Is it just me, or does Air Magic suck now?

I tried running a few air builds on my Elementalist in PvP the past few weeks. (I've also tried countless times to make PvE Air builds, but you can guess how that turned out.) I've found I can't actually make a build that overpowers my favorite Fire build.

Damage against damage, Air Magic simply seems to recharge too slowly, do too little damage and simply lacks any useful utility. The armor penetration does not help.

Why should I bother using an Elemental Attunement Air build, for example, which uses Lightning Orb and Lightning Hammer as primary damage dealers when I can use that same build in Fire, with Rodgort's Invocation and Fireball/Phoenix? The Fire build does more damage in most cases, can hit multiple opponents, applies a condition in burning, has the same cast time, and isn't interrupted mid-cast if your target dies. The Air build (in this example) doesn't seem to have any advantage.

I tried creating a utility Air build in the form of Thunderclap or Gust, something along those lines and noticed it lacked any sort of real stopping power against most classes.

I can understand Water magic and Earth lacking the potency of Fire, as they serve different purposes. But Air? I mean come on. Most of the skills are simple single-target damage spells. Shouldn't those skills actually out-damage Fire spells in most cases?

When exactly did Air Magic start to suck? Is the attribute simply limited to chaining Thunderclap with Lightning Orb now?

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Somewhere back here.

Ive been using an air ele for PvE for quite some time aswell for PvP in some cases. This is my build:

Air magic 12 + 4 = 16
Energy Storage 12+1 = 13

Elemental Attunement<Elite>
Air Attunement
Lightning Strike
Enervating Charge
Lightning Orb
Lightning Hammer
Blinding Flash
Ressurection signet

It's use is simple yet effective: keep double attunment up, keep target blinded stacked with weakness and keep hurting it with everything you got.

Double attunement returns 80% of the energycost which means you can basicly keep it up indefinitly.

Beat all 3 campaigns with it.

Air Magic may not deal the sort of damage Fire Magic can, but it has some fantastic utility. For 75% of the dungeons out there I've used Air Magic, due to the large amounts of physical damage dealers you can come across pretty often. Blinding Flash + Shell Shock + Epidemic is a beautiful combination of skills, and when mixed with Elemental Attunement, Air Attunement, Lightning Hammer and Lightning Orb you just keep spamming...like you're on an energizer battery.

@ OP. Don't use Thunderclap, it's a very risky and fragile spell. Gust is also not that great in my opinion. It's "ok" in some situations, but the fast-recharging blind skills Air Magic has are worth their weight in gold.

Oh! that's what I set Vekk up as! I did put in shell shock as well, so he can do crack armor, weakness, blind, also energy was never a problem really. Very effective indeed.

Air magic is good for PvP; constant blind, knock-downs, and the highest damage in game. Now, in PvE air is the only element not doing AoE damage, that's the problem, and that's because I never use air in PvE. Excluding areas where the maximum amount of enemies are 3 or 4 at the time, I don't see why not just use fire instead. If you feel really repetitive about using fire, change to earth, or even water (note I am talking about PvE)

Air magic is quite good in HM or Elite Areas, where blindness and weakness spam grants your team a better survivability. Armor penetration against highly armored mobs is not to forget, also.

It's just you.

Air has pretty much always sucked. It was only ever really any good for blind, and still is to some extent - though the options aren't what they used to be and people are prepared to deal with it. Gale used to be awesome, now it's merely an ok utility skill (mostly used to protect Ward). You have some ok speed boosts, but that's really it. All of your DDs are awful, always have been, only minimally acceptable for spiking. You pretty much run an Air Ele if you want a blind bitch, otherwise don't bother.

I think we all agree Air Magic is a utility attribute, like blinding and helping on spikes. There's more to GW than just killing stuff...

It's a utility attribute like blinding and blinding, maybe with a little blind thrown in. It's a one trick line, though that trick is still pretty damn good.

So...how many GvG's have you won without killing anything? There's not more to GW than killing, thats the ONLY thing in this game, theres just different ways to accomplish it.

hmmmmmmm we always have to kill something i thought we protected people do!

dont neglect the monks with dismiss conditions

Yestarday I tried Murakai dungeon with my friends (3 rangers).

Never done before, so we didn't know what kind of enemies we had to fight.

First try, I used 1 savannah and 1 warder. We got several party wipes when fighting the groups of enchanted, eventually we managed to finish the dungeon with a lot of DP.

Second try, I set the eles as blinder, shell shock, enervating, I was BHA+epidemic, the other 2 splinter barrage.
Cracked armor + weakness + blind spread over all foes. Cracked armor is great against all heavy armored enemies, and air spells have an additional 25% ap.

We literally breezed, completed the dungeon in less than 1 hour with +10 moral boost.

No, there's killing and not getting killed. Blind and weakness help with the latter.

That depends on how you look at it. The only reason you are staying alive is so that you can kill the other team. If there is nothing left to kill, you no longer try to stay alive, look at the lava map in the Arenas. Once you win, most people go stand in the lava.

The sole purpose of staying alive and keeping the rest of the team alive is so that you can kill the other team. So technically, not getting killed is part of killing.

Storm Djinn's Haste is only the best skill in the game!

That is true, but it basically just comes down to saying that surviving long enough to kill the enemy is important. I think the benefit of Air Magic is that it allows one to do both simultaneously - work on killing the enemy via direct damage while making it harder for them to kill you via conditions.

air is the least used element on my ele. aside from playing the blindbitch in pvp (which is boring and i don't want to do it), air magic is pretty "meh". however, air magic is fun with thunderclap and shock arrow =D which isn't ideal for most situations. i use storm djinn's when i run with my ele as well, but that's about it!

when i want/have to play a utility ele, i'd much rather use water or earth. putting blind on the physical damage dealers isn't my idea of fun. i'm like "haha yr blind!" and their monk is like "haha dismiss/draw/RC/any of the 6546541 condition removal skills in the game!" and i'm like "QQ why do i bother?".

i'd rather throw down a ward or slap a blurred vision on them anyday. or both! makes me feel like i'm actually doing something. hex removal is cumbersome at best, and wards...well there's nothing they can do about those once they're up.