Elementalists [Hard Mode]: Ideas on how to Buff them.

As the title implies, this thread is solely about posting what you think might be a viable way to boost elemental damage for hard mode while keeping HM monsters the same [unbuffed].

PVE ONLY:
One idea that came to my mind is to make Energy Storage investment increase damage of elemental spells by 3% and extend elemental hexes by 5% for every two points in the Energy Storage.

This would be a good start, and if the damage is still to weak, then the numbers could simply be tweaked up just a little bit. By making it an Energy Storage thing, this may keep HM elementalist monsters from recieving the same buff, but I really don't know whether monsters actually have an E.Storage level of their own... so... *shrugs*

What're your thoughts on my idea? Do you have any other suggestions that might help give Arena net something to chew on in hopes of making nukers more viable in HM? Have at it!

Sure, and whilst your at it give them maybe 10% armour penetration per rank of ES...OWAIT.

They need a buff fo' sure but that's a little extreme plus the whole extention of elemental hexes is a bit...weird. 1% AP per level of ES (capped at say 15 to prevent HM rape) should be fine and maybe buff the raw capabilities of some skills along the ES attribute.

This may not help, but my suggestion only involves the skills used. I have religiously used a E/Me hero set to 14 fire, 12 es and 5 insp., sac nuking with savannah heat and a few other cheap skills (liquid flame, breath of fire, leech sig, etc) since we first got heros at NF release.

I have through trial and error discovered that earth henchies hit harder (nm or hm) than my fire hero. I have since switched to an earth build with eruption, churning earth and unsteady ground...plus a few others of course. I am amazed at the difference in the speed with which I wade through bad guys, compared to the fire build.

My wife, who plays an ele as her primary, would love to see them buffed, but I can't think of anything that can be done to the class that wouldn't break them, even if PvE only.

Discussed

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/l...t10438663.html

and discussed

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/c...t10458925.html

All we need now is Anet to listen.......

Huh? Didn't you just say you wanted to leave HM monsters untouched? iirc all foes in HM have 20 in their primary attribute.

If anything, I'd like a change to Intensity that:

• Can be maintained, but is expensive to do so or causes exhaustion.
• Does extra AP damage to foes with high armor
• OR does extra AP damage to foes with high levels
• OR makes elemental damage from spells armor-ignoring at a certain point

Nothing to make them more effective in NM, but enough extra power to make them better damage dealers in HM, especially if changes to Assassin's Promise are coming.

There already is a primary attribute that adds +1% AP per level: Strength. Your idea basically means that Energy storage would become Strength + its functionality right now. That's just silly.

i play an ele primary in pve and you really can't make them into what they were intended to be when GW1 came out. If all classes stayed the same as they are now and you buffed the Elementalist to be the "Nuker", this game would be laughably easier than it is now and that would be a bad thing. Do I think they need a buff? IDK. I honestly think most every other class needs to be hit with the nerf crotch bat.

I think only Fire magic should be buffed in PvE. Earth is still viable through control and wards, air is good because of ArPen and Water is generally only used for PvP anyway.
Still, I wish they'd change something to the Ele so that they become better damagedealers than healers again. (Though I don't think anything's gonna change about them given the current state of the live team)

Laughably easier? You serious? Even more easy? I mean, you can roll through this game butt naked, without any skills or weapons and you still beat it in a week..
Ok, that's exaggerated, but Ele's WERE designed to nuke the shit out of things.. That was what they were for..
Necro's: Make minions, SS shit, semi-nuker
Mesmer: Hex stuff, damage with Esurge, semi-nuker
Monk: Heal shit, maybe smite stuff, but no-one really cared bout that..
Warrior: Tank shit, but still some nice damage
Ranger: Trap shit, use spirit support, a pet, perhaps barrage could do something but that was meh aswell at the start..
Ele: BOMB SHIT TO OBLIVION (and tank every now and then)

That was the original intention.. Now with the mesmers and necro's wiggling their humongous Armor-ignoring damage penises around, no-one even cares about eles doing damage, they're just there to (OH EM GEE, i said it again!) BOND SHIT..
Armor ignoring damage IS NO FAIR competition, seriously.. Either make ele armor ignoring, but still beat it some with the nerf stick so it doesn't go imba like hell (that would completely destroy the concept ele though) or lower the AR from some monsters against ele damage (exept lich lord, he's lol when triple MS'ed, even less and he'd die of a flare) or just increase the damn things and STOP SCATTER FFS those are the three options, but Anet cba cause they got their asses stuffed with GW2...

Oh my god people like you are still around? QQ moar. The power creep of skills made the game easier over the years but that doesn't mean you should nerf the shit out of everything remotely powerful to make everything equally medicore (Hell unless you're playing with a full team of human players HM can be pretty tough).

i am not QQ'ing at all lol. sorry if I gave that vibe off. I am saying that if you left every class to do the damage that it currently does, and then buffed eles so that they did the most damage of any class, this game would be easier than it already is.

@Bright Star Shine: Re-read my post man. I am saying it would be easier than it is now, and you are arguing with me with the tone of your post, but the words you typed are in agreement with me saying that the game would be easier. Am I missing something?

@xsiriss: Again, not QQ'ing at all. I roll my ele all the time and I don't see a problem with damage at all. Is it a problem that in my opinion, damage in PvE across the board is 100% acceptable the way it is at this moment in the pve portion of the game? Well I think that Shadow Form should have a mandatory 15 second cooldown, but that is a thread for a different topic.

Ouch... So that means that all Ele monsters would benefit from my idea as well? If that's the case, we'd have to come up with some sort of way to make elementalists deal better damage and extend their hex durations in order to make them more viable. I'm now thinking that maybe some PvE-only skills can be changed around to support this. For example, how about buffing Intensity and Elemental Lord? Intensity for instance, can be buffed to: [skill *as opposed to enchantment] a 25...50% damage, but slap on it the requirement of being enchanted (which Attunement + AoR can easily cover). What do you think?

power creep is bad. Not because it makes the game easier but because it limits the diversity of builds. Remember when Wanderlust was used on Spirit Spammers? It was never nerfed but it isn't used anymore because of power creep.

Nerfs are good. They reverse power creep.

Tie it to specific skills.

Intensity, Glyph of Essence, or Glyph of Elemental Power would be good candidates. Or take worthless skills and turn them into element-specific armor penetration, so things like Swirling Aura, Iron Mist, Elemental Flame, and Arc Lightning would boost the power of that attribute.

That way, eles have to pay for their boost via their skillbar, but they get the kick they need.

I remember when Ether Renewal + Zealot's fire smiters got nerfed. That's the origin of the "ether renewaled" phrase.

Divine Boon got hit and Light of Deliverance as well. Heaven's Delight used to heal for 200 HP in earshot on 15 recharge, but there was no pve-only UA to boost it at the time. Holy wrath got hit a bit for 600 monks: now you need to recast. Shadow prison was particularly bad with sins in PvP plus who can forget ursan?

Nerfs tend to be good when it's all people run (I'm looking at you SoS!) because other options fall short by a large amount. I'd like to see Searing flames, scythes on sins, Ineptitude (damage) and Ancestor's rage hit (make a-rage not armor ignoring, turn SF to more pressure by lengthening burning and lowering damage).

EDIT: to put it in perspective, back in 2005 it took 3-4 hours to do FoW. Right now we have speedclears of 30min...

EDIT2: the reason why ele damage is subpar is because some mobs have insane armor and a level bonus. Even against those with normal armor you do 60-70% of listed damage rather than 80-90% on casters. You don't have this problem as much with lightning orb since it has cracked armor AND 25% armor penetration ( I regularly hit for more than listed damage on casters ... 120-140 with 16 air).

The real problem is that if your ele in HM can't deal enough damage to be used instead a necro/mes/rit, your only option is change your playstyle to support the party....but consider that other profs do it better(enfeeble bond>enervanting charge/ebon falcon and so on....) and the 80-90% of ele's spell are only intended to do damage...what's left to us? ER Bonding? AP EVAS spam? Maybe Blinding surge(but probably you'll run Ineptitude)? Most of eles i've seen now run SoS, thanks to e-storage that allows to spam spirits that die fast for lacking of spawning power. Its full of E/Rt around.
This is the point:eles can'y do respectable damage, but also can't support enough good to be regularly used. Also some skill are ridicoulos(Second wind and iron mist, first two that comes to mind). It's not QQing, just looking at facts.
It isn't what i want to play when i created my ele(and choosed it as main...).

And if anet will nerf also ER healer and AP(like someone said)...i really can't imagine what to do.

We'd be flare spamming

Sounds like you are trying to focus on Fire Nuking in HM which is kind of useless and short sighted.

If you think that the only things Eles are capable of doing is Fire Nuking, Spirit pooping or AP Caller, then you really should consider choosing a different proffession as your main.

Eles are excelent at controlling enemy movement with Water skills (Also has decent amount of damage in them while snaring AoE) and to a certain extent Earth.
Eles also excell at single target spiking with Air Spells, quite a few of them have built in Armor penetration which you seem to think Eles lack. Air is also great for messing up Melee (BSurge comes readily to mind).
Earth Spells have great Damage mitigation through wards and Churnign Earth is one of the only AoE Skills in HM that doesnt really cause scatter (Anything trying to scatter gets automatically knocked down as they always move faster than normal).

Why stick to Fire when you have sooo much choice? Its like complaining that Rits are crap at dealing damage because the Resto line is not good for that.

Nobody said "Fire sucks in HM buff it".

About water to control enemy movement...how many times in PvE is this useful? 3-4(aurora glade and moddok crevice...)?

Discord says "hello".

About earth and air lines(that mean 2 lines on 4 are useless), their secondary effects(blinding, KD..) is good, but damage don't: you have a so-so damage and a so-so condition/enemy control. Things that other can do better.
Condition from Air is really too much single-target, and everything useful in Earth(like in the others lines) have at least a 2/3-sec casting time(churning earth, eruption, dragon stomp....)..in HM this means "Take this!oh, you're there now?"

P.S:yes, in HM fire(and nuke in general) sucks.

Dmg of eles based on purlely elemental skills sucks in HM at least in majority of places ... everyone who had a chance to test it should have no doubts ... that is my personal broad experience and I am sure that many elementalist can confirm it ... I am not going to convince anybody ...for me it is a fact ... Of course elementalists have many excellent wards, say some ''controlling spells'' like metor shower etc and can be used as very efficient healers or protectors but ... ele nuker is not nuker at all in HM ... necros, mesmers, mele charrs do much more dmg ...
on topic ... generally it is too late to do sth with that now when the game is 6 years old but assume that it is worth anyway so:
why don't put some armour penetration to fire skills or add (or change initial desctription of existing ones) some skills reducing high elemental ressistance of enemies in HM ( maybe glyph or sth)

If something like that were to happen, it should definitely be linked to the Energy Storage attribute, because otherwise you'll just see N/E nukers because of their superior Soul Reaping etcetera etcetera ..

Still, I think people should try out more than just the fire line of Elementalists. There is so much utility that can be used to great effect in HM. I think the only big element that cripples Eles in HM is scatter, because many powerful skills Elementalists have are AoE skills.

Perhaps people should realize that in Hard Mode, you really fight different than in Normal Mode..

I've done both air and earth in hard mode. Now, I play as a spirit spamming elementalist, because I find it more effective.

Sad truth.

Well... my personal experience with elementalists in HM is like this:
- Water: You bring Ward Against harm when enemies are going to bring fire damage, and maelstrom to interrupt. And that's all. Enemies in HM lose hexes and move superfast, so water hexes that snare do little to them.
- Fire: All you can do is keep burning on enemies, and apply AoE attacks in spots so they scatter and stop attacking or casting spells in our party. The direct damage is minimal. You can't hardly deal more than 50 damage with a single skill in HM, excepting against enemies weak vs fire. When you have a spell that is supposed to make 33 damage per hit, and you get just 11 against an enemy that is not particularly strong vs fire, that's rather discouraging.
- Earth: Let's see... we have three armor ignoring spells... one exhausts, and the other two remove conditions and just must be adjacent to the enemy... so they become rather useless too. There's AoE and multi-hit AoE, and even Knockdowns, but they cast to slow, or recharge too slow, or deal next to no damage or something like that. Wards are not used much, either, since they force you to stay within the ward, they are rather unpractical, they should follow the caster, like some kind of aura. And the rest are just to protect the caster, you can't cast them in other allies or something like that. And who the hell wants a party member that just defends himself? That's the reason no one like wammos, they just keep themselves alive a little and do not really do anything.
- Air: This is the only thing with some use in HM. You can apply cracked armor to lower their armor, then spread blindness and weakness to take care of the martial weapons, and even dazing to take care of the casters. But it has no AoE at all, just a couple of skills that hit on or two nearby enemies. You must kill enemies one by one and very slowly.
- Bonders: This is an aberration. I'd rather make it so you can't use more than 3 skill from a secondary profession than having THAT being used around the place. If you want an elementalist that heals, ask for some healing into water magic or something like that.


So this is all that's left for elementalists in HM:
- Spreading blindness, weakness and cracked armor all over the place to take care of martial weapons while the party gets rid of casters. I do enjoy using this. Specially against Destroyers. The poor things can't remove conditions, and their main source of damage are the physical professions, so they just stand there, useless, while the party kills them.
- Protecting vs fire in all those spots with lots of fire damage, like Kathandrax, or Hell's Precipice. Stand in spot, cast the ward, cast 3 spells, and wait for recharge. That's all you can do. The only non-elite spell you could cast while waiting has half range, and you don't bring half range spells in HM, or you'll get too close to the enemy, so you sit there and wait for the spells to recharge, doing nothing until maelstrom and Ward against Harm recharge.
- Fire damage in places filled with ice elemental enemies, like Sepulchre of Dragrimmar

And, of course, not using their own skills, like when they prostitute themselves as bonders, exchanging their elementalist dignity for a slot in a party. Yeah. I don't like when a profession has to bring 5..6 skills from a different profession to be accepted in teams. When I wanted to make a monk, I made a monk. But hey, even a monk can nuke better than elementalists in HM. Heh. Welcome to upside down town.

That got me confused as well.


I really don't understand why you are assuming that everyone thinks that elemental damage should be increased (in PvE). Appearently, you feel like elementalist do too little damage.
I do not see this problem as all. While elementalist do relatively little damage in HM, so does every other profession. It's called Hard Mode for a reason.

For any HM ele build what you need is 3 pve skills + glyph of lesser energy. That's 4 skills before you add attunement and a res. So you have 2 slots basically. You can either slot Assassin's Promise + Lightning Orb, or Unsteady ground + Churning Earth...or b-surge + Orb if you want to be utility.

Guys, you should try energy blast with Assassin's promise. You only need 8 energy storage (2 damage per energy starts at 8) and 75 energy before using it. Use a high energy set (+15/-1 regen wand + focus) and you pretty much get a solid 100+ damage, since a high set gives you +42 energy on top of the base 30, before any energy storage. My problem with the skill is it just does damage. It's better than Magnetic Surge pretty much always though.

12+1+1 Energy storage --> 114 energy with high set
12 Deadly arts

AP
EBVAS
"YMLAD!"
"FH!"
GOLE
Energy Blast
Signet of Deadly Corruption, Mark of Death,Glyph of Restoration, or other
Res

Well ER is ridiculous with a stack of enchantments. Elementalists don't have partywide/target ally enchantments save for Windborne Speed. Even way back in 2005, Eles ran /Mo for ether Prodigy + Heal Party, or aegis when not running Heal party for GvG so it's nothing new. When Factions came around we got Protective was Kaolai, weapon of Warding so Eles could use that for flagging. However, most of the resulting flaggers were Rt/E...

Assassins Promise + Meteor Shower + By urals hammer.

That is the problem we are talking about right there. 2 of the skills you are mentioning are not Elementalist skills. While there is nothing wrong with that and most Ele's have resorted to such measures to get into parties it shouldn't be this way. I roll with an Earthbind Rit to compliment my Elementalist arsenal, but I have to bring other classes to do the "nuking"(raw damage) when the Elementalist was originally intended in GW1 to be the raw damage dealer or "nuker". Mesmers, Necroes, and Rits are the raw nukers now because they have a litany of skills that have one of, if not the following three things:
1.)armor ignoring damage
2.)faster casting
3.)better recharge

Couple this with the fact that most Elementalist skills cause more scatter than other class's damage because of AoE over time and that the devs designed many Ele skills to cause scatter back when we were the main damage dealers. Now that it isn't the case, not only do they still have the scatter, but the damage isn't as good as the other profession's damage in the game.

With all that being said, I still don't think Ele's damage should be increased, because other classes damage is already so high that it will make the game easier than it is now. The only way Elementalist damage should see a boon is if they decrease other classes damage. It really is a no win situation at this point. Why? Because all you need in this game anymore is raw damage. Why play mind games in HM when you can just go for raw, armor ignoring DPS?

umm why do eles need buffs? I wouldnt mind but they arent that underpowered. Their energy reserves allow a vast amount of high energy skills/spam.

My typical ele bar for HM:

-Elite depends on the area
-Optional
-Pain Inverter
-"You Move Like A Dwarf!"
-Ebon sin support
-Liquid Flame
-Meteor
-Breath Of Fire

I could always swap out pve skills for Intensity/BuH if i want more Nuking damage, but ive Vanquished all of Cantha, 90% of Elona and 85% of Tyria so far with that basic build.

Like i said earlier, i wouldnt mind a damage increase but using Cracked Armor + Intensity deals enough damage. For those high armor bosses, Pain Inverter ftw?

Elementalists are the best at snaring. See the Symbolic and Graphical Investigation of the Efficiency of Water Magic Snares or this post (note that crippled is also 50%) if you have any doubts.

Snaring is a lot more beneficial than you'd think and can be used beyond just Aurora Glade, Moddok Crevice (and that one Norn race outside of Umbral Grotto). By using snaring in PvE, you can:

• Control agro (snaring the enemy group before argoing causes them to default target to your melee/minions, so the enemy melee would go straight to the minions, ignoring your party (and thus leaving you damage-free))
• Keep enemies in AoE
• Prevent them from chasing your healers (so your healers can do their job)
• Prevent the enemy short-range melee from reaching your party (if it takes them three times as long to reach you, you have three times as long to kill them before they can do any damage to you)
• Prevent a party-wipe (if there's a snare in place, it's easy to escape from the foes if your party is overwhelmed/over-agroed)
• Prevent foes from kiting/dodging as well
• As you mentioned above, preventing enemies from escaping so that you can easily complete the bonus/mission
• Plus more!

Foes in HM don't lose hexes super fast; it's actually harder to lose hexes than conditions (another reason why water snares > crippled). Some foes don't have any hex removal at all and even if they do, it's easy to cover-hex (either intentionally with a water hex like Rust, or unintentionally by bringing another character that can hex). The only thing that affects hexes that you can't do anything about is Natual Resistance, which only affects select bosses and foes in Prophecies.

Enemies moving superfast in HM is only a warrant to use snaring - why would you want short-range melee enemies moving that fast chasing your monks around or bypassing your minions and reaching your party to do damage even faster? Even if an enemy has a 50% speed buff in HM, using a water snare (66%) will cause the foe to be moving at 50% of your speed. The faster an enemy moves, the more it's affect by a snare (ex. an enemy moving at 300% when snared (66%) will only move at 100%).

EDIT: Added "prevents kiting" to the list of snare uses.

I know.I was talking about CONDITIONS, not snares(tought cripple condition is a form of snares, but it doesn't matter now...). And at spread/control conditions eles aren't the best at all...well they weren't intended to do it originally i think.


Yes these are all way of use snares...but i wouldn't run a whole skillbar(neither me or an hero) for snares. And water it's everything but the way to deal damage. The only snare i would run in general pve(so out of place like moddok and so on) could be Deep Freeze, because tought the high e-cost(auspicios incantation would resolve it) its the most powerful area-snare(66% right?) WITHOUT any point in water. But only this, when running a heavy aoe team(any kind of aoe..from roj to unsteady ground, this is stil useful).

Gotcha, I though you meant support in general since you only said "support" in that other post.

Deep Freeze is the most powerful AoE snare in the game (66%, nearby range, non-elite, and don't need spec in water magic) and I wouldn't fill up an entire build with snares either. Using just Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes (both AoE 66% snares) makes it so that the foes are snared for ~94% of the time, so I'd go for just those two (assuming you're willing to put spec in water magic). Beyond them, any additional snares become redundant, especially since there aren't any other AoE water snares.

Water snares might not produce the greatest damage or DPS, but the nice thing is the snares still do some damage and that you only need one or two snares on your bar, allowing you to fill the rest up with damage skills.

Also, what's nice about water snares is that they let you run heavy AoE, but beyond that, the snares are still useful even when not running it (see the list of uses I made).

I'd take soul reaping over energy storage any day of the year, unless it's PVP (since you can't count on things dying!).

Energy storage is just a bigger pool. A bigger pool doesn't mean more energy can be used, skills like Ether renewal and Glyph of Lesser energy are what allow eles to use expensive skills. However, with the number of 15+ energy skills (that aren't elementalist) that there are, you might as well just use it on an elementalist secondary.

Also, Breath of Fire is probably the worst fire skill you can run, since it is adjacent aoe, when you can run Snow storm which is 1 second cast, 10 recharge and doesn't require fire magic.

EDIT: energy storage is also a buffer for exhaustion, but it's the only class with exhaustion, so it doesn't matter as much.

Why did everyone decide to ignore me earlier? I really do not see why you act like it is an implicit truth that elementalist do too little damage. I do not see this problem, even if you use elemtalist skills. Not to mention that a E/A with a lot of PvE skills and assassin's promise will deal a shitload of damage.

Assuming its near the endgame of the campaign or an elite area, HM foes are around level 26-30, which translates to around 78-90 armor for casters (even more for warriors, paras and rangers). This translates to doing at most 70% of the listed damage (and as low as 35% to rangers) to hard mode foes with elemental spells.

In the absence of cracked armor and armor penetration from air spells, this is comparatively worse than for armor ignoring damage.

All other professions have access to armor ignoring damage, while elementalist skills basically all do armor sensitive damage (magnetic surge, obsidian flame and energy blast being the exceptions). Thus comparatively elementalists do less damage in hard mode, all other things being equal (physicals get AoHM and Asuran Scan which pushes their dps up, all classes can use BuH and EBSoH).

Warriors, Assassins, Dervishes, Ritaulists and Necromancers all have the capability to do a lot of damage.

Intensity
E:5, C:1/4, R: 20 (special)
Enchantment Spell. (10 seconds.) Your spells deal +15...25% damage. Your elementalist spells have +1.5% armor penetration for each rank in Energy Storage. This spell is disabled if you have equipped any non-elementalist spell (45 seconds).

That should do fine enough to fix the problem, so you can pierce some armor in HM, can't echo it, and to make sure that Assassin's Promise doesn't work with it. Something to make elementalists better, when they ARE elementalists.

They'd still be crap.

While I like your idea, that still doesn't bring Ele's in-line with Mesmer damage. I would say to rework one of the ES Elites to do this and to only affect Elementalist skills, but NOT make the bar Elementalist only. That way, if an ele uses Intensity, and "By Ural's Hammer!" they can deal almost the armor ignoring damage of a Mesmer in HM.

Me too but i think that the duration could be linked to e-storage(like critical agility for sins) and the damage/ap buff to the title...or viceversa, but making it ALMOST(or someone would say "it's too much OP!!") maintenaible(only for eles with high rank and high e-storage obviously).

Anyways instead:
i'd say: "This spell ends prematurely if you cast a non elementalist spell". Your version of Intesity would cut off any sinergy between different professions skill on the same bar imo.

P.S:i'm thinking that we were going a little bit offtopic(propose for buff eles)....so i'd like to see any ideas about other skill reworks too, we have another thread only for Intensity.