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

The only way the "elemental weakness" idea would work is if every mob on a map all have the same weakness.

Either that or Eles' spells have to do OMGWTFBBQHAX damage to mobs that are actually weak the the element used to make up for the fact that eles can't scratch the other mobs without the weakness.

Yeah, nobody remembers about the cold damage that necro can deal.

About attunements rework(as mabe i said somewhere else), could they changed to something more similar to Mes Mantras? Fix some other skills that interacts with attunements(invoke and chain lighting for example) and there could be already some improvements...

This thread is yet another example where ANET basically fails at balancing professions in HM. Time and again, it's the players who suggest the improvements but less than 1% of the suggestions are actually heeded.

Ele HM elemental weakness is needed to level the playing field for eles against other caster professions, namely mesmers and necros.

Stop making all the crappy costumes ANET, stop HOTN and start fixing glaring issues with current GW1 first.

I'm not sure it would be level. Maybe if they did shadow, chaos or elemental damage instead of ignoring armor.

You don't even need to get your attunement stripped or interrupted to be ****ed. The fact that attunements only return energy for a successful cast means that if the ele decides to abort casting halfway, then not only didn't cast the spell, but they also spent the full amount of energy for nothing. This is why in pugs, eles are nearly always the ones that are the most frustrating to heal/prot because they won't abort their 25e spell even though they are getting hit by half a dozen melee. Stupid attunements mechanics discourages kiting >.< They need to change the attunements to be more like expertise.

This is the most important part of the post imo

How to change them is another problem...i'd like to see E-storage act as perma-attunement, or at least be a true form of e-management, and attunements changed to a more reliable ench (reliable=lower recharge, cost, cast...easier to mantain:see Master of Magic...) used only to provide boost to APenetration or damage or whatever you want it to be.

I would like to see attunements changed to something like this:

(x) Attunement: For 36...55...60 seconds, you are attuned to (x). You gain 1 Energy plus 40% of the base Energy cost of the Skill each time you use(x) Magic. Your (x) spells cast and recharge 25...50...60% faster.

Idea being that 3s cast spells are too much when there is a 50/50 chance of the enemy being dead after 3s (assuming your group is competent, at least), and the 1-2s spammable spells can't be spammed enough to actually be useful (.75s aftercast makes the majority of them too unspammable to be worth it when you look at what is required for PvE). The AoE nukes suffer both from this and the fact that a lot of them are 30-60s recharge spells that are useless without AP, so this helps AoE spells be used more often. And with this you could alternate between invoke and chain lightning almost at flare-spam speeds, which would be pretty baller (probably overpowered, but its not overpowered at the gold standard of current PvE classes so I'm OK with it )

I would make elemental attunement similar, but also make it so that spells don't cause exhaustion. This way your investment into energy storage opens up a new set of skills that are otherwise impossible to spam due to exhaustion being ridiculously bad in PvE. Things like Dragon Stomp/Maelstrom/Meteor Shower which could actually be good spells if you were able to use them more than once every 30s.

Then change intensity to:

Enchantment Spell. For 10 seconds plus 5 seconds for each rank of Energy Storage, enemies have 20...30 less armor against spells you cast. Intensity cannot reduce enemy armor below 60.

Pretty simple. This is basically the same thing as automatic (somewhat stronger) cracked armor debuff to enemy armor, and its also almost the same thing AoHM does with scythes, except I've capped its power against NM foes (which badly needs to happen for AoHM as well, but thats another discussion). This directly translates into 40...70% damage increase against most HM foes. Most caster classes will take damage just as well as they did in NM, and with other PvE buffs like EBSoH or BUH stronger armor classes in HM would still be quite overcome-able.

I just had an idea from reading this, what if we changed the primary attribute, energy storage, to incorporate attunement properties and change the functionalities of the attunement skills? I think this change to energy storage would more better suit the name than having energy storage give elementalist skills armor penetration as I've read many times.
Here's what I think the energy storage attribute could look like:

Energy Storage:
For each rank of Energy Storage, your maximum Energy raises by 3. In PvE whenever you cast an elemental spell, you gain energy in percentage equal to the combined attribute rank of that spells elemental attribute and your Energy Storage attribute. Several skills related to gaining Health or Energy become more effective with higher Energy Storage.


In case some people don't understand, this means that if for example, you had 14 Water Magic and 13 Energy Storage, and you cast Maelstrom, you would get 27% of Maelstrom's energy cost. which in this case would be 7 Energy, rounded up.

Now, with this change to Energy Storage, a range of interesting possibilities opens up for what to change the functionalities of the Attunement skills to.
My personal idea, with some inspiration from guild wars 2 attunements are:

Air Attunement:
Enchantment Spell. For 36...55...60 seconds, you are attuned to Air. Your Air Magic spells have an additional +5...10% armor penetration.

Earth Attunement:
Enchantment Spell. For 36...55...60 seconds, you are attuned to Earth. Whenever you cast Earth Magic spells you gain +10...40 armor for 3 seconds or until hit by one attack.

Fire Attunement:
Enchantment Spell. For 36...55...60 seconds, you are attuned to Fire. Your Fire Magic skills cause burning for an additional 1...2 seconds.

Water Attunement:
Enchantment Spell. For 36...55...60 seconds, you are attuned to Water. Your Water Magic skills heals allies adjacent to your target for 5...20 health.


These are my just my ideas but I think the attunement skill functionality changes could use a bit of tweaking as they were rushed thought of.

I have another idea abot this:

1-Energy Storage:
For each rank of Energy Storage, your maximum Energy raises by 3, AND whenever you cast an elementalist's skill you gain the (3 or 4..)% of the energy base cost OR you gain an additional pip of e-regeneration each 6 ranks in ES.

(another way could be "raise max energy by 2" and add both the others effects on pve, and only one in pvp...i'm not soo good at balancing lol).

2-Attunements:
5 ene, 1 sec cast, 12-20 recharge. For 5...60 seconds you're attuned to (X). Skill of this element you cast (pick your favorite):
-gain an additional (2 or 3..)% Apenetration for each rank in the element attribute;
-cast and recharge 2% faster for each rank in the element attribute;
-do +x...y damage.
-whatever buff you prefer

You are interrupted and this enchantement ends prematurely if you cast an ele's skill on a foe of your same level or lower.

The idea is to pass the e.management to ES and use attunements to fix the underpowered damage in HM. Skill stats are set like AoR or Master of Magic.

The final clause of skill fail and end ench is set for:
-don't destroy PvP balance, because noone is at lvl 21 and so you couldn't use attunements boost at all;
-do not destroy earlier nm areas, cause foe's level would be lower than 20(instead, eles in early nm would be stronger, but only against fully leveled players);
-don't give to HM eles foes a even more insane damage trough attunements buff, because they're level is always > 20.

3-Wards: make them move centered on the caster and affects allies around him, like the Golem Fire Shield in oola's lab. Oh, and move Ward against harms to earth. (the 3 pve wards should be kept like they are now, static.They're enough OP now).

Finally, move Second wind to ES and give him a functionality for skip looong cooldowns, a sort of AP for eles.

These are just some more developed ideas...don't blame me so much plz

1.) Ele monsters would be nerfed from insane to nonexistant
2.) I can't wipe minion armies anymore?

That said I like the idea of a permanent passive attunement (aka Energy Storage) and attunements giving damage/armor penetration buffs.


Edit: New Idea: Giving the elementalist the ability to crit via PvE skill (Elemental Lord, Intensity). "Your elementalist spells have an x% chance to deal 141% [melee crit muliplier] of their base damage as armor ignoring damage"

This could be fun with low-lvl mobs: 200 .... 200... CRIT 141 ... 200 ... 200...

Umh, you're rigth. Maybe the interruption and ench lose clause is too much...thinking about it, monster AI would try to keep attunements up, and then get rupted each time they cast something at you.

So something along this line could be:
Enchantement spell:For 5...60 seconds you're attuned to(etc).

You don't have any benefit from this enchantement if you cast an ele's skill on a foe of your same level or lower.

Same effects(no increased Ap or damage or...), without rupts.

As I've said before, and in light of the time taken to restyle the Dervish, I think the best we can hope for is a small tweak to ES (to buff energy recovery/reduce spell cost only) and a reworking of Intensity (to give more HM effectiveness via armour ignoring damage for human players only).

I was thinking to myself that perhaps in HM elementalists could get a +1 Attribute buff. Or +2. But I like yours more, the 3% more dmg and 5% more hextime. I play an ele too, so I know how it sucks to play them in HM. I might do 35 dmg with SF spiking, or 15 dmg with savannah heat... And that's with a +3+1 Headpiece!

More than making changes and tweaks to Energy Storage and Elementalists, the inherent problem with Elemental damage in HM should be the one to address, and not by adding some change to some PvE skill, or to the skills themselves, but by making elemental damage itself more effective in HM.

Cap armour on enemies in Hard Mode. Simply make it so there is no further armour progression after level 20 (to be honest, level 24 would be fine).
That's really it. Problems beyond HM armour stem from how the game works and affect all forms of direct caster damage.

Armor is the essential mechanic of any game, but in this one it's pretty easy to just ignore your way to super damage.

Thing that you can't do using ele's skills....we're at the starting problem.

Cracked armor says hi.
People bitching about things that aren't even a problem.
Its PvE for RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOs sake.
Not rocket science.

Cracked Armor?
Heh!

Get an elementalist, throw cracker armor, and the skills with highest damage and 25% armor penetration, and go to the isle of the nameless, and try using that on the 100Armor dummy.
See the numbers? Well, you'll be doing about 33%..75% of that damage against most enemies in HM, excepting enemies weak vs lightning, which are a few.

-20 armor is not really that much against HM monsters, and if they changed cracked armor to decrease the armor more, then HM monsters that have it would deal insane amounts of damage.


The flaw resides in the damage calculation and having so many armor-ignoring skills, that leaves out elemental damage.

@Infectious: just what MithranArkanere and loads of posts in guru said.....

As you Cracked Armor is a must for ele's damage because can relatively "boost" it, something around 30-40% if i remember well.

But 30-40% of a pathetic damage is still pathetic.

With the Dervish update, Eles will be the worst Hard mode profession.

Rangers attacking with barrage can pump out 40DPS even to 100 armor foes, with no buffs.

* Bow damage at 14 marks, 15% damage bonus, customized bow with Vampiric vs 100 armor: 23.6 average damage

16.1 Minimum Damage, 25.7 Maximum Damage, 34.3 Critical Hit Damage, 20.9 Average Damage (excluding critical hits)
23.6 Average Damage (including critical hits)
barrage adds +19 @14 marks = 42.6 average before buffs

Add GDW/Splinter, Barbs+MoP, Asuran Scan, EBSoH and other stuff, and it is pretty much going to wipe any ele build since it has d-shot too. Cracked armor boosts physicals too.
* Bow damage at 14 marks, 15% damage bonus, customized bow with Vampiric vs 60 armor: 42.2 average damage

27.2 Minimum Damage, 46.4 Maximum Damage, 63.6 Critical Hit Damage, 36.8 Average Damage (excluding critical hits)
42.2 Average Damage (including critical hits)
barrage adds +19 @14 marks = 61 average before buffs

A skill like sloth hunter's is easily +50 on top of base damage rather than the +19 of barrage.

Oohh...i forgot about this...
Thank you Life, now i'm very depressed.

Said it before...
Reduce armor against the elements or a specific element for every monster across the board.
Problem bloody solved.
Hell they could Copy & paste.
Create a monster skill that makes them take increased damage from air magic for instance and just copy & paste then on monsters if they don't feel like actually tweaking armor numbers.

Bandaid fixes are easy and they've done em before.

If they want to do it with more care it still shouldn't take anymore then a week to actually do (could probably do it in a day, but lets be generous). Go in open the monsters data for armor, look up in the database about monster weaknesses, see who's work to earth damage, make that weakness relevant in Hard Mode.
For Enemies who aren't weak to any elements, reduce their elemental armor a tad.

Should help across the board, Dervishes cold & earth spells will be relevant, Necromancers cold damage will be relevent, Ritualist channeling damage can be more relevent. Elementalists are in a better position, concept wise it makes the elements more important.
Everyones happy except for those who are pissed they need to go buy an earth spell now.

Im clearly not 100% sure on Anets coding practices, but when I was learning coding, I was taught to keep things as organized as I could if I could. Considering the skill and time they've invested in this game, changing armor levels of some monsters quite likely is not a difficult task for them, nor would it break the game. Sure Melee could still do well by switching their damage via weapons but small price to pay. The elementalist will still have the AoE down. So as long as their sufficient enough and can drop some aoes, being weaker then melee will balance out in PvE. So drop some armor reductions for the elements, hell could probably increase physical armor levels.

Apart the tecnical issue......
Changing mob's armor calculation against ONE element isn't that good option like can look imo.
The most important thing is that using this solution, you'll have the build limited to the predominant elemental weakness.

For eles the element line change a lot the playstyle and effectiveness depending on circumstances.
Let's say, just for example, that you have an area filled only by wars.Bsurge, or earth spells could work greatly for neutralize attacks. But then you look, fire dmg have a bonus, while earth and lighting a penalty....what would you choose?

What you want to play or the only element you can decently play?

This isn't the way to fix it imo.

No they won't.


Besides:
"barrage adds +19 @14 marks = 42.6 average before buffs"
does not translate to 40DPS.

With my ranger I can deal hits of 100 damage per every 2 seconds.
That averages over 40DPS.

"Reduce armor against the elements or a specific element for every monster across the board."

They can do either one.

@ensoriki: I didn't say that it wont work...just that i don't like it and think it isn't the best solution, cause i faer that it would force the use of a line over another just for the opportunity of do something better than this ridicoulos damage.

@Xenomortis: Then tell us what class will be the worst...exclude paras(imba with perma SY! or strong party support, and are always phisycal using spear), monks(obvious heal ability paired with Roj and smite line if needed), phisycal(insane buffs, as always).... mes? rit? nec? For them HM is a walk in the park....Oh, the last prof is the Ele, without neither decent party support(except ridicolous condition spread and snares) or their ideal ability to outdamage every caster(due to well known HM armor issue).

P.S:And about ranger DPS, no matter if it's over or lower 40: it's phisycal, and as phisycal can benefit of the countless buffs in this game(spliter/GDW,Orders,SoH,Ascan and so on...), and can trigger skills like Mop and so on.

Remember that in GW phisycals outdamage casters almost always, apart in SC's where you destroy a balled mob with AoE(thanks to invulnerable tank, and apart DoA with LB buff, you'll use armor-ignoring dmg) or if you consider the damage of SoS and similar attribuite to the caster.

The latest update nerfed the few damage buffs that were available to casters...all of eles' options had just been rendered useless. You can't even say they're the best at AoE and hitting a lot of foes anymore because the latest update gave the Dervs that crown.

Every suggestions that were made in this thread now have to be adjusted upward because Eles (and rangers) are now the worst profession for HM PvE by far.

Rangers will always be pretty well off as long as Barrage exists and can be comboed with things like splinter weapon/EBSoH/OoP/GDW. They can even run SY to replace an imbagon in the party while doing it. EoE also is pretty effective. So they have a niche and can actually function well in a group.

Eles are a great joke though. All they can do is spam E/Mo prots while the player cuts themselves to relieve the boredom. I get the feeling someone at Anet read the GW manual, played some NM against lvl 20s, and decided Eles are totally awesome nukers that really don't need any more power.

Agree 120% with this...BuH is gone...next stop: limit AP to sins only skills, nerf the OP Ether Renewal and eles are done.

I've seen the new Intesity..after all threads on guru this is the results?
Intensity: changed skill type to skill; removed casting time; decreased recharge to 10 seconds; changed functionality to: "For 10 seconds, the next time you deal elemental damage with a spell to a target, you deal 40...50% of that damage to all other nearby foes."

Seriously Anet.....

Seems is time to play my other chars, dungeons in hm will be a pain and i'm a noob at prot

The last update reduces even more the way eles can increase the damage in hm.

buh is gonne, intensity ends after u casted 1 spell so it's not really an option (might actually be an option if u play secondary something else or as ele secondary for other class, need to test this).

So now the ele stays in glyph of elemental power and ebon ward to increase it's damage...

Eles are SO WEAK, what with Ether Renewal being nerfed in this update, and Assassin's Promise. Oh, wait? They still have the best party support, still better than a monk, still spamming those AoE earth blind skills? gg.

Well, AP isn't there to recharge ele's spell, but PvE skills, mostly EVAS and Norn shouts. Shouts->EVAS->AP and lot of times the mob is dead before cast a 2 sec spell. Then repeat.

And about ER, please don't call it a "Elementalist bar". Minimun 6 skills are from monk prof or pve. It's good, but it's a huge nonsense.

As i said in another thread:

from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...eloper_updates

this made me lol...

seems they still consider eles as nukers xD

@Above - Lol you have got to be kidding me ... there's no hope for Elementalists anymore ...

Really...should we laugh or think they're serious and nothing will change until GW2?

Make it so Anet

Or they could actually make it usefull.....

I really am baffled by the change to intensity....it was a poor skill prior to the change...it is a poor skill after the change. It in no way helped eles in HM. I have seen many ppl try to justify using it...but they keep testing in isle of the nameless, which =/= HM PvE. Imo, the time spent on the "intensity" rework was wasted and could have been better allocated to something actually usefull.

What? You think my version was still underpowered?