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

I agree with a lot of points on this. We as Eles have been reduced to outsourcing our damage to other Profs and PvE skills.

The Prof is gimped by long casting and recharge times, scatter and quite a bit of now unneeded Exhaustion, or at least misplaced is some cases i.e. Obsidian Flame. Also having to deal with higher Armor on all enemies in HM means the damage is cut rather heavily compared to every other class; mainly when forgoing the use of skills like BuH, Intensity, Asuran Scan and the like.

But do I think the damage needs to be increased, no. I haven't had much of an issue with it aside from fighting a Ranger in HM. By the way I'm proud to say I'm a Fire Ele, I like to watch things burn. :P But I'm capable of running everything but don't due to limitations in them; i.e. casting times cost recharge and so on.

But when running in a group and comparing the raw damage of the casters Eles are handicapped. Necros, Mesmers and Rits have a higher percentage of armor ignoring abilities and most of which are to a degree spammable by comparison.

I do think, however, a small buff from Energy Storage to help compensate for the shortcomings we face is needed. How about something like 1% increased damage per rank and +1 pip of Regen per 5 ranks(pulled from a post by Mouse at Large; Good idea in my opinion). Yes it makes it very similar to Warriors Strength attribute, but gives us a primary Prof buff so it can't be run on another Prof. Also a casting time, cost and recharge decrease would be a welcomed change to help an Ele compete with the other classes without having to set in place a big nerfing to everything and upsetting more people.

Btw @ Newbie Of Doom you were ignored because you missed the point, our damage is less when compared to the other casters in HM. Also we shouldn't have to run a bar like that to get comparable damage to the other Profs.

I for one I'm proud to be an Elementalist and generally refuse to outsource my damage or energy management to another Profession or a PvE skill or two. Yes I do use a few but as support to my own build and Hero team, as well as chosen for the area I'm dealing with. Pain Inverter for Example when dealing with high AoE enemies. Although, I do think one other skill could use a small change, Elemental Lord, it's comparable to AoR but barely worth the effort in raising your rank from an Elementalist stand point. Only suggestion for it would be the addition of upping the Elemental Attribute bonus to 2 at max rank to keep it in line with the other skills.

Maybe, reworking some ele skills' damage to be armor ignoring could work. Like, a few from each attribute. That way you don't really change how they are played that much and it would open up possibilities for Prismatic armor Insignias and Master of Magic to see use. That way the damage would be capped at 12 in all attributes, but it would give eles a damage build that would be in-line with what Mesmers and Necroes are capable of.

I like TitansFaith's idea with removing the Exhaustion from Obsidian Flame if the damage was toned down just a tad.

Maybe rework Elemental Flame to add a little damage from Fire skills? As it is now, that skill does what Glyph of Immolation does, but GoI can't be removed like Elemental Flame can because it isn't a hex.

For PvE, I think that if Ele's don't get a damage buff, then ANet should at least make some of the Mesmer and Necro skills cause the enemies to scatter. The Ele AoE causes a ton of scatter and those skills don't even do 3/4 the damage that some of those skills do.

I am just throwing ideas out there that might alleviate some of the frustrations that Ele's are going through at the moment.

Said this likely months ago but nerfing ritualists, physicals, and necromancers to the level of mesmers and elementalists would require a massive huge rework of a ton of skills. Tons.

I can see Wastrel's Demise causing scatter, but that skill take several skills to go with it and doesn't do very much damage unless you're in DoA or some ridiculous area.

Snares are amazing in PvE. See Frozen Ele's replies.

I see your point, but then don't have the ele AoE skills cause as much scatter. That is one of the reasons the other classes have an advantage; besides raw damage, their skills don't cause the same amount of scatter. If that would take a huge change, then change the ele skills to not cause scatter as much. Even as it is now, the Fire and Earth AoE takes 2-3 seconds to cast and you only maybe get half of the damage out before the enemies run. I shouldn't have to bring a snare when I can just hop on my Mesmer and do more damage with less casting time, more bar compression, and no scatter. A fix like that may alleviate some of the annoyances Ele's are having.

Scatter reduces the group's damage even more by forcing the melee to go on a wild goose chase. The scatter concept is badly implemented, they should have went for randomized target switch so that it affects everyone equally, or just removed the scatter altogether and implement some sort of "balling penalty" where there's a diminishing return for hitting too many mobs at once (also affecting everyone).

/signed.

It's ridiculous how mesmers are now better nukers than eles, without sacrificing any utility or shutdown.

Scatter protects your party from damage and is easily dealt with.

Killing everything "protects" my party from even more damage. Therefore, mesmers and necros are better protectors! [/sarcasm] Doesn't mean anything though. If scatter qualifies as "protection" then anything can.

The whole point is that elementalists shouldn't have to "deal" with scatter when they already have half a dozen other problems they are already dealing with at the moment. At least half of an ele's bar is already filled with skills that are only there to deal with the artificial penalties. (Assuming its an indigenous ele bar that's not air)

I think the problem is that eles' primary attribute is useless in comparison to every other class. Pretty much every other primaries exists to cover the weakness of the respective classes. Necro's powerful Soul Reaping covers the high cost of their spells, Divine Favor covers the low healing of their spells when not used by monks, etc. The energy attribute does nothing to alleviate the weaknesses of eles. That extra 20 energy is gone by the first 2 spells.

Glyph of elemental power:
- Moved to Energy Storage.
- Functionality changed to: For 25 seconds, your elemental attributes are boosted by 2 for your next 5..15 spells. Your elementalist spells have +0..4..5% armor penetration on each affected foe for every level they have over your own level.

So if you are level 20, foe is level 30 and you have 12..14 energy storage, your spells have (30-20)*4=+40% armor penetration on that foe.

Something like that that should help with HM.

I'd like to see ES changed to add more damage indeed, but that would be LOL in DoA where Margonite Anur Su's have like 50 ES (dunno howmuch but they have over 300 energy).. Armor Penetration would leave you with negative armor ratings and +150% + 50% + 50% from two times enraged would end with +250% damage.. I can see Invoke Lightning hit for 1000+ damage pretty soon

But that's one case.. The Ele buff really has to be linked to ES, because mesmers are already overpowered (although I am very guilty of taking advantage of that ) but seeing them go even more nutcase with the extra damage would be unfair..
WTB Intensity buff too, just like Critical agility, linked to Critical strikes, Intensity linked to ES.. Why didn't they do that from the start btw?

Also, some armor lvls vs Elemental damage reduced. It is ridiculous that Necro's and Mesmers can "rofl you're dead" the shit out of stuff with armor-ignoring damage while elementalists can deal 1/3 if their damage in HM and they cause scatter at the same time.. And don't go "then be snarer/warder/supporter" on me, if I wanted to be a support charr, I would've picked Paragon, Ritualist or Monk..
This is from the official GW website lol
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=289

So everyone who keeps telling eles can do more than raw damage, well, they can, but they're supposed to be the strongest damage dealer in the game, and they're not. In fact they're the worst damage dealer in the entire game, even a monk can do more damage in HM with Holy Damage than an ele! That's ridiculous!

To be fair, that statement has always been misleading. Warriors have always been better damage dealers than elementalists.The fact that they used to be able to get more damage in a single strike didn't matter, because in the time it would take them to get that spell off the warrior would deal at least as much damage, if not more (to say nothing about cooldown times).

Nuking is another thing, but as ranged casters elementalist damage should never be able to outdamage the various sources melee nukes that are out there today. It wouldn't be fair if they could.

The issue is that elementalist nukes are currently inferior to what other casters can pump out. That's what needs to be changed.

I dont mean to rain on anyones parade, but all Ive absorbed is that everyones mad because theyre usually god-like damage pumper has been reduced to a support class such as a paragon, if one utilizes the snares and armor penetration aspects of an elementalist they are quite viable in gameplay

Killing everything doesn't protect your party at all, it simply puts an end to the battle. Your last sentence is nonsense.

The problem is that they're nukers (or at least purely thought as just nukers by many players). You would have to increase their damage excessively in PvE for general play to not need tanking or tank players, but then that would just mean more Shadow Form craziness.

A support class that isn't nearly as good at support as a real support class.

Snares as a form of offensive support are either unnecessary or not significantly better performed by an elementalist primary. And as a form of defense, they are outdone by more direct methods of damage prevention.

Air magic is laughable.

Mending Wammos are viable. Ergo, "viable" is not synonymous with "good".

This, minus the expensive/exhaustive clause, if melees can easily maintain Asuran Scan indefinitely, no reason to gimp Intensity by making it difficult to maintain. The AP damage and armor-ignoring doesn't really have a point, the extra damage in an AoE format already has a built in advantage over melees and AS, no need for AP.

I play a dervish, I know all about it, this is the corner im coming from ^_^

<---Spent his entire early GWG career making suggestions to improve the dervish

Exactly. Which is why scatter also doesn't qualify as "protection", as you stated before. Even assuming it "protects" it is still utterly inferior compared to monk/paragon/ritualist protection or necro minion swarm / curses "protections"

Eles had only ever been godly damage dealers for a very short time...the time before scatter was implemented and mobs sits in meteor showers for the full duration. After the (badly) implemented scatter mechanics melees and necros pretty much took over in terms of damage capabilities. The only reason there were less complaints back then was because of the huge amount of pugs that would accept eles because they're "newbie friendly", "flashy", and that there was no HM back then to make the ele's weaknesses obvious.

Ele got slightly better in ranking in factions simply because exploding enemies were unfriendly to newbie melee players, but at that point minions masters were far outclassing everyone else, and eles were still second rate. Then come nightfall and "stat pump" mode...I don't think I need to say anything there.

Dervishes, eles, paragons, AND rangers all need work . But at least dervs and paras are not "nerfbated" for just doing their original role in a certain mode.

Dervs were originally intended as mobile, adjacent range AoE generators, which was a role that barely survived the NF intro weekend. I don't see that "original role" viable anymore in any way, shape or form. That would very much define being "nerbated."

I always thought they were supposed to be scythe users with AoE on the side . Either way I did say "in a certain mode", dervs and paragons retained their "melee damage" and "party support" role in the entire game regardless of how their skills are. Only eles went from flashy nuker with 90% of their skills somewhat useful to a bond bot with 90% of their skills useless just by pressing a button

I agree they do need work. More specifically, it seems they all had something OP in PvP that was nerfed and overflowed into PvE, all the while the other classes recieved powercreep when these professions did not. I also blame client degradation related to PvP/PvE skill split. When thinking of ways to buff them, the best options(for ANet) would be PvE skills or skills that already have a PvE/PvP split.

Exactly what? Scatter gives the ability to make the game's AI change targets or to run off to their deaths without damaging while giving damage.

I'm not an expert with elementalists, but I have to suggest.. how about tuning down on the casting time for some water spells? Or perhaps add more versatility towards elemental spells? As it stands, very few elementalists can play two elements at a time as there are greater cons than pros. Perhaps buff a few skills, or create new skills, that will better promote the use of chaining elemental spells.

That's a rather interesting point.

Have non elite versions of Master of Magic which crank up various attributes to promote synergy. Chilling Winds, for example could make your water and air attributes use whichever one is higher in number, or Chilling Winds could greatly enhance the armor penetration of all air magic spells used on foes hexed by water, etc. There are plenty of throwaway skills which could be converted into combination powers (Iron Mist, Swirling Aura, Earthen Shackles come to mind).

I like your idea.

Exactly that scatter does not qualify as protection. Its a ridiculous grasp at straw argument. I could bring a mesmer hero and interrupt every spell and blind everything but I wouldn't call it "protection", even though I am prevent them from doing damage while damaging them also....there's a reason why the term "utility" exist. Similarly, I can make enemies "run away" simply by kiting in a certain way every time they come close...its still not real protection though.

The main point is that whether or not you classify scatter as "protection" doesn't really matter, useless is useless. I have a dozen different ways to prevent damage rather than using expensive, long cast time, long recharge "terror" spells. That 10-25 energy spell would have been much better used to cast some armor ignoring damage spells and kill the mobs as quickly as possible.

As much as I like this idea, the work that needs to be done to make it possible would be even greater than just trying to buff the damage. The current single element eles already need to bring 2-3 energy management skills, which usually include an element specific Glowing Gaze equivalent. Multi element would require 5 slot for it to work, unless the plan is to bring only 30+ recharge spells....

A cure to that would be a buff to Elemental Attunement, or equivalent. Perhaps skills that reward the caster with energy if used while meeting certain conditions; IE, burning, water hex, KD, blind.

make monster armor level cap to 80 and gg

There's still a ridiculous level damage decrease. Even on 60 armor casters you only do 70% damage usually. Against warriors and rangers you do about 35-40%.

At this point using my Ele means Red Candy--> Mindbender --> EVAS --> YMLaD --> 12 Domination --> Armor ignoring damage. I can always fall back on Glyph of Renewal-Assassin's Promise-Meteor Shower nuking with an Earthbind Rit, but the problem is that playing with only primary Ele skills is never really a viable option.

I think changing some of the skills in each attribute line to be armor ignoring with a 1 second casting time and making Master of Magic a skill as opposed to an Enchantment could make for some wonderful builds, especially with Prismatic Armor Insignias. That way the Ele could be a viable "Nuker" again. AS it stands now, Necromancers, Rits, and Mesmers all do better damage than the class that was designed to be the party's damage dealer. Or, ANet could release a statement saying that they would like the Ele to be support snares and moderate damage AoE dealers in PvE.

Don't use such skills if you think they're useless, other players will. Protection utility same stuff with countless blurs between them.

And players would use mending wammo too...this entire thread is meant to make useless useful, unless if the title has some "hidden" meaning that I don't get.

I actually find the recharge more of a limiting factor in comparison to cast time. Even 3 sec cast time would be fine if i could cast it every 2 second as opposed to 30+ seconds.

What or where is the hidden meaning?

...What?

60 armor gives an Armor Effect of 1. In other words, on 60 armor targets you do the listed damage. Every 40 armor after that reduces listed damage by half.

You're correct, but only if you can assume you're attacking level 20 foes, which you aren't. Level difference matters when it comes to damage.

Armor raises with the level of the foe at 3 * creature level + armor bonus. A level 30 monk will have 90 armor.

The more you know.....

Yes, because higher level foes have more armor.

I don't see how cracked armor would help. It only reduces 20.

For example, a stoning ~14 (101 damage) only does 32 on a Quetzal stark lvl 26 even with weaken armor.

42 vs 30 on a mountain pine soul (out of 101) is another example.

75 vs 53 on Mahgo Hydra (a caster)
71 vs 50 on Avalanche... (a caster)
101 vs 74 on Frozen Elemental... (a caster)
88 vs 62 on shadow of fear (caster)
101 vs 75 on margonite seer (caster)

75 on Quetzal sly, 101 with cracked armor which means it has at least 80 armor. So basically eles are only going to be killing casters with no additional armor.

This is all fine and dandy, but you have to keep in mind that when half the professions and some casters take about 30-50% even with cracked armor, then it is pointless to run a damage elementalist when on that same 5 cooldown you can pump out Mystic Sweep (+30 damage), overload (75ish), desecrate enchantments or some other spell. That's not taking into account Barbs/Orders/AoHM/"I am the strongest!"/Asuran Scan/etc.

Your token ele spells (save for Searing Flames) are on at least 5 cooldown. So unless they put out 100+ damage (20DPS) they aren't really worth it (even a single ritualist spirit does that, never mind SoS or SoGM spirit spam). With AOEs, it's slightly better but it needs to compete with scythe users with no buffs other than AoHM. If a melee wielding a scythe can carry 1 skill and outdo entire skill lines then we have a problem.

If enemies were given the WiK treatment we'd be better off.

The enemy's level has no direct effect on your spell damage. While enemy armor does go up with level, it's entirely up to Anet exactly what it will be and it often doesn't follow the same 3 armor per level players use. For example, the WiK white mantle enemies all have 60 armor + profession bonus regardless of their level (this is why WiK doesn't suck for elementalists). OTOH, Death Threshers in UW @ lvl 27 have 101 armor even though they should only have 81 by player standards.

The same is not true the other way around, though. A lvl 28 caster effectively penetrates 28*3 = 84 armor players for full damage. This is why armor ignoring enemy spells suck hard while armor-affected spells get large damage boosts (about 50% before you even consider attribute differences or the boss multiplier).

Please just reread all my previous posts on this thread. Our little argument is getting way off topic. To summarize my point: Scatter f**king sucks when the damage is already so low. If Anet won't balance the damage, then remove scatter and be done with it.

Eles would still have a disadvantage when facing non-caster professions. But the fault lies in the fact the armor ignoring damage spells of other classes surpasses Eles' when it shouldn't even be close. I always thought that armor ignoring damage spells is supposed to be a trade off of damage in exchange for more stability.