Need more balance between element magic and more AOE for air/earth

After playing an elementalist for a while I have noticed some imbalances between the elemental magic. One imbalance is that lightning and Earth are severly lacking in AOE spells in comparison to Fire and Water. There are some AOE spells but most you have to combine with something else to get the AOE effect, etc. Whats funny about that is fire for example you get tons of AOE and you don't have to combine it with nothing at all. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind combining to produce a more powerful effect but many times the ability to do so is not always there (Other players don't have the skilll necessary to combine with or you don't have the slots available necessarily to do it yourself). There needs to be a little more cast and forget AOE spells with these two elemental magics in my opinion to make them more comparible to other two types. I also believe that Fire magic has been guaged slightly more powerful than the other magics which make it an easily abused element. Example: if I can do meteor swarm to knock down opponent groups over and over again as opposed to combining magics to get the same effect using either Earth or Lighting (And wasting an additional slot to combine two skills to get the same effect as one skill from fire magic to do it myself if necessary and still dont' do as much damage as fire) which one do you think I am going to go with.... Fire of course!... I was really hoping there would be more knock down effect in Air or Earth with less headaches to pull off on your own... I dont mind some difference in damage as long as there is balanced effect (Like waters slow effect), but the air definately should of been a little better in attack effect since it doesn't have the protection powers like water/earth. I could keep going with this topic but I think you probably starting to get the point. Balance it out and make Earth/Air more appetizing...

Uh. I don't suppose you realize that Fire is DESIGNED to be AOE, whereas Air is designed to be powerful against a SINGLE TARGET. Earth, of course, is rather lacking in damage--instead designed to be more of a utility line, which it succeeds at beautifully.

Speaking of balance in the elements, I would love to see more earth and water spells available in the lower levels, and also the ability to 'train' in more elements than air/fire in pre. My poor little geomancer would be most appreciative.

If we're talking about balancing the elements, I would like to see skills available much earlier in the game for water/earth. You only train in fire and air in Pre and then you get a few measley skills for earth/water in Post. My hydromancer would be happy if she could get more then three skills at the moment.

Not to mention that the spam skill - Flare, Ice Spear, Stone Daggers, and Lightning Strike - show up at very different points in the game, and have very different power levels. Using Flare as the standard, Ice Spear comes much later and has half the range, Stone Daggers comes much later and is subject to armor reduction twice, and only Lightning Strike has a similar power with 25% armor penetration.

I say give all four spells early in the game, and have quests that let you choose which skills to receive as a reward. If you want fire magic, you are less likely to do spells for Water spells, but if it is a choice between a Water and Fire, then it becomes valuble. Choosing a reward would allow people to experiment with builds early on, rather than playing through the game to get enough skills in order to play a build, then finding out they do not like it.

I always imagined water to have an AoE spell called hurricane. Kinda dissapointed it doesn't.

I agree, more balanced availability early on in the game would be a neat thing with earth, air and water as far as I'm concerned. Since there are so many skills with elementalist, maybe what they should do is give you a choice at least on what elemental type skill you win on a side mission and also have these skills available at the vendor to purchase at locations much earlier in the game for the other elements besides fire. I still think they should pump up AOE cast and forget spells on AIR and Earth. Chain lightning really should effect alot more than two people (Should be all adjacent foes in my opinion just like all AOE spells mostly do). I think you should also be able to get a knockdown effect with air like with thurnderclap without having to combine it with some other silly skill. I mean give me break. I can meteor swarm and knock you down three times in a row and do massive damage with one skill in fire magic but now your telling me I need to combine two skills in air magic to knock down "once", loose an extra skill slot to do it, and on top of that do less overall damage. That just not balanced folks in my book. Its just plain rediculous in comparison. Air magic has the armor penetration so I will give it that and hence forth it does a little less base damage than fire but the flexibility to use in comparison to fire is a flat no winner. I really would like to use Air but it just doesn't compare in the end for effect and damage as fire when it should be on the same playing field in my mind. Now earth is a little different since you have more protection powers but I still wouldn't mind the AOE beefed up a bit... Example- Make Earthquake a continuous area effect for 10 seconds causing either a slow effect of movement after the first knockdown or a tripple knockdown effect every 3 seconds (otherwise I can't justify spending 25 energy on this spell with this effect in comparison to one stupid meteor fire spell that costs me 5 energy to cast and has basically the same effect except does more damage- can you believe it). I think you're startin to get my point. Basically GW developers can take the skills that are already in place for earth and air and just beef them up using the suggestion above or some other variation.

Jarrod...

Uhh...so? Watch me as a RANGER get owned by our own targets. Obsidian flame is a great spell...not AOE, but this actually adds a little imbalance in favour of earth. Has about 2 sec cast, ignores armour completely (making my +30 ele resistance useless) and does about 120 or so damage for most lvl 20s. Earth is for heavily armoured targets, fire is for softer more grouped targets. Lightning is just well...i dunno. And water, utility mainly.

Though, technically, earth should have more AOE considering the earth is all around them.

Mainly the AOE side of Air and Earth is severly lacking but I do agree there are some good one person hitters on these two elements (don't get me wrong). However, I don't think its asking to much to beef up the existing AOE spells a tad to do a little more (e.g. Like boosting the coverage of chain lighting to a normal AOE coverage and boosting the effect of earthquake for a longer duration). Eathquake could be a 3 second duration knockdown, contuous knockdown effect for 9 seconds, etc.. Or add to these some new skills but they probably could play with existings ones to keep the balance # of skills the same.

If you give other elements better AoE spells, why would you use fire? Everyone would use earth to get the protections and the AoE! The elements are balanced, they each have an area that they excell in. Earth has great protections and a few devasting attacks like obsidian flame and crystal wave, but they are somewhat restricted in either range or exhaustion. Air has the best individual target spiking skills. Allowing you to chain multiple spells for devasting spikes. But its easier to protect against these than Obsidian flame, because they are easier and cheaper to do. Water has maelstrom for AoE anti casting, AOE slow downs, and other effects. Its not about Damage, it about effect.

So relish the differences between the elements and pick the ones that offer the skills you need for your buld, and quit trying to make tham all vanilla clones of each other.

Remember in reality each line only has a few damage dealing skills anyway.

Earth: You have obsidian flame, maybe you can run EQ+AS (in PvE.)

Air: Mind shock, Orb, and Strike

Fire: Well fire kind of sucks, you have Fireball and Mind Burn

Water: Really this is pure ultility, if you want pure damage you are using something else.

Even if you bumped a couple of existing AOE spells up like the ones I mentioned for example for earth and air (maybe just pick one from each group thats already there as an AOE to boost), Fire still would have the most massive AOE selection and repeated AOE damage hands done becuase its just the way it is- it wouldn't matter (its the way the element is designed as opposed to Earth and Air). But it would really be nice if there was at least one AOE skill out of the bunch on earth/air that did have a decent, robust AOE effect and damage (not quite as nice as some of the major fire ones) but good second runner up at least with out alot of headaches to pull off. And because there aren't a bunch of AOE spells in either Air or Earth already you can't slam them together for massive AOE damage repeatedly like you can fire (That still will belong only to fire element). So even with this slilght modification, I don't think this is making everything totally vanilla as you said. It just makes the magic a litte more appetizing to some who wish to specialize in these elements but don't wont to totally loose all potential entirely for AOE as an elementalist but only some of the AOE potential in order to gain other effects such as protection from earth or armor penetration from lighthing.

Jarrod.

Well...according to the CGW article about Factions, we'll be seeing spells that will make people want to go dual elements, ones that may add damage to a target if they are under a hex from say water magic. Stuff like that...

This may boost the differences between magics.

Hex under water magic=lightning touch i think. Does extra damage if they're under a water hex...water is conductive...

My gripe isn't really about what they do or do not do; it's the fact that you get virtually no earth spells early on in the game, and a whole gambit of fire spells. That is what I would like to see balanced, the availability.

as Harmony said, the need to increase the amount of spells for both water and earth in the earlier parts of the game which makes it hard to build effective builds of them. This is why neither are seen as very powerful, because it takes so long to gather the needed spells. This is why most people are pryomancers. Easier to make a build with what you have.

Mhmmm...otherwise i would be making a hammer w/e. It's stupid that only 1 type of class is encouraged early on. Axe warriors have a delay, hammer, even bigger, sword straight up. Monks-healing early, prot- a little later, smiting-sucks pretty much till you're at yak's or icetooth.

I agree.
The game got so much easier after I got me ele run to droknar's forge, hiked up to warcamp with henchies, and capped water trident. Armor aside, water is actually quite lacking until the shiverpeaks, but at least you get its attunement early (with about one skill for it to back up).