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."