Easiest ways to fix els in PvE

Wand/staff attack skills.

As attack skills ignore damage, some of the single target spells, and maybe one or two AoE spells, should be converted over into attack skills (since the damage on those ignores armor).

With that, els would have a method of being able to deal damage in HM and it'd involve the least amount of changes overall. Plus anet doesn't need to make these changes to the pvp side of things unless they want to mix things up.

Potential spells to be converted:
Anything that's a projectile spell
Enervating charge
Lightning bolt
Lightning Javelin
Stone Daggers
Stoning
Flare
Lava Arrows
Ice Spear
Water Trident

I'm not too sure if this would fix them (I don't think it would), but it's one of the more sane suggestions made. Players aren't really into those skills in PvE though.

It wouldn't be a total fix, since Elementalist would still lack in the AoE department, but it's a good suggestion to make Eles more viable for single target nuking. I like it.

If you made 1 or 2 AoE spells from each attribute this way, I would be all for that. It would let Master of Magic see more use for sure.

i always have a good LOL when i see the ele stink in HM QQ.i never had any problems dealing damage in HM with my ele you just have to snare group before aoe nuke and then knock them down combos work wonders

@ above: other 7 team mates says hi.

As people says in this case, "i can roll pve using blank bar. Blank bar is fine."

Simply put, give them armor ignoring damage in fire, air and water lines like in the earth line of spells. Tenari's crystals wokrs because it is armor ignoring. That way you don't have to OP AOE like it was before HM and can undo some of the nerfs like they have been working on. This fix is simple and allready in the game mechanics.

You'll have to make them unblockable too.

My ele has an axe and conjure frost coupled with strength of honor (from hero) and triple chop, cyclone axe and whirlwind attack. Someone splinters me and everything suddenly sexplodes. Yes, sexplodes. It's that hot!
Got a messy watermagic armor buff too.

edit:
Just give an inherent armor penetration to energy storage. 1 pt per point in ES, or per 2 points or whatever. But only in PvE hard mode. Maybe change one of the elementalist-specific pve skills like intensity or that other one to do just that.
Oh, and something to increase casting speed. my warrior manages to get maybe one attack chain off in HM. Then things are dead... If I were to play my ele as a caster, I'm sure I would do fireworks... like way back when in prophecies, Orion would do firestorm at the end of a fight. I wouldn't be able to cast fast enough to actually do anything.

Before I went meleele, I did discord AP caller, boring :/

The problem isn't eles. The problem is people wanting to play ele's "wrong." People expect eles to be an aoe DPS class because the guy who shots fireballs in other MMOs is a DPS class. Eles in PvE are an AoE control class. Blind, knockdowns, snares, weakness, cracked armor, wards. Mix in some PvE skills for damage (like pain inverter), and an ele is very capable in PvE.

I know this has been quoted three million times before, but anyway:
Straight from the official website. Now, I wonder why people want to play eles to blast shit to bits..

So? Change the website.


There is nothing wrong with the class. Just people's perceptions of what it should be.

Only issue is mesmers do better aoe shutdown and damage at once now, so I'm not sure where you are going here.

No reason to half-ass this, just cap the automatic armor upgrades after lvl 20, replace with a little more HP. It will fix alot more than just eles.

The best way to buff Eles is reduce the ridiculous Armor HM creatures have and increase their current HP by 20-30%. That way eles will do NM damage...just have to do slightly more of it.

that would help warriors, rangers and paragons, and dervishes(perhaps)

Exactly. EVERYONE would be even more playable without having to run PVE spikes or retardo builds like Discord/Sabway.

You don't have to run Discord or Sabway. If you read these forums Discord gets a bunch of hate from hipsters and Sabway is viewed as out of date. Maybe keeping up with skill changes or experimenting more with your current skills could help.

I dont think his point is that he has to run an armor ignoring damage-way, just that he would like to see the damage potential of elemental damage closer to that of armor ignoring damage.

I have no problem putting eles to a great use in PvE HM, play a different build.

Just because you can't pump out AoE 150 damage every second doesn't make em useless.

PVE Conjures adding + damage to spells IMO. I"d also change PVE mirror of ice to add AoE like Keystone, rather than only giving +damage to one target.

+20 would make up for the 30% loss on skills <100. (70.7% from 100 armor with cracked)

+40% or +15% armor penetration on intensity

It wouldn't help DOTs... but whatever, they have EBSOH.

If that were the case, they shouldn't have had AoE damage spells to begin with. Anet tried to make them DDs as well as those other things and failed. Likewise most people who pick an el don't want to do those things initially... they want to blow stuff up.

Even their "right" ways of playing suck compared to the other classes.

Blind support is inferior to necro curses or illusion mesmers.
Wards are inferior to Aegis, shouts, and ST rits.
Snares are not even needed by the other classes.
Weakness is inflicted way easier by necros, same with cracked armor.
KD is done better by PI mesmers and warriors.

^This. Eles can't play for damage, so you should take a support role....pity that everyone will do it better.

And what mean this? That to be at least useful to a party you should run always ER prot. Which is everything an ele can do better/decently.

Almost 100% pll who chose ele to play with as a first character had been ''expectting eles to be an aoe DPS class because the guy who shots fireballs in other MMOs is a DPS class''. So pll who had bought the game and started playing with ele are not a problem. The problem is that the information on ele's was only correct before introduction of HM. Later there should have been done the changes maintaing ele as a really dmg dealers. Unfortunatelly, it was not done. That's it.

PS

I know I can use PVE skills and other char's skills too but the discussion is not on that. Support role is totally different issue.

Most players want class diversity and ANet promised the players in the beginning that Ele would be a DPS powerhouse by inflicting the most damage in a single hit. After actually getting on my ele and playing it for a bit in HM its actually just fine. The problem is skills that ignore armor. If mesmers and necros didnt ignore armor this wouldn't be an issue. I say make all the mesmer skills that ignore armor do chaos damage and make chaos damage reduced by armor. Same goes for the necro skills, have SS do shadow damage with shadow damage being reduced by armor for example. Instead of making Ele,ranger or para do more damage you now have the OP classes dealing less damage and HM gets a little bit more interesting. Seriously why should mesmer and necro skills ignore armor when most of the other classes get cut in half.

Highest damage in a single hit is not DPS. It's spike... hell even in PVP eles were always utility/spike support ... not raw damage.

However, when your non-DOT AOE spells are on 10+ cooldown after recharge+ cast are summed up, this is what causes "DPS" to be crap. Also, the ones that do AOE like Fireball/Liquid Flame don't do much more than the armor ignoring ones (i.e. Ineptitude/Mistrust does more than Rodgort's Invocation...even in Normal mode). If DOTAoEs were any good you'd see more AP Earth bars being run instead of Necros/Mesmers. It's that they can't be run on heroes reliably, cause scatter, and don't do much damage unless you pack EBSoH.

For example, I did the ZM today on my ele with 7 heroes and I did 40% damage to charr warriors, so to match clumsiness' 92, overload's 75, or even Desecrate Enchantments' 60 I'd need to do 150-230 listed damage with Fireball/Ice Spikes/Rust/Liquid Flame, which is outright ridiculous ... In fact, if it was just 80 armor after cracked armor (i.e. 100), I'd need at least 140+ per AoE just to match Wandering eye, which is in a better skill attribute...or 85+ for Desecrate Enchantments' base damage.

I test things regularly on my monk by wanding with my wintergreen wand (high energy set). Even something as simple as a Mantid Nymph (mesmer) only takes 7/10 damage and with the Dervish update, Diggers take 50% too.

The mesmer/necro non-AoE stuff is pretty underwhelming when you have multi-hits from Dervishes doing >20DPS (>40 if you run SoH) on 3x 80Armor targets just using an IAS and no skills. It's just that it's a lot easier to shutdown a melee.

In the beginning.... there was only Prophecies, no HM and no updated enemy AI. So, ANets initial promise was not incorrect as eles were probably the highest damage class.

No. I think after proph was released and before factions, ensign or someone like him ran the numbers and noticed that based on how the numbers work with attack skills, that warriors were better for DPS even back then.

Ensign ran the numbers. See "Why nuking sucks" in Gladiator's arena. Lightning orb hasn't been updated in the many years other than a cracked armor change to the PVE version.

Back in prophecies days PVE warriors were dumb and ran defy pain + dolyak signet and eles ran firestorm /echo meteor shower...because there was no scatter. Warriors put out ~30DPS then if they ran the proper weaponmastery, and the only AoE was Cyclone axe (Hundred blades was like sun and moon slash but with energy cost). Remember, there is no flail. Crude swing was easily interruptible. Strength of honor wasn't as powerful as it is now, Mark of pain didn't have AP, Splinter didn't exist. I remember I ran 0 tactics and spammed Watch Yourself! on my Eviscerate axe warrior (+20 armor with 0 spec). They nerfed Watch Yourself! when P/W Tactics Paragons abused it.

Eles didn't do listed damage even in NM. The other options were just terrible.

Back then Cry of frustration was 15 energy and 20 cooldown and Power drain didn't return as much. E-surge was 10 energy and 20 cooldown. Feast of corruption was 15 energy and 20 cooldown. Desecrate enchantments was on 15 cooldown. Wandering eye/signet of clumsiness/mistrust/unnatural signet didn't exist. Ineptitude/Clumsiness didn't have AoE and they were on higher cooldown (20 for ineptitude, 10 or 12 for clumsiness). Keystone signet was crap because all it did was recharge signets (no symbolic celerity so forget it) and nothing else. Panic just gave -2 energy regen.

Healing prayers was crap more or less and Heal Party on elementalist monks running ether prodigy was the norm.

When Sorrow's Furnace came, the book/gear trick came and Spiteful spirit saw use, due to a scatter update. That was the death of ele damage.