fire Magic set to 12).

Finally, we have Ice Spear. Let's start with saying "this skill sucks" because it does. With Water Magic set to 0, it does a pitiful 10 damage and only has half the range. Even if you max out your Water Magic to 12, it only does 58 damage. That's only 2 more damage than Flare and you still have to cast it at half the normal range. Benefits? None. It sucks. Stone Daggers is better than this skill x2.



Now that I've gone over all of the wonderful "spam" attacks, sum it all up:

• Lightning Strike has 25% armor penetration, but the damage it does and the recharge it has doesn't make up for it.
• Stone Daggers is pretty good.
• Flare is what everyone already uses.
• Ice Spear is lamenting its own existence.

I'll get to the point. Lightning Strike needs a minor buff in damage and/or recharge. Ice Spear needs a buff in general.

Please state whether you agree/disagree and why. Feedback is great and sometimes I just don't see the "big picture". Thanks in advanced!

Ice Spear does have that drawback because it is on the water attribute.
(so what?) well water is very superior on strategic side.

You don't need spam skills, most of the time these skills tend to have horribly bad dps when used in both PVE and PVP, if you have a high damage spam attack it leads to brainless gimmicks. There is no real reason to buff these skills because of the tactics they encourage (button mashing).

Both stone daggers, and lightning strike have been used in the past as followups for spikes.

Its been showing that wanding a target with the conjure x skills do more dps then simpley spaming flare.

I don't really see a point to this thread.

The fact that you think Lightnening Strike is bad is also stupid. People who spam with air damage skills in PvP use like 3 air skills on their bar (lightnening strike, lightnening orb, lightening javalin, lightening hammer, arc lightnening, lightning bolt just to name a few) to spam air constantly.

EDIT1: Thanks, Coran Ironclaw, for that point of view. It does make sense to a degree.
EDIT2: I just watched half of nadesico, so say what you want and I just won't care, really.

Then what the hell was the point of this thread? To say that flare and ice spear suck? Who didn't know that? Where is the troll bait in my post simpely stating the obvious.

Also, I MEANT to say PvE (not PvP, it was a typo on my part) and was talking about PvE skills (no air ele in PvP would use the build I just suggested). Way to just dismiss my arguement completely.

My own point of view was that lightening strike is good, and that why are we discussing skills that are the "noobish" ele skills that everybody knows is bad?

Stone Daggers FTW. It's great to use with energy renewal but also a great secondary attack. It only costs 3 energy with earth attunement on and they cast more rapidly than a normal staff attack. Stone daggers has been number 1 on my skillbar since I reached Fisherman's Haven on my ele (about a year ago)

Sadly if you look at energy cost to damage, ice spear is still better than vapor blade.

And I'm going to agree with Hawk, this thread belongs somewhere else as there aren't any suggestions I can see.

Fire ele's already have Searing flames - Fast casting, fast recharge and relatively high damage. Extremely spammable with echo or similar skill.

It drains energy if you continually use it, but such a skill already exits.

I dunno about the other elements. But we cant have a elemental skill which are too powerfull and easily spammable.

The idea is ele's do high dmg, but have the side effect of large energy demands and casting times. Remove that and we have an overpowered character.

(note: my primary is an ele)

While I agree that when ever someone suggest a skill change, most people assume its a PvP thing, and thats bad.

I dont agree with your attitude. You should have stated PvE if you were going to get so defensive about it. There was no need to be so rude to that poster. He/she wasnt flaming your idea, they were simple putting their ideas accross from a PvP perspective.

After just 3 responses (which were all perfectly polite) you flew off the handle and wanted your own post closed because you couldnt handle the abuse?

No one was flaming you!!

You've lost my vote purely for being aggressive, arrogant and rude.

Nice way to insult people that are trying to help you understand the skills.
Thats gratitude for you :|

For other people that might see this thread and agree with op , ill post to following:

At 12 in each attribute.
Lightning strike : 54 dmg/60 | 41dmg/80 | 32dmg/100
Ice Spear : 58 dmg/60 | 41dmg/80 | 29dmg/100
flare : 56 dmg/60 | 40dmg/80 | 28dmg/100
stone daggers : 2X28dmg/60 | 2x20dmg/80 | 2X14dmg/100

Those are the numbers against that certain armor for each skill.

Now for each skill.
Lightning Strike : Can not miss, 25% penetration,
Ice Spear : Can miss,can be obstructed,small distance,.
Flare : Can miss,can be obstructed.
Stone Daggers : Can miss twice,can be obstructed twice,skills that trigger on hits become more effective and skill that defend against next attack don't help that much.

If i looked at this information i would have to say that Lightning strike is the best, followed closely by Ice Spear then Flare then Stone Daggers.

Lets see here,
Lightning Strike the higher armor they have the "more" damage you do it cant not miss, but it does indeed have a recharge time

Ice Spear it has the most average dmg and since your at half range the chance of missing isn't that great anyways.

Flare has the same damage that Stone Daggers does but it has it in one hit since its a projectile you can miss with it.

Stone Daggers strength and weakness is that it has 2 projectiles , you have 2 times the chance of missing or being obstructed, but skills that trigger when foe takes damage or the likes, also trigger twice. (also think about RoF, first hit gets reversed second doesn't)

I almost think that stone daggers is better then flare, because of RoF type skills or on hit skills, but the disadvantage of missing twice is still too great for me.

Dude, you compare lightning strike as a spammable skill instead of shock arrow?

Shows how very little you know about elementalists.

Out of all the skills in the OP, lightning strike is the only useful one (stone daggers is ok for geo tanking, but nothing else) as someone mentioned above when combined with lightning hammer + orb. This works well in PvE too, it isnt just a PvP based assumption.

You can solo many many bosses with these 3 skills, aura of res, dual attunements and blinding flash, just go in, wipe the mobs with your heroes/hench, zone them away, kill the boss. I farm a lot of greens by doing this.

Numbers for Shock Arrow are :
49dmg/60 | 37dmg/80 | 29/100

Lower overall damage,can miss or be obstructed.

If we were comparing this with the other 3 then i would say this one is the worst.
So This skill does need a boost


Note : I have no facts besides from what i can see, but it apears as this travels faster then flare.

You compare those spells because you consider they are spammable spells in their attribute line, so they need to be equal in damage and usage ? Lol.

OMG how did i only just notice this line?

all I can say is roffle.

Ahh, thanks guys for supporting me on this and agreeing that the OP was a bit aggresive. I thought after the OPs response to my post might had been been trollish was a bit freaked out for a miniute.

But yeah, shock arrows is definately the air equivalent to those spells, but I'm guessing the OP didn't include it since it isn't a core skill, but factions only.

Yeah, my guess is he's only going of off core.

However, if we expand into skills from all available chapters, that's where Ele's shine. The various methods of damage, side effects, and utility is hard to match.

For instance, if you want a good spamming air skill, look no farther than [skill]Lightning Javelin[/skill]. 5/1/2, with the ability to interrupt an attacking foe (nothing makes Sins hate me more in AB I think). For Earth why Spam? I think that one of the strong points of that line is that you don't have to spam damage to be effective. Simply set up defense for your team, watch the battle, and look for a good target for the combo of [skill]Ebon Hawk[/skill], [skill]Stoning[/skill], and [skill]Ash Blast[/skill]. Switch up a few spells in there for the same effects over an area.

For fire, Searing Flames has already been mentioned. But afraid of being a cookie cutter? No fear! [skill]Mind Blast[/skill] is here! Open up with a big spell (I'm fond of [skill]Rodgort's Invocation[/skill]), a good and improved [skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill], a couple more big spells (like [skill]Phoenix[/skill] and [skill]Teinai's Heat[/skill]), then find a wammo and blast way with Mind Blast till your energy is refilled. Rinse, repeat.

Now, water, why worry about a spam skill. Water is all about Battlefield Control. Your job is to make the enemy either have a hard time running from your melee teammates, or have a hard time catching your fellow casters. Water is all about the snares and the skills that work with them! [skill]Deep Freeze[/skill] is the king of area snares. Combine with [skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill] to make the enemy team wonder, "WTF, why are we so slow!" Then you also have [skill]Ice Spikes[/skill], [skill]Shard Storm[/skill], and [skill]Freezing Gust[/skill]. One they are slower knock em down with [skill]Water Trident[/skill]. Then stop their attempts to use [skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill] on their buddies with [skill]Icy Prism[/skill].

In short, if you are all about wailing on the "1" key in this game, don't be an Ele. There is so much more for you to do out there!

Lightning Javelin is a really bad skill, especially to spam....

Yes of course we could have went into why each of the "spam skills" or like they are looking at the line they are in and what other skills in that line they have, but that was not the subject of OP , so I at least for that reason didn't.

I was going off of core skills.

EDIT1: clouds

because some others here wish to continue with the skill discussion whether or not you wish to participate any longer. as is their right.

as for spammable spells, flare and stone daggers work very well in early ele bars, before you have every skill at your disposal. their DPS isnt horrible (not great, but not bad either), plus they are good for filling in downtime between your chains, where you have a handful of seconds to kill before you chain is ready. once you reach the higher ends in pve, these skills lose a lot of their punch against lvl 24+ enemies. plus by this time you should have a much larger base of skills to choose from.

ive always seen these skills as throw away slot skill (where you really have nothing else to sub in) but even more so as stepping-stone skills. they serve their purpose until you can get to the better skills.

as for pvp, i cant find the old flareway video anymore, but needless to say, its a blast to watch.

Its your thread. Why are you being such a misserable sod?

No one has flamed your idea, or had a go at you in the slightest. If you dont like debate and people questioning your ideas, then why did you post a thread?

Unsubscribe from the thread if you dont want to read what you started.

Air has no spammable skills...
Fire has the drawback of baing the one most people is prepared against.
Water has a 'half spell range' drawback.
And Earth has a 'less damage', 'two targets' drawback, that prevent spikes in crowds.

Air is meant for spikes, with more than one skill.
Earth is meant more for protection and such...
Water is meant more for slowing down and such.

Fire is the element that does the damage dealing...

It's normal for me that it is that way.

Hmm, have you not read the thread?
People have posted that there is a air spam skill.
And i believe your description to the elements are completely wrong ( off topic form the subject at hand too)

@Freek, he wants the thread closed, cause people are not agreeing with him like he wanted, so rather then hear and let other people , that don't know how it really is , to hear the other part. ( which is the correct one )

Mithran, I think you misunderstand how stone daggers works. It doesn't shoot 2 projetiles at 2 targets, it shots 2 projectiles at 1 target. That's kind of nice cause the damage then comes in two damage packets right after the other, thus doing more damage thorugh say prot spirit then 1 damage packet. On the downside, with SoA now, stone daggers would do less damage in 2 damage packets instead of 1, so it really just depends what the monk is running.

While Fire is prepared against (most of the time) in PvP, I was talking about early PvE. I, for one, never play PvP, but if I did, my Hydromancer would not have Ice Spear anywhere near her skill bar. However, in early PvE, it's still pretty lame compared to the other elemental skills, which is the point I was trying to convey. I suppose I just find it odd that GW influences Pyrotechniques early on moreso than any other element, but I digress.

As for Stone Daggers, It targets just one foe with two "stone daggers". While it does a bit (and I mean a small bit) more damage than the other three skills, I would guess you could avoid one dagger and get hit by another, thus taking only half damage.

I'm not sure if Armor Level actually works against Stone Daggers, though. If you use it against a foe with 40 AL, then the damage they recieve will be chopped in half. And since it's two daggers instead of one, you might lose some damage... Then again, Armor could just use the distrubutive law or something. I really don't know.

In Early PvE you are given a nice set of skills, more than enough to deal with most situations fou find in your way, with your first character and no unlocked skills.

Why do I know that? My first one was a Tyrian Ele, and I found the game awesomely easy.

Armor level does work with stone dager, it deals earth damage.
Only obsidian (armor ignoring) earth skills deal armor ignorin damage.

Although the elementalist is the damage dealing class of the 6 core ones... not all its 5 attributes are focused in damage dealing. Energy Storage doesn't even have a single damage dealing skill.... and it could.... one elite dealing deathly chaos damage sacrificing your whole energy! Mwee-hee-hee...

The only thing I didn't really like about Tyria is they hand you (mainly) fire magic and push you towards being a Pyromancer... Then again, they may have changed what skills you're given since then... I haven't made a Tyrian character for quite some time, now.
I do find it odd that the primary attribute of the elementalists has so few skills (eight counted)... And that's including the Elites. While I'd like to see ANet actually do something more with Energy Storage, with the upcomming release of GW2, I highly doubt it. It would be impressive, though.

Don't you think that.
It's not odd.
When a primary attribute is so much powerful like Soul Reaping and Energy Storage are, they end with not many skills.

What are you talking about? Energy storage is shit. It and strength are the worst primaries in terms of effect.

Garbage. Try running an ele with only 45 energy, then get back to me.

Lol. Energy management ftw?

The only reason to invest in energy-storage is for the energy management linked to it or to make mind blast more effective. You can run an elementalist perfectly well on 45e (dual attunements, attunement + GoLE, etc).

Well, you can't, but Why? With the build I usually use I rarely go under 40 energy, and I've got more than 100. I used that skill the first time I beat Glinth. I that battle never went under 50, not a single second without casting.

Energy storage grant you the safety if someone uses on me an exahaustion or energy steal skills, or interruptions or whatever, you will still have energy.All elementalsit skills se energy and they have biggest number of skills with higher energy cost (25).
With my Elementalist, in my entire life I suffered in the domain of secrets or due to Famine. That is Energy Storage for.

The idea for the energy storage is 'keep casting no matter what happens'.
Energy storage is not shit. If it where shit they would have changed it long time ago. They changed Death Magic because it was too powerful, didn't they?
It lets you cast, and cast using less slots for management, or even not a single skill for that.
Why to stick with cheap energy management when I can Chain echo a massive attack over a slowed down army with E:25 skills?

And in the case of strength, most of the best Warrior Skills are there. It's not the same case as Soul Reaping, or Energy Storage, a chip of armor penetration is fine, but not really a great deal, but Warriors do not need much more help to be good as they are.

Maybe you and I have different standards of what constitutes "good". I don't consider an exhaustion buffer, or a half assed way to compensate for overpriced elementalist spells particularly impressive.

Except it doesn't do that. Estorage is not emanagement, for the n-th time. Elementalists get the same 4-pips of regen everyone else does. All estorage does is give them a bit of reserve.

Are you playing the same game I am? The game where there are literally hundreds of skills that never see use because they suck?

What? I've used and tried all the skills so far.
I even try and test new builds sometimes.

Sorry, but if you can't see the use fr a skill that does not mean that it has no use.

Elementalists do need to worry about energy management more then any other profession in the game (or a PvP monk, but that's party just cause they often have a mesmer or interupt ranger annoying them). But a good ele should have some sort of energy management skill on his bar at all times.


The thing to keep in mind is, necro soul reaping is weaker then energy storage in certain situations such as highly competive GvGs where nothing dies on screen for several miniutes. Soul reaping is situational and its effectivenss depends on what style of play your team is running.

Energy management allows for investment into high costing spells not from the elemenatlist line, such as heal party and extinguish. I'm not saying eles should run with 100 energy, but it does allow for a buffer. In the case of long, drawn out fights, energy storage is a nice attribute to have.

Monk's are capable of [skill]infuse health[/skill], why don't they give Elementalists "Infuse Energy" (or something)? I, myself, usually run 100 energy, but very rarely do I reach 40-30. That extra energy could be given to teammates that need it.

However, I don't know how this would affect PvP (what's new?), but we already have Necros supplying Monks with energy, so it shouldn't be too bad...

Eh, a skill like that for energy transfer from eles was already suggested on these forums (some like, all your exhuastion becomes energy for somebody else). The problem was, a primary monk with like 70 energy (or who gains 30 energy when he's almost out instantly by being transfered from the Ele) becomes way to overpowered. I say, keep it in necros. You also have to remember that it would probablly have to be an elite to even be considered balanced.

That wouldn't really fix our problem with energy storage not having enough non-elite skills. I do believe that a few more skills like glyph of lesser energy would be nice to have. Its annoying as an Ele to have to be limited to elites like Ether Prodigy and Ele Attunement, Attunements in general, or the mesmer inspiration line to be viable.