[Ele] Time to fix the mind spells already.

Let us consider them. Carefully.

They appear as such.

[skill]Mind Burn[/skill]
[skill]Mind Freeze[/skill]
and of course...
[skill]Mind Shock[/skill]

Now, while a while ago their recharge was buffed, they still don't really see use. Let us consider why.

Each has exhaustion. Not good for a spamming skill. Then, each has secondary, conditional effects that are reliant on your current energy pool. Note the boldface parts. See how they kinda work together to gimp the skills.

We really need one of two fixes to these skills.

1) Remove the exhaustion. The sheer fact that it becomes less effective with less energy is balance enough.

2) Make the extra damage and secondary effects conditional based upon MAXIMUM energy ratings.

It is time for this. I'd love to use Mind Freeze, but I hate Exhaustion in PvP. It's not too bad in PvE where you can recharge, but in PvP, exhaustion can be a killer.

Agree to remove exhaustion, not agree for 2.

I think the damage needs to made so it triggers all the time regardless of energy amount, and the condition only trigger if you have more energy then target foe.

E.g. Mind Shock - Target foe suffers 106 damage. If you have more energy then target foe, that foe is knocked down.

These are all very powerful spells. I think exhaustion in fine. It's rationing it like you have to do for Obsidian Flame.
I would seriously like a damage buff to Mind Freeze, but if you think about moving 90% slower for 11 seconds, there's a lot more that can be done. Very little running happening.
so then
/notsigned, I think these are very powerful spells, no need to buff them.

I haven't calculated the damage, but since obsidian flame is armor ignoring, it's actually probably even better or almost as good, and it's not elite.

Let's assume 16 in the corresponding attribute.

Obsidian Flame = 118 damage

Mind Burn = 126 (63 + 63) + Burning for 7 seconds (98 health loss) = 224

Mind Freeze = 84 (42 + 42) + 90% slower for 11 seconds

Mind Shock = 106 (53 + 53) + Knockdown (add 25% armor penetration)

As far as I can see, these are far from weak spells, especially since Elementalists can use Energy Storage to raise their energy far above all other professions'.

Imo its cheap not for you to spam it. Its cheap so you maintain the higher energy pool.

You can safely use these skills if you're low on energy, but have a high maximum amount of energy.

Mind shock sees play. It's an awesome utitlity skill that doubles as an awesome spike assist.
Mind Freeze is outclasses by other water elites. A direct comparison would be Icy Shackles, but Water Trident and Shatterstone tend to be superior as well.
These two skills don't have to be spammed at all to be effective. They're situational skills, that are used situationally.
Mind Burn is another story. This skill is pure DPS, with no added utility. In order to be effective, it DOES have to be spammed. DPS is only a threat if it's constant, and in this case you're right. The exhaustion totally gimps the skill. My suggestion would be to raise the energy cost to 15 and remove the exhaustion. 15e should be quite doable with an attunement and Glyph of Lesser Energy.
Mind Shock would be totally overpowered without exhaustion. It combines a lightning orb damage with Gale (one of the best elementalist skills, even without the 3s knockdown). Being able to spam that is nothing to laugh at.
Mind Freeze could be doable without exhaustion if they raised the energy cost, but I don't think it's a good idea considering how strong the water line already is, and that Mind Freeze compresses your skill bar (you have a perma-snare and a heavy damage nuke in one skill slot). I think it might be a bit too strong.
Mind Burn definitely needs to have its exhaustion removed. DPS that you can only apply like 1/5th of the time is a stupid concept, and they should change it. It should have its energy cost raised to prevent it from being too good.
That's my take on the mind spells.

Good points. I can see what you're saying, especially with Mind Burn. However, my point is the following, restated for clarity;

Each of these spells, as written now, become almost geometrically less effective the more you cast them, epically in PvP. While in PvE you might be able to get away with casting only one or two spells over and over (boring Searing Flames, we're looking at you), in PvP if you're not casting, you're not helping as an Ele. So it goes a lot like this with mind spells...

Cast attunements/other preparatory enchantments -> Cast Mind Spell at first available target (and gain exhaustion) -> cast other non-elite spell (either offense or utility) or two, depending on cast times -> either cast Mind spell again (if viable) or cast other spells (possibly gaining more exhaustion on top of existing) -> cast other offense/utility spells -> etc etc etc.

This results in a steadily decreasing current and maximum energy pool. The skills, especially in PvP, are self regulating to an excess as it. Removing exhaustion and then either upping the cost to 10 or upping the recharges as suggested above would still leave them as self regulating, as you eventually have to stop casting for a bit to get the most effect out of them. Now in PvE, would that mean that you could make a bar out of just these skills and a couple of utility ones? Sure, but we've already seen numerous cases of proof that you don't need a full skill bar in PvE (at least before Hard Mode). As said, people already do this in PvE with Searing Flames and Mind Blast. But that's PvE.

We already know that even if they took the exhaustion of these spells, spamming just them alone will not win the day in PvP, and that is where I'm concerned for these spells.

These skills don't see play for a reason, reason being that conditional. Who wants an Elite dmg skill on their bar that would only see play in the beginnings of a battle. I'd seek to lessen the req. for the conditional or remove it, but as these are high damage skills coupled with secondary effects which is quite powerful in of itself, I'd leave the exhaustion in.

Tempted to asking for a buff in damage for Mind Freeze, but it's snare is a 90% and lasts a long time so it might not be warranted. Still, it could be considered just another snare in a line full of them, so maybe a dmg buff is in order for this Elite.

While Mind Burn's burning is long, I've never considered a single-target burn to be a huge threat, and have always thought of the major dps threat of burning only in terms of the Rodgort's spells or SF,...I mean what monk is going to watch a teammate burn for over a few seconds anyway? But I'll digress to one that more familiar with pvp scenarios. As the spell is even without the conditional, I wouldn't take this on any pve outings.

Mind Shock is fine as it is excepting for the conditional which could stand an improvement. About the only time I ever use this is when a guildie wants to 1v1 me. At which time it's the funnest skill in the game.

these skills, especiall mind shock, are similar to gale and other fast recharge, high cost skills: they require a skilled player to pull off.

a bad player will just spam them indiscrimately, exhausting themselves in a matter of seconds. a skilled player will use them at the point of maximum effect, whether to assist on a spike, helping to pull off a retreat, etc. each skill have powerful effects, but is held in check by the exhaustion condition. this allow these skills to be spammed when needed but still encourage players to use them sparingly.

increasing the energy cost is not an option, because people will just slap on attunements and GoLE, making these skills ridiculously powerful. increasing the recharge will simply weaken them, because you no longer have the option to spam them when you need to. personally, i think the damage on mind freeze should be increased and the conditional effect on mind burn to be changed to something else. other than that, there's absolutely nothing wrong with these skills.

These spells are fine as they are.

giving mind freeze higher damage would be sweet

Mind shock is fine. Really, it is. Mind burn is always going to be outclassed by mind blast, savannah heat, or searing flames, simply because unless they completely retool the mind burn, these skills will be better.

Mind freeze is outclassed by icy shackles, unless you want damage, and then outclassesed by shatterstone. buffing damage gets tricky, because due to the conditional effect of the skill, if I want to snare Id rather have shackles, and if I want to do damage Id take shatterstone, and If I want both, then paying 5 energy and exhaustion is getting a little rediculous for a skill that would combine the two best water elites.

[email protected], you're partially right, but mind shock can pretty much be effectively spammed. You can just either mind shock on the spike every time and almost always instagib, or mind shock an off monk and force kills. Spamming gale almost always worked the same way.

Well, my point is that you don't by definition have to use a skill on recharge for it to be effective. Not at all. Shatter has a 30 sec recharge (or 25? somthing like that), but it's used maybe once every 45 to 60 seconds. Still it's a very strong enchantment removal (actually the only one that sees play exept for drain on a MoR bar). Diversion has a 12 sec recharge, but it actually becomes less effective if you use it on recharge (more predictable --> people adapt --> diversion doesn't trigger). Similarily, you can 'save' your Mind Shock for situations where it's needed. (a knockdown on a retreating target, a spike). It's actually still worth it if you don't use it that often. You should just see the exhaustion as if Arenanet put a 30 sec recharge on it, but gave you a little flexibility in when to use it: as long as the average is 30 seconds you won't get in any energy problems (provided you don't use any other exhaustion skills).
Now the problem is not that the Mind spells can't be used every 9 seconds, the problem is that Mind Freeze and Mind Burn are not worth the skill slots on a virtual 30 second recharge. Mind Freeze is outclassed by Icy Shackles and Mind Burn on a long recharge is just a stupid concept. DPS shouldn't have a long recharge. (in order for a damage skill to be viable on a long recharge the damage needs to be really high. This just leads to spike builds. Spike builds are bad). In the Freeze and Burn cases removing exhaustion is the right thing to do, because it's the only way to make them viable. A snare nowadays needs to be able to cover a target the majority of the time (icy shackles and freezing gust raised the standards here) in order to be worth it, and 11 our of 30 seconds is not even close. It should have a 15 second recharge and a 10 or 15 energy cost. (energy is not that big of a deal for ele's with the buffed GoLE and the buffed attunements). Mind Burn needs to have its damage removed (to prevent spikes), its exhaustion removed and its energy raised again to 15 or 10. I'm leaning to 10 in this case.
What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that Mind Shock is A LOT stronger than the other two. It's the only one that sees play, for a reason. A KD is a snare, an interrupt, and a complete shutdown for 2 seconds (long enough to spike someone down) all in one. It's (one of) the most versatile abilities in Guild Wars, and its cost should reflect that. Being able to use that once every 30 seconds is pretty fine.

I beat you thomas. and again, I disagree. You spam the shit out of mind shock and win. I don't care if I half my energy bar is gone from exhaustion, because I've probably single-handedly won the game.

That's basically what I was saying: It's strong enough with exhaustion and it would be bloody retarded without.

I think that the problem isn't there. For sure it may be too late to rework a core class but there is a design issue here. I'll try to resume the energy management of caster classes in GW (I add assassins and dervishes because I think there are more disguised casters than anything else) :
- Ritualist : nothing to say, this class is way to broken.
- Assassin : energy is gained through successful critical strikes.
- Dervish : energy is gained when enchantments end on self.
- Monk : divine favor, only works on monk spells that target an ally. It's indirect energy management through efficiency.
- Necro : soul reaping, things need to die.
- Mesmer : energy is gained through a wide variety of conditional effects on enemies. You meet the requirement, it's yours.
- Elementalist : unconditional energy gain whenever you feel tired, you're a living source.

In short, elementalist is the only class able to gain unconditional energy with their skills. And with energy storage they have far more maximum energy than other classes. What's the point ? My point is that elementalists need skills like auspicious incantation or ether signet (without the condition). A lot of their spells have a very high energy cost without means to gain this energy back efficiently. There is no skill like ether prodigy that is non-elite, something is missing.

What this means for mind spells is that with non-elite skills (linked to energy storage) that allow you to get big energy jumps (without losing it like most other casters since you have energy storage), they begin to be less conditional. I feel that elementalists aren't meant to manage a high energy pool like they do, they should spent it largely and get it back like nobody else. Some could argue that this completely prevent the use of spells to other classes, but what other class use elementalist dps other than fastcasting mesmer ?

I'm sorry. I think your post would make more sense if this was actually true.

Good points. Maybe we'd be better off with leaving Mind Shock the way it is, and removing the exhaustion from the other two? Something needs to be done with them, they are outclassed by far by other elites, and sometimes by non-elite skills as well.

At least here it's being discussed and considered. The crew over at GWO just flamed it down right away. I'm really starting to think that over 60% of their population is PvE wammos.

One thing that could help a bit is if the exhaustion only happens when the condition is met.

I actually think thats a great idea.

You do know exhaustion wears off...just don't spam the skill and you'll be fine. For an ele's energy to drop below a typical caster's, they'd need at least 3-4 times of exhaustion along with high energy usage. Those skills (besides mind burn) are used at key moments for key snares/knockdowns. Just because they're not casting these skills doesn't mean the eles don't contribute to battle. They have other skills too.

Mind shock is good as is because it already does a good amount of damage and knockdown.

Mind freeze could use a change, but anything that removes exhaustion would make it an insane snare. Maybe up the damage or something. Making snare unconditional would also overpower it a bit.

Mind burn needs a big change. As is, the skill sucks for pressure because of exhaustion. Make it basically a copy of rodgort's damage-wise except with only 15 energy cost, higher burn duration, and no AoE.

A good 50% of this population is comprised of PvE wammos too. Look at genova's comment for example: "Elementalist : unconditional energy gain whenever you feel tired, you're a living source." Just be glad a lot of the more experienced PvPers (Thom) like to post on here.

The sheer fact that an elite spell causes exhaustion is stupid anyway. Exhaustion is the bain of an ele's existance, to put it onto an elite spell is stupid.

If they want to prevent us from spamming it, then give it a higher energy demand or recharge time. Dont add exhaustion.

Searing flames is a perfectly example of an ideal elite spell. No exhaustion, low energy and low recharge. The exact definition of an elite spell in my opinion. Almost perfect.

Thats how an elite spell should be.

/signed for removing exhaustion on elites.

Searing Flames is the perfect example of a gimmick: One powerful effect that requires you to sacrifice the rest of your bar for energy management to be able to use it.

Hummm oh really with SF ?? Nah I don't think so, you juste need fire attenuement (of course, any fire build needs that) and GoLE. Glowing Gaze is a little "plus" and make extra damage. So do you still think so ? Some eles had double attenuement + sometimes GoLE (against debuff) it's the same ... Well not the same they don't have a skill that pwns anything in Guild Wars

Exhaustion is a great mechanic from a design perspective. It gives elementalists a 'gold card' in terms of 'free' energy and/or unreasonable power. You just have to pay for it later, just like any credit card albeit with the currency of time.
The Key factor is it is up to the elementalist how they choose to settle accounts. There is no parallel for this amongst the other classes and it is one of Anet's most original and ingenious ideas.

Case study: Mind Shock.

Simply amazing... The power/recharge/cost/cast-time of this skill is even beyond the quality of elite in my opinion (in terms of elementalists). It needs exhaustion as balance.

Possible alternatives to exhaustion:

1. Cost - 15 energy is still over-powered. 25 energy would be the only way to justify it.

Reasons this sucks...
- Flexibility goes straight out of the window. having a spare 25 energy is not easy to achieve.
-GoLE/Auspicious Incantation Can lighten the load but still won't equal it's current form.
GoLE seems a great way to control it. Until you realise you'll also need the second cast to even think about pressuring/dominating an opponents freedom for the foreseeable future. What Mind Shock is all about. So no spells for 8 seconds while Mind Shock recharges plus being all about one friggin' spell? Stupid...
Auspicious Incantation. Awesome e-management for 25 energy/low recharge ele spells like Deep Freeze/Lightning Hammer etc. It will literally refill your bar. At around 8 Inspiration you'll receive +40 energy per cast! (btw if you want to see pre-balanced Ether Prism, use it with this skill. Stupid energy...).
Sounds cool until to factor in AI has a 25 second recharge so you'll have killed your energy well before it recharges again. Plus it adds around 7 seconds to the recharge of Mind Shock ruining it completely.
In comparison, it's current form requires no additional skill slot to be used even more than the proposed form would ever allow. Far superior...


2. Recharge increase - To justify this the recharge would need to be something stupid like 30 seconds or more.

Reasons this sucks...
-Should be obvious. Save to say it won't ever be used again...

(Obsidian Flame get's a special mention for being another Exhaustion spell that uses the feature comparatively well. Making for a fantastic skill.)

Fair enough there are spells with exhaustion that completely boggle the mind (Energy Boon, Ride the Lightning, and more recently Mind Burn) but this doesn't stop exhaustion being a fantastic idea. It basically let's Anet create over-powered skills and still put a really (really) lose leash on it for some sort of limited control.

Nerf the dmg and duration, and get rid of exhaustion. Maybe make recharge or energy cost 10 energy.

I too agree with this idea.

How about remove the exaustion and the conditional damage, but add the special effects (fire condition, slowed target, knockdown). Maybe bump them each up to 10 energy.

Mind Burn maybe...but all the others are fine.
Mind Freeze 90% slow is EXTREMELY painful
Mind Shock's KD is also very painful.

The thing is...both Freeze and Shock have secondary effect besides damage, but Mind Burn ONLY do damage. That is what makes it weak.

Exhaustion is only there to to prevent you from spamming it "mindlessly".

Mind Burn also sets the person on fire, so it does extra damage and can set you up for using spells and skills that are dependant on the target being on fire.

I wouldn't say that, seeing as the condition is easy to meet with weapon swapping.

My fixes: (changes are underlined)

Mind Burn
5/1/5
Target foe takes 15...60 fire damage. If you have more energy than target foe, that foe takes an additional 15...60 fire damage and is set on fire for 1...7 seconds. This spell causes exhaustion if you are not enchanted.

Mind Freeze
5/1/8
Target foe suffers 15...60 cold damage. If you have more energy than target foe, that foe suffers an additional 15...60 cold damage and moves 66% slower for 1...10 seconds. This spell causes exhaustion if you are not enchanted.

Mind Shock
5/1/15
Target foe suffers 10...50 lightning damage. If you have more energy than target foe, that foe suffers 10...50 additional lightning damage and is knocked down. This spell has 25% armor penetration. This spell causes exhaustion if you are not enchanted.

The main themes here are consistency. Knockdown is more powerful than Snare Hex is more powerful than Burning, in a tactical sense. Increasing the recharge times makes the skills more comparable to similar elites. The "having more energy" condition should give a clear advantage in skill power over similar elites that don't have that condition, notably Gust and Icy Shackles.

Searing Flames deals as much damage as mind burn, burn as much as, has AOE and can be spammed.
Want a advice? Dont bother posting about it, i have been sayin this for over a year.

Mind burn really needs to have the exhaustion thing removed, and the cost increased, making it something like a single target searing flames, and thus a viable elite version of immolate.

Something like: 10/1/5. Target foe takes 15...60 fire damage. If you have more energy than target foe, that foe takes an additonal 15...60 damage and is set on fire for 1...7 seconds.

Mind Shock is ok as is. I could see maybe getting rid of the "If you have more energy" thing, but it really is a good spell.

Mind Freeze is a tough one, since if it doesn't have exhaustion, it clearly outclasses every other water elite. However, the exhaustion is also what makes it unusable. I think it's just a permanently broken skill, I don't see any great fixes without completely changing the skill.

Frojack- Completely agree, who was the 'tard who thought energy boon and ride the lightning warranted exhaustion?

So change the damn skill, the hell, change the name if you have to!

Your changes to these make absolutely NO sense... A 15 second recharge kills Mind Shock. Believe it or not, Mind Shock, like I have said in the past many times, is almost friggin' perfect. Leave it alone!

Mind Freeze is only good because of the (almost) guaranteed 90%. To remove that makes this skill pointless. This could work with a 15 energy cost and a 12-15 second recharge. Maybe an additional clause to weaken it a bit more since it also has (mediocre) damage in there to. Still, water is pretty strong anyways. I bet a few of the hardcore GvG guys would shed a few rage-tears if this ever happened ^_^.