ele balances i would like to see

i wanted to start this thread because so far many people think that the elementalist proffesion is either WAY overpowered or WAY underpowered. After Nightfall the Fire line of the elementalist has become what i personally think an elementalist should be, ABLE TO DEAL DAMAGE. not just some puny warder in a corner, but an actual threat. These are some changes i would like to see, feel free to say if you think they are overpowered, and add any skill you think needs rebalancing (other than SF and SH... ... theyre finally what an ele should be)

The changes from the original post are in ()

they will be in this format:

Skill Icon
Pros
Change

X energy, Y casting time, Z recharge.
Example:

[skill]Lightning Hammer[/skill]
This skill is perfect. i love it.
Change: ...

[skill]Gust[/skill]
with a 3 second KD it is definately nice, but the fact it has a 10 sec recharge just doesnt work.
Change: 10e, 2sec, (7)sec

[skill]Glimmering Mark[/skill]
Blinding all adjacent foes is nice, but the recharge doesnt permit enough time to put on various targets.
Change: 10e, 2sec, 5 sec
duration changed to 4...16...21, which would allow you to keep 3 targets hexed. (3...more...seconds... cmon if you think that buffing it by 3 seconds would ruin the world it would have been nerfed by now)

[skill]Lightning Touch[/skill]
Change: Water AND Earth magic hexes. just a little more room to be creative.

[skill]Glowstone[/skill]
nice energy regain... if only it would hit every once in a while...
Change: not a projectile plz?

[skill]Breath of Fire[/skill]
some good aoe damage for low energy
Change: recharge down from 30 to at least 20, maybe 15. or just make in 25energy and set aoe to in the area... thatd be fun (sarcasm)... but i kinda want an in the area aoe >_<

[skill]Double Dragon[/skill]
Change: (forget the recharge down...) aoe set to nearby. (compared to other fire elites i think that this change would make it work)

[skill]Armor of Frost[/skill]
Change: recharge down to at least 30 sec... must be able to compete with [skill]Frigid Armor[/skill] so after you saw that skill do you see why armor of frost is worthless?

[skill]Icy Prism[/skill]
like you can interupt with a 1 sec casting spell...
Change: Skill reworked. Target foe takes 10...54 cold damage. If target foe has any signets equipped they take an additional 6...30 cold damage per signet. 10e, 1sec, 10sec <--- people MIGHT ACTUALLY use it... a nice ~90 damage spell in PvP as most people bring res sig.
(many people like icy prism the way it is apparently...)

[skill]Mirror of Ice[/skill]
nice damage, nice coverup enchant, nice blocker...except hexes and interupts and all sorts of fun spells like that go straight through the mirror... make it worth it plz?
Change: For the next 0...3...4 spells

Lightning hammer. You pay 10 more energy for not being a projectile? Bull. Imho:
CURRENT STATS: 25e 2s 4sec, deals as much as lightning orb and has 25% ap
NEW STATS: 25e 3s 30s: Deals damage to 0..3..4 nearby foes, if you are under the effects of an enchantment.

Umm... so in other words you want balanced skills to become rediculously overpowered? You want to lower every recharge time so that you can maintain these spells constantly, whether on yourself or enemies, and you want to increase the AOE of everything... umm no.

P.S. @ Icy Prism, most signets (except for interuption signets) take at least 1 second to activate, often longer. So it's perfectly possible to interupt something like blessed signet or signet of devotion with this skill.

Icy Prism is a perfectly fine skill as it is IMO. The damage + quick recharge + possible interupt make it for me.

And with regards to Glimmering Mark, c'mon you already have Blinding Flash and Blinding Surge.

im trying to find some new ideas for skills... i mean no one is every gunna stray far from cookie cutter builds like SF, SH, BS, IL, WT, UG/wards. those spells are what eles should be. they are the builds people use because they work well. now why have 100+ skill if you can only use ~20 of them competitively?

@Kool Kirby, It is called chain lightning.

@ca oak, please tell me which ones you think are overpowered. i see few to NONE of these skill i listed in PvP in general. if that makes you think they are balanced, you think eles are overpowered. if you see that no one uses them because they just arent as good as other choices, like me, you start to think the ele is underpowered in SOME aspects.

@Ecklipze, i see what you mean with Icy Prism. Maybe if it was 5 energy or 3/4 or 1/2 cast I would use it, but atm i just dont like it much. Most water spells take 2+ seconds to cast, and im not gunna stop casting that spell to try to interupt a 2 sec spell with a 1.5sec until my spell hits... its not worth it...

Oops, lol. I don't have proph, so I don't use that skill, rofl, sorry.

IMHO: Give lightning hammer a kd. Or give it a condition.

Not every skill is built with PvP in mind. And most of these "balances" will only replace SF because they will be MORE broken than SF was before the glowing gaze nerf.

Meteor: Why is it that every knockdown needs a low recharge? Knockdown is one of the most powerful mechanics in guild wars, as it fully disables a character for a certain number of seconds in addition to interupting any skill that was being cast.

Gust: And people thought gale lock was a gay way to play. A 5 second recharge on a 3 second KD means you can have someone spend more time on the ground than standing up, and with no exhaustion penalty this skill would instantly find a place in every party.

Glimmering Mark: The recharge is 5. The hex lasts for around 15 seconds and causes AOE blindness whenever you hit the target. I'm not seeing what's wrong with that.

Lightning Touch: The skill is built to "make sense". As in if you're covered in water, electricity is going to do more damage to you. Throwing dirt all over yourself would lessen the effect, if anything.

Glowstone: Already giving you a little less than 1 energy/second, it fits in line fine with other non-elite energy management skills. Perhaps you should only bring it in a condition heavy build that includes both cripple and weakness, so that your target is unable to kite. Or consider using a ward or water hex for the same effect.

Breath of Fire: It's about as useful as firestorm, so it won't see use in PvP regardless of how you buff it.

Double Dragon: I suppose it could use a recharge buff, it's likely a less powerful skill because it's one of the first elites you can cap in factions, and generally elites get better as you progress farther through the PvE storyline.

Armor of Frost: This gives you +40 armor indefinately unless you're facing things with fire damage. Which is overpowered. It's the same reason why endure pain doesn't have a 15 second recharge. Skills are meant to have some downtime.

Blurred Vision: It's already an AOE "blind" hex, I'm not seeing any reason to increase range to nearby, as having the effect on an entire team would be overpowered.

Icy Prism: Fine, as previously stated. Signets have slow cast times and no way to enhance them without using special skills (HCR does not affect them).

Mirror of Ice: It damages an enemy, prevents a spell from working, and has a recharge of 10 seconds. Making this affect the next four skills would make it a better shutdown than most mesmer skills.

In short, these changes will all break the balance of the elementalist and promote gimmick builds to an even further degree.

/Notsigned.

i would like to see a KD on lightning hammer, but i think that it would be overpowered (4 sec recharge >_<... and thats the thing i like most about it)

chain lightning is not exactly what you were describing but it is close... same with [skill]Invoke Lightning[/skill].

first of all, mirror of ice only effects spells that deal damage to you, and you can still be interupted and hexed. (or at least thats what it used to do, im not sure if they changed it but it wasnt in any update notes i know of)

i can see the KD thing with gust (and meteor... i do kinda like meteor how it is though)... but they would be down for less than half the time, maybe 7 recharge and that would be 1/3 the time. the fact is you are using a horrible damage skill to do something useful like KD with an awful condition to just to GET the KD, i kinda think it should be buffed to 5 secs, its FAR different than gale.

glimmering mark is good as it is, but the addition of *gasp* 3 seconds would make it easier to maintain on targets and more viable instead of blinding surge and blinding flash

blurred vision... i like this hex, but it just wont have the effect you want it to. reduce the duration and % and make it nearby, that way you can at least get more than 1 attacker...

armor of frost... i guess its fine the way it is, but frigid armor can be maintained indefinately too, i wanted to make this one appealing as a sub for frigid.

since when does GW need to "make sense"... innovative builds is what GW is about

lightning hammer
25e 3sec 8rec

same damage but kd to target and adjecent target if you are enchanted










that was what i would say but that would overpower dual attunes.
and i like my attunes un-nerf'd ttvm

Lightning Hammer costs 25 energy and takes forever to recharge is that it cannot be dodge unlike Lightning orb where it's very easy to sidestep it.
That's the biggest reason behind it if you want attack to hit, Lightning Orb is just to easy to miss with.

Anyway, back to the topic:

Meteor, it is used very often actually, but often it is replaced by Meteor Shower for the hope of having players stay in there. The recharge time is high because the cost is low, but raising the cost and shortening the recharge time will make the skill over powered as knockdowns will come in twice as much.

Gust, your suggestion makes it very very powerful. It's a three second knockdown and you want it to be recharged in 5 seconds? That change will definitely make this skill better than thunderclap for knockdowns plus some damage behind it.

Glimmering Mark, if the duration is increased, this'll be the new blindbot skill of the century. Blinding Surge is annoying enough to a lot of players and it can be maintained on a 4 person team already.

Lightning Touch, making it deal extra damage to Earth hexes doesn't really make much sense in the fact that "rocks" in general don't conduct electricity as well as water can. Exclude metals such as silver from that statement.

Glow Stone, I might actually agree with that...

Breath of Fire, it has a long recharge time due to the immense damage it can potentially deal for 5 energy.

Double Dragon, this spell can potentially deal up to 238 damage in 2 seconds which can come fast, also it hits adjacent foes and you can place this skill very well.

Armor of Frost, I do agree it needs a buffing, I made a thread a couple days ago about buffing it.

Blurred Vision, I personally think your suggestion is a giant nerf

Icy Prism, Healing Signets can be stopped, and especially Resurrection Signets.

Mirror of Ice, it'll be too powerful if more than one spell can be negated. If you want more than one spell to not work on you, consider these, Shadow Form, Obsidian Flesh, and Spell Breaker. These elites have a long recharge time while mirror of ice lasts for a long time (until a spell is casted onto you), recharges quickly compared to the others and also it's a 1/4 second casting skill, this can foil things at the last second.

Overall,
/notsigned

mirror of ice doesnt counter spells, ONLY DAMAGE from a spell

Nah, Mirror of Ice is great. Its one of the few ways to hurt somebody as a ele thorugh Obisidan Flesh and Spell Breaker. In 1v1 ele on ele matches, I always go water with this and archane echo it and bring elemental resistance because 90% of my foes bring obsidian flesh and just spaw away until they die, most of the time with no idea what happened. :-)

Not being a projectile and having 1 sec less recharge time shouldn't cost 10 more energy, even for an ele. Thats some pathetic reasoning, are you retarded? KD or some kind of condition is needed. After all, 80% of factions skills are crap, and they all need rebalancing.

I was going to overlook most of this crazy talk but... How the hell can you even begin to touch Blurred Vision?

Madness...

Armor of frost doesn't need any points in water magic to get the full +40 effect, whereas frigid armor requires quite an investment. That's something else to consider.

i did consider that. it would last 10 seconds. GG.

(took out skill changes to blurred vision and meteor, they were just not really needed)

Yes it should cost 10 more energy. This was done soley because of PvP. A HA lightening orb spike team can be sidesteped or avoiding by standing behind a wall. Lightening orb is a very slow projectile (snowball arena and dodgeball arena actually operate with the same animation asLightening orb) and can be sidesteped. Lighting hammer, however, is guarenteed to hit, making a ligthning hammer spike possible.

A) 10 seconds is quite a bit in PvP.
B) I never said you should put zero points in, you could just throw your spare and get level 3-6 for a decent duration.