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

What armor ignoring damage spells really surpass Ele spells in base damage? Other then a few Mesmer skills I can't think of any. Other caster classes are more overpowered for their buffing physicals, abusing summoning spells, or otherwise providing party support. I really don't see other casters laying on the damage at all, its mostly buffed physical damage. Eles would be fine with all enemies normalized to a base 60 armor, they are faring just fine in WiK currently.

It isn't really the damage number themselves that make non-ele casters great, its the extremely low recharge, short cast time, more free slots, and the lack of attunements. When I play non-searing flame eles I often find myself mashing the button for Fireball/Rodgort's Invocation (Or Stoning/Ebon Hawk for earth) because every other skills are on recharge. Other classes would be pumping out one spell after another without stopping. Other time I'm busy recasting my attunement, cover enchant, and glyph and the rest of the party is already half a radar ahead with 33% IMS Fallback....pugs don't wait. (Heck, even my guildies don't wait most of the time, I could always catch up later, right?)

I've yet to see anything pump out more than Searing Flames. Ineptitude, Clumsiness, Wandering Eye come close but they aren't on 2 recharge and only Wandering Eye is nearby range. If you count Wastrel's Worry, Wastrel's demise, Overload, Spiritual Pain (conditional) spam perhaps.

If you're talking about Water Magic, then no, it's not for damage. Air magic's Invoke/Hammer does a good 112-140 depending on whether you have cracked armor (Lightning Orb).

Earth magic isn't really damage either, but it has 100+ damage AoEs like Earthquake (3 cast time though). (DoT in hard mode is meh, but against normal armored mobs, 42x5=210. Tack on Ebon vanguard standard of honor and you get 285. Nothing impressive when it's on 25-30 cooldown. Savannah's Heat is 315 though. Tack on 75 and you have 390.)

Eles need a buff regardless just because of powercreep (Nightfall was particularly bad). Or they could just nerf everything that's non-ele from nearby to adjacent and reduce ritualist and mesmer damage.

My challenge to everyone is: try to make a bar with no elites. You're pretty much relegated to Eruption, Churning earth, Lightning Orb, Chain Lightning, Deep Freeze (not for the damage), Ice Spikes (not for damage), Blurred Vision (not for damage). Meteor is decent, but recharge and exhaustion limited. Fireball, Immolate, Liquid Flame, Rodgort's Invocation aren't impressive. Ebon Hawk is yawn worthy, as is Stoning, Obsidian Flame, Magnetic Surge. None of these are lower than 5 cooldown. Incendiary Bonds is laughable when you compare it to Spirit Rift, which is in the same line as Splinter Weapon.

Rodgort's Invocation is unusable without Dual attunements or Mind Blast.

The most powerful effects of air magic (knockdown, cracked armor, blind) are outdone by PvE skills and other professions. Blinding surge is outdone by Ineptitude simply because Ineptitude does ~130 damage. B-surge only manages to pull ahead if you need to keep targets blinded and they have condition removal that sucks (i.e. on >6 recharge). Gale is pointless when you have YMLAD.

About WiK:
Have you tried playing hexes in WiK? They are pretty brutal with condition and hex removal. They have Blessed Light smiters, Deny hexes, Hex Eater Vortex, Smite hex, Convert hexes, Contemplation of purity, etc. Elementalists excel there since other professions rely on hexes (spiteful spirit, panic, Wandering eye, clumsiness, Ineptitude, Visions of regret, Assassin's promise, Discord, etc). You don't have to care if they run hex or condition removal. You can just blast things to bits. That's why I don't run Discord.

Take a look at:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/White_Mantle_Abbot
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/White_Mantle_Sycophant
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/White...28ritualist%29

This isn't including the condition removals like Foul Feast or Antidote signet.

Just run critscythe ssin and you rape these mobs like priests in an elementary school..
I have killed Peacekeeper Enforcers with 3-4 swings of my Scythe in HM, dealing over 150-200 damage each time. Dude, there is still nothing that beats that. Spellcasters got 1,5 seconds to get healed or they're toast. I've done almost 380 damage there (I think my max was like 376 or something) Lead with cracked armor, micro'd on one of your heroes, make sure your preps are up, Asuran scan, Mystic sweep (if that doesn't get em below 50% in one swing, Eremite's or Malicious Strike) Reaper's sweep to finish em off.. And i've got r4 Asuran, so with a r10 that is a LOT more damage pumped out..

Eles SUCK in HM, yes, I can let mobs scatter, piss em off with dual MS's, AP nuke them (I also did WiK on my ele) but it is NOTHING compared to what Warriors, Ssins, Mesmers and Necro's can pump out.. Hell, even a smite monk will do more with the right build...

That's why
* AoHM should be dervish primary only (linked to Mysticism like critical agility).
* Asuran Scan should be toned down. (this doesn't matter as much since it's single target, we have SoS as broken single target damage as well... it's also easily 200+ DPS)
* RoJ is plain broken

Yet these rarely come up in any scary quantity. The odd Cure, Deny or even Convert doesn't hinder hex heavy play too much unless it hits Assassin's Promise or other key skill (which it shouldn't be).
Even with their random compositions, you can quickly learn to identify which builds contain skills that give you trouble (when I was doing the WiK on my Derv and Mes, I knew which Mesmer build had Hex Eater Vortex for example - never had a problem with that build on my Nec however).

Not to mention a lot of the great builds don't even use that many hexes now...the mesmer's keystone signet builds comes to mind. That build got the equivalent of the necro's anti melee hexes (Tryptophan Signet), mesmer interrupts (Every Skill), possible knock down every 4 sec or less, very good damage, fast cast, low recharge, completely unaffected by dozens of anti-caster skills other than the handful of anti-signet skills, all for nearly no cost and still have spare slots for support signets to boot.

Elementalist is a total joke in comparison.

Lovely, more pvp/pve skills split. Sure let's boost eles in pve, not like it matters anyways, 3 spots on the bar gonna be taken up by broken pve skills most likely

It would also be nice to see a few more skills take on different functions.

At present, the elementalist has about a million ways of doing the exact same thing. Most of fire magic is just a tiny variation of "deal area effect damage" or water's All Snares All The Time or earth's Many Ways To Get Armor That Doesn't Stack, with way too many choices for way too few functions. This results in few practical choices, with most of the space being wasted.

It would be nice to give the elementalist something he can do, that only he can do. Many different classes can nuke, many can buff themselves up, several can avoid spells, and lots of them can spike. There's nothing iconically elementalist right now, aside perhaps glyphs. Glyphs are nice, but they aren't that amazing, especially when they're used more for managing your energy than beefing up your skills.

It might take the form of Sustained skills (ridiculously long casting time, deals damage while you cast, so you can cancel at any time to exit), better targeting parameters (allow the Armor spells to be cast on allies, and change them to have an offensive component, so that Armor of Frost would deal frost damage when broken), or quasi-summoning (create a creature that takes no damage and doesn't block movement, but has its own skill it inflicts upon enemies), but it should be something. At present, everything an elementalist can do, someone else can do better, because they have nothing iconically elementalist with which they can shine.

Yeah, this is the main problem. The elementalist's skills are designed for almost a single purpose: Damage. If the damage is crappy, the class is almost useless.
And when you try to do something else, as you said, other classes outdone eles easily(see condition spreading ele vs necro: only eruption, Bsurge and SF are acceptable).

Also there are some mechanics that hasn't never work imo.

First of all Attunements, and cost of spells that are priced thinking that if you aren't attuned, you must lose all energy in seconds. Also, we are talking about a 2sec cast Enchantement, and the recharge is almost the duration of the attunement itself. Rupt or strip it, and the ele are stopped.

I never liked the exaustion concept too, and the energy management that ES should be is simply ridicolous(see Soul Reaping...). Also, some skill are simply bad designed: Eles today relies on the few acceptable skills, or to the PvE only, or to the secondary prof...

Tbh, i think that even if is obvious the need of a fix, Anet wont buff eles before GW 2 release(/pessimist): i still hope that at least there they will be decent.

There's one more thing that I thought of, the glyphs. I don't get why they have so many limitations when what most of them do is reduce all the artificial penalties on elementalist spells. They should also buff some of the glyphs other than the 2 common ones and link it to Energy Storage somehow to prevent other casters from abusing them.

These are the unliked glyphs:

Glyph of Concentration
Glyph (15 seconds.) Your next 1 spell cannot be interrupted and is unaffected by the Dazed condition.

Glyph of Elemental Power
Glyph. (25 seconds.) Boosts your elemental attributes by +2 for your next 10 spells.

Glyph of Essence
Glyph. (15 seconds.) Your next spell casts instantly. You lose all Energy.

Glyph of Renewal
Elite Glyph. (15 seconds.) Your next spell recharges instantly.

Glyph of Sacrifice
Glyph. (15 seconds.) Your next spell casts instantly. This spell takes an additional 30 seconds to recharge.

I would link some of them, but not all of them to Energy storage. Fire and Air have Glyphs. Let's give one to water and air too:

Glyph of Elemental Power
Glyph. (25 seconds.) Boosts your elemental attributes by +1..2..3 for your next 1..11..14 spells. (Energy Storage)

Glyph of Essence
Glyph. (15 seconds.) Your next spell casts instantly. You lose all but 0..12..15 Energy. (Energy Storage)

Glyph of Sacrifice
Glyph. (15 seconds.) Your next spell casts instantly. This spell takes an additional 30..25..20 seconds to recharge. (Water Magic)

Glyph of Concentration
Glyph (15 seconds.) Your next 1..2..3 spells cannot be interrupted and is unaffected by the Dazed condition. Removes Dazed condition with Earth Magic 13 or higher. (Earth Magic)

Glyph of Sacrifice currently has use with Meteor Shower and Assassin's Promise.
That said, I don't know if that's of significant use anywhere.

I'm not sure why you need to arbitrarily move some of those to other attributes.

The real trouble with glyphs are the cast time and opportunity to bringing them given their rather small effects.

I dont believe that Elementalists need that much of a buff in HM. I'm nearly finished with Legendary VQ-er with my ele. Sav Heat, Mark of Rodgort, Searing Heat, Meteor, GoLE, etc deals enough damage.
I agree that Warriors take practically 0 damage but they are Warriors....let your mesmers, necros, or melee take care of them. Ele's are suited for AoE damage, if you increase that damage, your making it too OP. Bring Ebon ward or BuH if your having trouble with your damage in HM.

/notsigned

I can get legendary VQ-er with no skill bar. I can even do it while running in circles. Therefore, I believe that empty skill bar is too OP. Please nerf empty skill bar.

Well as far as PvP goes Glyph of Sac + Res chant was used for a while.

Need to play other classes on the same missions/VQs to feel the difference. Hell, RoJ does more than Savanah's Heat, it just is a smaller AoE.

The difference is huge, with my mesmer, just with SS alone, without using any other skill at all, I do waaaay more damage than with any elementalist-only build.

Have you tried using EBSOH and BUH with fire or earth AoEs?

That is very powerful.

1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6.
7.
8. Rez

See what's wrong with this skill bar? Maybe if the game is designed around 16 skill slots then it would work. Of course, by the time you finish casting 5 different prep skills, the rest of the party already obliterated the entire mob.

Unless you're using AP none of it is on a decent recharge (20-30 seconds) and you push 40ishx5 +75 from EBSoH (base)=275 (maximum damage). BUH adds to everything so I don't count it (RoJ?).

Also you need something for the scattering effect, such as (and mainly) Deep Freeze.

That's it. The ultimate Elementalist Buff:

Energy Storage [PVE]. Functunality added: For every 3 Points in Energy Storage you gain an additional skill slot which can hold an Energy Storage skill, a Glyph or an Attunement.

That way ES gives energy management in form of additional skill slots (for the holy trinity Attunement, GoLE and AoR) and elementalists can use ALL 8 skill slots for the actual build.

^ is that sarcasm?

Seriously just make elemental weakness count for something.
Give more monsters elemental weaknesses and shit will be fine, Elementalists will just change builds based on the general weakness of their enemies. If more enemies gain elemental weaknesses Eles will be fine.

Updated elementalist skill bar:

1. Aura of Restoration
2. Attunement
3. Glyph of Lesser Energy
4. Air of Superiority / Assassin's Promise
5. EBSOH / BUH
6. Deep Freeze
7.
8. Rez

See? Problem solved, eles don't need a buff. Also if you want to protect your 2s cast time Deep Freeze from interrupts, just put Mantra of Concentration in the optional slot 7.

Now your ele has no energy problem (like other caster classes), no recharge problem (like the other classes), have damage that match up to the ranger, no problem with scatter (like the other classes), and no interrupt problem (like other classes with their 0.25s-1s cast time spells). You even have the option to bring Mindbender instead of rez so that you can cast normally.

Learn to play people, this is how its done.

Why would you be bringing a rez, AoR, and Deep Freeze? Those would be optional depending on the build and none of which I'd bring on an AP build on any profession. Nonsense.

This.

Give monsters a serious armor penalty versus elements they're weak against
something like "Ice golems have 25% less armor vs fire."

Different elements have different purposes.

Fire is for killing a lot of things.

Air is for killing one thing.

Earth is for not getting killed.

Water is for killing movement.

Even if you started making enemies exceptionally vulnerable to (for example) cold damage , water magic will still not be an effective damage dealing method (and if it did, well, then everyone would just use cold damage weapons to do the same thing, only better).

You know what else? Energy Storage needs a rework.

Now that we can split prime attributes, it would be in the general interest to take a good, long look over the special elements of each class, and find the ones that are currently coming up lacking. They did it for Fast Casting, they can do it for others.

Energy Storage is basically useless after the first few seconds of battle. Any situation which calls for an extended firefight, the things you need to be paying attention to, will require the ele to have energy management enchantments and glyphs just to compensate for their high cost skills, which are currently underpowered (which means more skills to beef them up, etc). The first step, therefore, is to condense the amount of utility an elementalist needs to function.

Make Energy Storage work like Attunements. Then, make Attunements help with the Armor Penetration problem. Add a few Glyphs that punch through armor completely, and you're golden.

That would take more time to do, but it would be the best solution.

Destroyers, Titans, fire and Ice elementals already have elemental weakneses, some phantoms vs lighning, and a few more monsters.

But they are A FEW.

There should be way more.
Insects and spiders weak vs fire and cold, but way stronger vs arth and lightning, water-related creatures such as the EotN frogs and wisps weak vs earth, dragons weak vs cold and strong vs fire and lightning, giants weak vs earth, ghost weak vs proton beams, I mean lightning but strong vs earth... ...

It's as if they started with the idea and then forgot about it, and mostly used the plain 'ol fire&ice stuff for the most obvious enemies

I've recently gotten into playing ele on a regular basis, and beside the fact that I feel my damage capability is lacking in power compared to most other professions, I find it excruciatingly annoying to stop every 80 seconds to recast my attunement(s). Would it be really game breaking to change their mechanic to become enchantments of indefinite duration, like illusion of weakness for example? Increase the cast time and/or recharge, no prob, but this 2-3 second forced stop and go after every other battle begins to piss me off in the long run, and when I think back always has since I realized it's the reason why my ele hero/hench were constantly falling behind. Why does this matter for HM? Battles take longer in HM, so it's not every 2 or three mobs you need to recast your tune, but a good portion of the time your attunement runs out after every single encounter you have.

Just an ele novice's pov.

Lol, is that bar serious? You now have 1 spot for a damage skill, and 7 prep skills.. Either you're being very sarcastic and I'm not getting it, or you're being pants on head retarded..

You say "Yes, eles can use BuH and EBSoH and they'll do the same damage" but you're relying on PvE skills here.. Also, saying "they can take 2 extra skills and they'll do the same damage as the other professions that need neither of these to get it done" is just agreeing with us you know.. You're admitting that other professions are way stronger..

Eles suck, stop denying it. High energy, bad management, low damage, high recharge.. As opposed to a mesmer for example: low energy costs = good management, immense armor ignoring damage, and low recharges..

I like that idea ... it's more work than a quick-and-dirty Intensity buff, but I think it would be worth it. Only problem may be elementalist bosses which have access to armor penetration and deal even more insane (insaner?) damage.


btw: Sry to those who got it, but
and
are full of sarcasm.

The idea of give a lot of elemental weakness to all GW mob isn't that great(put a elemental mod and your warrior is even more overpowered..), and it was discussed before also.

Imo eles requires a huge rework of mechanics, skills effects and damage and overall ES. The idea to give to ES the function of a perma attunement isn't bad, maybe if coupled with a rework of attunements as damage boost(but make them somehow more usable, for cast time and recharge, like mantras...). Then you could have some problem with HM eles, but this is another (and already discussed) story...and is always possible to remove attunements from mob's builds(....no ignore this last thing).
Other mechanics could be changed imo...more utily or real damage, glyphs can surely be improved, and i'd like to have wards moving with you, centered on the caster and affecting all allies that stands around you, like the protective ward from fire darts of the golem in the elusive golemancer mission in eye for example(but this shouldn't work on pve wards too imho, they're enough overpowerd now...)

And about the previous "sarcasm"...the problem is that it isn't so far from true. Running a "full" ele bar requires at LEAST 3 slot for your e-management(gole, attunement,aor or ele lord...), trow in a res or utility skill and you have 4 slot for damage skills. Then you have to face interrupts(long cooldown are a real issue) scatter(another slot gone for a snare...) damage ( and another gone for Buh or EbsoH...)...do you see some problems?

P.S: obviously this is all referred to PvE. I'm not a PvPer, but from wath i've seen in PvP the ele does(thanks to completely different armor parameter) what tehy are built for: kill everything moves in their aggro bubble.
More PvE/PvP splits are necessaries imo.

Eles in PvP doesn't use rely on attunements as much because enchant strips are so common and stuff like Invoke isn't exact energy heavy (10 energy can be had in 8 recharge so you don't need attunement). If they run attunement and no other energy management it usually is covered with Aura of Restoration.

Lately you don't see that many eles outside of water ones and most recently Invoke (after the 1 second cast buff).

Old school Ether Prodigy, Ether Renewal --> new Ether Prism (which is out of favor now), Mind Blast, GoLE.

http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=586
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=588
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=586
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=591
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=583
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=579
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=570 <-- no attunement at all
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=568
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=540
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=539 <-- both water eles have no attunements
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=538 <-- ether prism
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=480

compared to old school
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_pase_i.php?id=73
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_pase_i.php?id=62
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_pase_i.php?id=58
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_pase_i.php?id=34

Compared to a rangers every 12-24 seconds prep?

But yes maybe decrease the duration, recharge and make it 1 sec cast in pve.

Recharge is the big thing here. You can't strip preparations by the way.

1 cast does matter but not as much as anywhere from 35% to 50% energy reduction return gone from one enchant strip and then having to wait 45 seconds to recast it and eating a d-shot/p-spike/p-block to the face in the process.

Having Aura of Restoration as a cover enchant doesn't work in elite areas where Strip enchantment, chillblains, Assault enchantments (rare), Expunge enchantments, well of the profane, disenchantment (spirit), rend enchantments, etc. are active since enchant strips are 15-20 cooldown and the attunements are on 45 cooldown.

If a ranger loses his/her prep it's no big deal most of the time and much less severe than losing the equivalent of 9 to 12 ranks of expertise. Okay you lose 3-4 pips of degen (barbed/apply), +10-20ish armor ignoring damage (Read the Wind/ Glass), +10-20ish armor-reduced damage (Kindle/ignite). The exception is Choking Gas, which is rarely used these days seeing how things with >1 cast time are few in HM, Expert Focus (basically an attunement for 5 energy ranger skills), Disrupting Accuracy, and Seeking Arrows.

Yes but that is what i'm getting at, the recharge is the problem and not the duration, no mater the effect both preparations and atunements are supposed to be maintained and my quoting was that he/she though it was much of a pain to stop to recast the atunement every minute, which frankly is quite a generous duration. In pvp the recharge of atunements needs to remain since they are some of the of the few enchantments left worth stripping. In pve though a 20 sec recharge along with 1 sec cast would protect against random mob stripping.

Attunements being recast every 20 seconds would cut 10 energy/20 seconds or 6e/20sec if precast before the end, 5en/20sec with aura of restoration up. That's a 0.25 to 0.5 energy/second investment, which unlike for Rangers...isn't reduced. In comparison, that's 1 pip or 2 pips of regen (1energy/3sec is a pip or 0.333 energy/sec).


Also it wouldn't matter in areas with bulk removal or multiple mesmers and/or necros.

Lastly, preparations don't have aftercast and they do something even if you autoattack. Attunements need to pay themselves off by letting you subsidize energy equal to the cost of the attunement (at the least). So to break even with a cost of 10 energy in 20 seconds you need to successfully (cancel cast, interrupt, fail lead to energy loss with no return unlike expertise) cast a combination of these adding to 10:
25 energy = 8 return
15 energy = 6 return
10 energy = 4 return
5 energy = 2 return

i.e. 1x 25, 1x 5 ; 2x15 (Searing flames); 1x15, 1x10 ; 3x10; 5x5

However, 30 energy normally takes 22.5 seconds of 4 pip regen so if one gets interrupted you've already lost more than you invested.

i.e. 25 energy-8= 17 + 5-2=20 energy --> 15 seconds of energy regen, not counting aftercast and attunement cast time. Tack on 3 seconds of aftercast and you cut it really close for recasting the attunement if you don't run +20% enchanting.

That's why having a 24 second duration like a prep would be catastrophic.

^
The thing i was talking about was not (as i said) about the effect of the autunements (gah how do you spell it? ) themselves but rather the one i was adresing originaly was about the forced time on recasting it because having the duration upped much more and it could as well be a maintainable enchantments without energy degen, i wasn't talking about the specific mechanics at an active and a passive buff. I didn't say either that we should nerf the duration to a drastic 20-30 seconds (and you gain 33% + 1 energy gain back on recast of the autunement (4 energy) so the cost isn't that major compared to it's effect. As for the stripping i mean situations where for example an anoying dying nightmare would have rendered you you would be able to reapply it faster or already have it recharged when it is removed. Ofcourse if you leeroyed into a mob entirely consisting of mesmers or necros with enchantment hate i would feel sorry for you. And a cast time of 1 second would remove some of the annoyance of staggering behind the team and be late because of maintaining or applying. That was the issue i was trying to adress .

As for its effect i cant see how autunments are bad, its like a expertise thrown in along with the really potent energy storage related skills i have nearly never run out of energy as an elementalist and thats while spamming deep freeze and other heavy costing water skills in pvp as a shatter stone ganker where enchantment stripping is quite common.
The bad thing with it is that you need to sacrifice a skill slot for it where ranger don't have to, but then rangers are in general pretty "meh" and are in the same rowboat trailing after HMS-Powercreep.

Well Attunements seem like awesome energy management because most elementalist skills are limited by recharge. i.e. 15 energy every 30 seconds for churning earth is doable with no attunements. You could even cast Eruption AND churning earth on recharge.

Plus, ele skills are priced with attunements in mind.

Anyone that plays ele knows that Glyph of lesser energy is the real energy management (unless you need hard core stuff like Mind blast or ER) unless you spam 10+energy skills every 2-10 seconds like Searing Flames,Stoning, Blinding flash, or Rodgort's Invocation.

You don't need to leeroy a mob if there's a group of 4+ mesmer/necros. They will hit you with enchant removal eventually. I noticed this on my UA monk (UA is on 10 recharge so it's no big deal). If the area has well of the profane or something of that sort like Chilblains you're SOL.

I like the idea of reworking attunements, but as said above they're vulnerable.

And just a note about making monster weaknesses more prevalent: it would buff more than the ele. Ranger, dervish (as it exists today), ritualist and necro can all deal elements (not to mention an obvious boon to weapon mods). It would be nice to bring in more traditional RPG strategy.