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.