Replacing the Invoke Ele

Ask, and you shall receive ...

The last balance update seriously hurt the original Invoke Ele template; this topic documents attempts to replace it. The basic build was this:

Quote: 16 Air | 9 Command | 10 Energy Storage
Shock Arrow | Lightning Orb | Invoke Lightning | Chain Lightning | Aura of Restoration | Air Attunement | Glyph of Lesser Energy | "Fall Back!" The hallmarks of the original Invoke Ele were:

1. Ability to spec 9 points or more into a second attribute, e.g. Command Shouts.
2. Ability to bring heavy damage on demand to a single target.
3. Ability to output AoE damage as well.

Builds and variants tried so far:

Do nothing; keep original bar - tried this out, the hero runs out of energy. Does not work.

Keep Invoke Lightning, ditch Chain Lightning - tried this out, hero still runs out of energy. He runs out of energy slower, but run out he will. Does not work.

Keep Chain Lightning, ditch Invoke Lightning - tried this out, not only does the hero still run out of energy there aren't many good skills in Air Magic to compensate. Does not work.

Switch primary element to Fire and use Elemental Attunement - feels like the most effective replacement right now. The main build is 16 Fire, 10 Energy Storage, 9 Command @ Immolate + Fireball + Liquid Flame + Rodgort's Invocation + Fire Attunement + Elemental Attunement + Glyph of Lesser Energy + "Fall Back!". It sucks to have to use GoLE with dual attunements but the hero has the tendency to cast Rodgort's without both attunements up, and once that happens he can't dig himself out of the energy hole (I tried Glowing Gaze + Glyph of Elemental Power and he ran out of energy). It's possible this build can be improved but I'm not sure.

The big drawback with this is of course there are plenty of areas where monsters have absurd armour vs. Fire.

Switch primary element to Fire and use Searing Flames - Searing Flames sucks and cannot provide damage on demand.

Switch primary element to Earth - this build never got off development. Asking Earthquake and Dragon's Stomp to replace Invoke Lighting is like asking Koss to gather aggro like EFGJack. Single-target damage isn't spectacular either and mostly relies on projectiles, while DoTAoE isn't damage on demand and requires some balling.

Switch primary element to Water - not enough useful skills in Water to even try. If Shatterstone had 4s cooldown + 1s cast + detonated on death it might be able to carry the entire Water line on its back, but no, it does not.

Use Death Magic - there aren't many good non-minion skills in Death Magic. There's Deathly Swarm, Discord and Putrid Bile; that's all. That does mean there's plenty of room for something else, but also means there's not much in the way of damage. Deathly Swarm is NOT Invoke Lightning; in fact it is very much worse. Putrid Bile isn't very good either, but then it's a non-elite so can't complain. Discord being conditional is a big strike against it as well because it forces me to AP (and even then the AI doesn't cast it on recharge, and it isn't AoE). Other skills like Vile Miasma tend to tempt the AI into casting them instead of Discord, even if the conditions are met.

If all the monsters who heavily resist Fire left bodies, it'd be possible to patch up the Death Magic bar with Animate spells and only use them when the Fire Eles aren't viable, but no, things like Ruby Djinn exist.

Use Icy Veins - if Death Magic and its array of damaging spells does not work, what good is Icy Veins, Signet of Sorrow and Angorodon's Gaze? Especially since the secondary profession is locked to Paragon with considerable spec in Command.

Use Curses - there're a few direct damage Curses spells, but they are all plagued by long recharge. Damage on demand isn't available.

Use Rangers - always an option, with Splinter Weapon they even get a bit of AoE damage, but they aren't really capable of bringing "Fall Back!" since Expertise doesn't work on shouts.

Use Mesmers - only have two Mesmers and both are already occupied; besides they can't use "Fall Back!" well.

****

That's all the Invoke replacements I've tried or thought of in a nutshell. A universal replacement to Invoke does not seem to exist; certainly of the four elements, Air is dead, Fire and Water are heavily resisted in certain areas and Earth doesn't have enough good skills to make a build of (not to mention I think there are monsters that heavily resist Earth, although I can't think of any off the top of my head), which means armour-ignoring damage is going to have to take precedence. If some mixed solution exists, it will have to rely on stuff like Stone Striker and Winter, both of which are terrible + require spec into an otherwise useless attribute line.

If anyone has an idea or (even better) a working replacement, please share.

Master of magic!!!1111 Take a few useful skills from everywhere.

Flawless.

Thought about that. The problem is you can't get good skills from elsewhere. Without Invoke Lightning, Air is left with only Chain Lightning (and Lightning Orb I suppose). Earth and Water are both quite barren. Most your spells are going to come from Fire, and if you're going down that path why not just use Elemental Attunement?

I think your just gonna have to live with the fact there is no replacement for invoke until the next ele update comes through. We will have to wait and see what changes Anet will make.

Water doesnt have enough damage.

The big hitting earth spells have big drawbacks.

Air's loss of Invoke and Chain to unconditional exhaustion hurt the Air Magic line enough to make it almost nonviable for PvE.

Fire is your best candidate but is useless against Titans and Destroyers unless you convert it. IDK why you hate Searing Flames, its incredibly good except against Destroyers which are in one small part of the game. It becomes insanely good if you only use it with GG, heroes will spam it more.

I also tried MoM as well. I found all the spells I wanted to use came with RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing Exhaustion. :/

Dervish?
I havent tried it but it seems many people are using it.
(and ofcourse a monk?)

It's probably safe to disregard me as an idiot when it comes to ele builds but, keeping in mind everything there is either In the Area or Nearby range, what about this.

OglmwwIcCrwLsJPID1Rvop9N2x0CxK

Braces self to feel dumb.

Personally I find running this on a derv to be effective.

OgajowpIrSQXHRWgOXcfYX2CibA

Kinda weird but also very fun if you run it as a human. Heroes cope well enough.

I was going to ask this too.

Only interesting thing i've found so far is replacing invoke with gust (in the old Invoke build) and Searingflames with Double Dragon (in the standard searingflames build, but loosing rogdort too). If you are a physical player, those 2 works quite good...but aren't even close to achieve what old invoke did. Also, if you aren't a meele becomes almost useless.

Armor penetration from Air just isn't that impressive anymore with the new HM changes. Any high damage skill is viable now, and while Air has versatility, conditions are such a waste of time in PVE (exception being clever Fevered/Frag builds which I find fun). Having said that Fire excels because of the higher damage cap and abundance of aoe.

Regarding the fire build, drop Rodgorts and Gole, problem solved. Crap like 127dmg from Rodgort's vs 119dmg from Fireball is trivial, but 25e vs 10e on 7-8 sec recharges is not. As for earth and water, a few semi good elites but not enough normal spells that shine in PVE.

The popular argument that there are a lot more Fire resistant enemies is plain stupid. You wouldn't bring Air spells against Lightning resistant enemies, so why would you do the same with Fire?

The underlying problem is players are lazy forcing the same ele builds all the damn time. Take 5 seconds to load a different build if it means doing 1.5x more damage for the next 25mins.

Bottom line is run Fire through first 75% of campaigns, then remaining 25% of campaign (vs. Destroyers and Titans+) switch to anything else. Geography and quest text are dead giveaways to stop bringing Fire.

These are what I've been using since invoke got mugged and hit with the nerf bat


Build codes as follows

E/ME: OgVDEIysSTA6QgDLgNDID0ChDA
E/P:OgljgwMpZS7Y6QgDLgNDID0ChDA

Sadly not AoE but does pump out some good damage energy is never an issue

My hero is rune with a sup Air on head and minor E-storage on gloves

I'm thinking the build I use can be tweaked a lot more and yup I know there's two sources of cracked armor but that helps alot

Quote: Originally Posted by loopysnoopy

Quote: Originally Posted by Zidane Ortef

Lightning Surge + Shell shock is redundant, you better off bringing something like Epidemic with the E/Me to spread the cracked armor around or another command shout like "Stand Your Ground" etc with the Paragon variant. Yup tried that but vekk seems not to use it when I want lol I found lightningsurge and thunderclap is used moderately wise among the AI the only skill I'd suggest dropping is AoR (Aura of Restoration) and if your going ME second accumulated pain for deep wound or if Para second bring SyG

I don't call it redundant between 2 sources of cracked armor as I found might be me but Lighting Surge is cast on 1 foe but shell shock is cast on another vekk seems to have brains! so I get plenty of foes effected by cracked armor

As I said that build is great for working around some conditions

Another note thunderclap,epidemic,shell shock,shock arrow, then any fillers is quite a great filler to get rid of the AP spammer to prime discord or prime any condition heavey builds

I'm currently just running 1 Water hero and me as Primary Ele.
Vanquishing easy areas.

Water hero runs WAH, Derp freeze, freezing gust, ect depending on the area.
I run master of magic ( in enchant friendly areas) Derp freeze, FB, stoning w/ Intensity.

Wreaking havoc with all the snares, My initial F DERP w/ intensity does 40~80+20~40 in HM to most of a balled group, the water hero maintains the snares.
Monsters 70% of the time try to run from aoe but give up then die. (with 66% slower runing.

But its not universal, and the damage lacks... its no INVOKE for sure.

My eles all run Invoke + Chain, they don't have energy trouble. Sure, Exhaustion gets pretty intense, but in between mobs, the exhaustion should recover enough to be manageable. I have yet to have their energy bars FULLY greyed out, and they seem to always be okay, unless I'm in a consistent fight lasting longer than 2 minutes or so, but I don't know of a single area that I farm in which I would be in that situation

Am I the only person who doesn't find it unreasonable that the best combined AoE + single target damage hero build can't perform at 100% damage output continuously, with no down time? That maybe the fact that heroes run out of energy *eventually* while mowing down mobs is a good thing? That maybe the community should pick between the completely incongruous stances of "PvE is too easy!" and "There should be one all-encompassing 7 hero team that beats all HM areas quickly and efficiently (and anything that can't do that is absolute trash)!"

No? Just me? Ok then...

Quote: Originally Posted by Skyy High

Am I the only person who doesn't find it unreasonable that the best combined AoE + single target damage hero build can't perform at 100% damage output continuously, with no down time? That maybe the fact that heroes run out of energy *eventually* while mowing down mobs is a good thing? That maybe the community should pick between the completely incongruous stances of "PvE is too easy!" and "There should be one all-encompassing 7 hero team that beats all HM areas quickly and efficiently (and anything that can't do that is absolute trash)!"

No? Just me? Ok then... hehehehe yea... double standards are the standard on the internet :P

personnally im interested in a "invoke replacement" cause i get bored of invoke/any build no matter how effective after 10 hours+ of using them, but thats why i keep playing

Quote: Originally Posted by Skyy High

"There should be one all-encompassing 7 hero team that beats all HM areas quickly and efficiently (and anything that can't do that is absolute trash)!" TBH, this was never really the case. No team build has ever been "the" ideal team build for every area in the game. Therefore, i think its silly that people are even attempting to create "the ultimate" team build.

Poor Jeydra doesn't wanna use mercs. ;p Seriously though, if you want big packets of unconditional damage at relatively low recharges with decent energy management it's either wait for updates, get mercs or think new. Possibly meaning "Go Melee", which overall seems to be a good choice right now given the increased HP that came with the reduced armor.

Well, I've been getting quite a bit of success by replacing the Invoke Eles with Clamor Rits. Basic build is:

Clamor of souls
Spirit rift
Splinter weapon
Ancestor's rage
Cruel was daoshen
Ghostly Haste

+ 2 more. (Fall back and whatever, you can even offspec for a heal if you want)

Lamentation is sort of ok, but requires ghostly haste, and for obvious reasons, you need a MM (splinter targets) and something like a SoS in the party.

As for Energy management, I'm addicted to BiP.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra