Return eles to HM damage dealing

I don't know you, but since I've started playing, I have been always dealing more damage than anyone else in the party in PvE with my elementalist, and in PvP I kill things quite fast while enduring a lot. Nuking it's only for PvE crowds, in PvP people is (usually) smart enough to leave AoE and carry removals just in case you snare them inside AoEs.

The first time I killed Glint, a long time ago, I did it alone with a Ranger, while the rest of the party yelled '/resign, /resign'. Just my burning and his poison killed her in less than 2 minutes, a long time ago, when it was still some kind of a feat. The rest of the party was amazed, while me and the Ranger were "Meh, it would have been easier without you messing up things".
That taught me that most of the time the problem it's not the profession, but people using it.

But if you look at skills, Prophecies has an asymmetric number of them. They could give Prophecies new skills until all professions have the same number (30) and the one for Elementalists could be an Energy Storage glyph that makes the next elementalist skill ignore armor (making it deal Chaos damage instead the usual element) if that's what you want.
But such skill would have a huge recharge time or any other kind of downside.

nuking is bad.
want damage? play a warrior with a decent build.

I have been playing mesmer for a lot of time.
(Yes, I know the thread is about eles, but it is even about a common mindset "ELES ARE NUKZORZS")
Before Nightfall and the arrival of heroes was really hard to go through the missions, since it was hard to pug ("NUKZORS NO HAS THIZ PROBLEMZ").

No one wanted a mesmer in the group because mesmers "are useless", "DON'T NUKE", "are weak", and all the other bullshit that unexperienced players say.

This keeps going on, even after the coming out of EotN. When trying to pug for Duncan's dungeon, the only chance my mesmer had to be accepted in a group was to be "nuker", or using the signet of illusions and a fire build. Any other mesmer build was to be ignored (it is stupid because the mesmer could shut down those annoying dwarven monks that resurrect the allies). I've been allowed only once by a pug to join using mesmer skills on my mesmer. That time they said "wow, we were really fast", "Yeah, we rocked", "Good nuking", "Good monking", "good tanking"... but no one noticed that the enemy healers and other casters were being shut down all the time. This is why their damage was being more effective and we were so fast.

This is why nuking is so popular: big numbers and shiny effects, other things that are more effective, but less sparky, are frown upon.
In other words: nuking sucks, learn to be more effective with other skills that aren't the average tank and spank builds that even a monkey can use. It is really fun to experience new things, give it a try.

/notsigned

The thing about elementalists.

Yes you can play the bad nuker 16 fire 13 energy, blow your wad on a group then force the party to wait while you regain your whole mana pool. It works (slowly) in NM, but it can't completely wipe a group in HM. Really that shouldn't be too big of a surprise.

The thing about elementalists is that even with proper energy management 4 to 5 attack skills is redundant. Skill slots are at a premium, how many "deals X damage to target" do you need? Take out 1-2 redundant damage skills for non-redundant support skills and the build improves dramatically. Read that last sentence again. This is the largest problem I see with most pug builds and it is not just elementalists.


I'd like to say the 'holy trinity' is a hold over from the days of EQ, but I cannot see it as being that case. In EQ, yes we loved our tanks, healers, and nukers, but we especially loved our enchanters and bards. The enchanters (debuffs) role is currently largely filled by curses necros though it can easily be filled by elementalists and mesmers. The Bard role is largely absent in GW, the closest it comes are a handful of rit skills and paragons (paragon buffing largely being terrible outside of imbagon).

I don't know where it came from or who perpetuates the 'holy trinity' but that mindset really needs to go away. Unfortunately it is prevalent and in this prevalence the support roles are always overlooked or absent.

lol..........

Sad, but true.

Additionally, /notsigned.
Eles are good enough in HM. That is, if they don't run fire and don't expect big purdy numbers. There's other forms of damage besides numbers, like blind or KDs.