Ether Mastery?

I've long been considering the usefullness of Energy Storage as a primary attribute, and I think I'll finally say something on the matter.

In the thread Why Nuking Sucks, Ensign had many good points about the comparable effectiveness of warriors and elementalists in regards to damage output. In particular, the following line got me thinking:
One of the underlying reasons why warriors currently make for a better offense is that a warrior doesn't need to use skills to still be effective while an elementalist does. However, constantly firing out skills will completely drain the elementalists energy and they'll have nothing to fuel the next wave of damage, while a warrior constantly swinging his weapon is actually building up the fuel for his next wave of damage.

So in order for elementalists and warriors to be more on par with one another as far as damage is concerned elementalists need a way of building up energy by constantly casting spells. At one point in time, Ether Renewal worked (a little too) brilliantly at this, but caused problems at the same time. It encouraged an elementalist to use non-elementalist spells and thus we were overrun with E/Mo smiters.

Other elementalist energy management elites attempt to make it alright for elementalists to constantly cast spells, but they don't even come close to rewarding elementalists for constantly casting their elemental spells the way a warrior is rewarded for constantly swinging away. Furthermore, the elementalist primary attribute Energy Storage is aweful for easing this problem. It provides a larger pool of energy, but one that is very quickly drained (and thus rendered useless) if an ele attempts to output the kind of damage a warrior can.

The question becomes, what could be done to put elementalists more on par with warriors damage-wise without creating potential abuse with other classes' spells?

I see a couple of possibilities, though they too might cause unforseen problems. Afterall, I'm just one person and ANet has a team working at this stuff daily.

The first possibility would be to slash the cool downs of the attunement spells. While their durations are wonderful, they are extremely fragile in that they are very easily stripped. A stripped attunement will take forever to recharge and be put back-up, and to devote faster recharging enchantments (ie: monk enchants) solely for the purpose of cover consumes resources that would be unneccessary for a warrior and again leaves a gap of effectiveness between ele and warrior. If attunements could be more easily replaced, they might help alleviate the elementalist's fragile state of energy management.

The other possibility would be to rework Energy Storage so that it increased not only maximum energy but energy regen as well. The problem would be limiting the energy regen such that it wouldn't be abuseable with the cheap spells of other classes. However, ANet's already solved that problem with the ranger. Ranger Expertise increases both maximum energy and energy regeneration yet is limited to non-spells. In a similar manner, Energy Storage could be reworked so that it operated like a ranger's Expertise but with elemental spells instead of skills (though it would probably require a name change to make sense). Rather than "For each rank in Energy Storage, your maximum energy increases by 3" it would become something like "For each rank in Ether Mastery, the cost of your elemental spells is reduced by 4%."

This would benefit the very high cost elementalist spells greatly, as a % reduction in cost would benefit them the most. Additionally, the attunement spells give back energy based on the original cost of a spell and thus the very highest cost spells could actually give back the elementalist energy. For once, there would be a benefit to using high cost spells, instead of the high-cost spells being simply a bar for other classes attempting to play ele. This would also justify the current recharge times and fragile state of the attunement spells.



I'm sure there are downsides to these ideas that I'm simply not seeing right now. Whether or not you think these particular ideas are good ones, I'd really like to get some discussion going on this topic. For too long have elementalists been portrayed as the might nuker without actually having the numbers to back them up.

Wouldn't the cheap spammable spells give back just as much energy(assuming rounding is done with plenty of decimals), and faster?
I think this is an excellent suggestion anyway. Desperately needed too. Perhaps the attunement spells should be modded to be a bit like Ether Renewal, in that you get a short burst of energy gaining when using the spells, but you can't keep them up indefinitely without Glyph of Renewal or the like.

Ah, you're right about it affecting them the same. My bad on that bit.

I think this is a really good idea actually. How about, "for each rank of energy storage, your max energy is increased by 3 and all elementalist spells cost 2% less to cast".

A 4% decrease is basically a clone of expertise and is IMO a bit too much when considering the elementalists 4 pips of regen and excellent energy management. Consider that a 2% decrease means that at rank 10 your spells become free under twin attunements. This means you gain energy as normal when under attunements, and your big energy pool becomes a reserve in case they get removed.

To be honest, I have no idea at what percent it would be nicely balanced with everything else, only that something like this is worth giving a thought. I do think you've got a good point though, in that the percentage reduction should be smaller. I hadn't crunched the numbers to see just where it would fit with the attunements, as I was trying to get my idea down before it flitted off to where ever all my other trains of thought disappeared to.

If they were getting a reduction to spell cost, would the full 3 energy per rank be too much? With reduced spell costs, any increase to your max energy is going to be powerfully more potent, afterall.

Well the thing is an increase in energy pool is not particularly useful over longer battles, so the specific number isn't terribly important. Even if it were 5E/sec it wouldn't be overpowered because all ES does is provide a buffer against exhaustion and the ability to frontload your damage.

My thought is that elementalists should have enough energy to spam unaided for half the length of their attunement recharge period (30 seconds).

Assuming a (very) conservative 3E/sec burn rate and a 20% reduction in spell cost this equates to 72 energy at rank 10, which is 3E/rank. So the 3E/rank sounds about right.

I don't think that you could properly judge what to do with a primary attribute or energy engine until the elementalist has skills that don't suck to power with it. Obviously the engines are good because you see people powering good skills from other professions with them all the time (most popularly, Heal Party). Good players use good energy engines to power good spells, they rarely start using bad spells just because they have an energy engine.

The problem with elementalists, is that most of their skills are bad. If their skills weren't bad, people would use them.

Peace,
-CxE

people should just start to except the characters the way it is, eles are powerfull enuf.

Part of the reason the elementalist skills are bad is because they're overcosted. If A.net isn't going to fix this on an individual basis then hacking something up with energy storage is the next best thing IMO.

I don't think the elementalist damage lines are THAT bad if you could reliably spam them. Fire needs buffs to to the AoEs of some of its spells and maybe a cast time or recharge decrease or two, air needs a two second chain and better elites, but huge changes aren't necessary.

Thank you for that chunk of erudition.

i dont see why people like the attunements so much.

double attuns block two of your seven (+res sig normally) slots, just to make you able to cast your (quote) "bad" skills one tor two times more.

they are easily stripped too...

IMO the power of attuns should not be increased, but the ability of the ele to mange his casting changed.

to come up with another idea:
for each rank of energy storage, your max energy is increased by 3,
and you gain 1/2 pip of energy regen while casting.

(meteor shower would give back/additionally regen 10 energy, earth armour 2, at energy storage 12)

Not necessarily commenting just on this response, but THINK ABOUT PVP. A good coordinated mass-nuking team is already hard enough to heal/fight against, and imagine if they had enough energy to wipe out 6 of your 8 guys before they start to run low on energy. With the energy as it is, I've on on teams where we can take out all of their healers (and a caster or two) before we have to temporarily pull back for regen. With a reduction in spell cost, HoH will end up being dominated by 8 e/mo groups.

LOL! "Coordinated mass nuking" doesn't do jack shit unless your team is retarded and balls up. We've been over the damage numbers. Elementalist damage is simply not scary.

And in case you haven't been listening, this whole thread has been about PvP.

I can be a me\e with 50 energy, casting 25 energy skills like i had loads more energy than i should. ele attune+the attunement of the element you are using, and its almost unlimited energy...people are always looking for double echo nukers, but double attunement + arcane echo is good enough.

The problem with double attunements is that they are very fragile. You have to devote enchantments to keeping them constantly covered, or they will get removed. Their recharge is simply too long to do otherwise. Even with cover enchantments, one rend can cripple you for quite some time. Compared to Ether Prodigy, I'm really not certain that Elemental Attunement is worth your elite slot right now. I've never been the most competitive of players, though, so I could be wrong.

Also, thanks for the insight Ensign. I had always had the impression that the rediculous costs of elementalist spells are supposed to act as a bar so that other caster classes couldn't cast elementalist spells as effectively as elementalists. If that was indeed the motivation, then the problem with playing an ele is that all the means they have to deal with their high-cost spells benefit other classes' reasonably priced spells even more. I was trying to fix the problem from the aspect of making the ele's ability to deal with their pricey stuff not benefit other classes' non-pricey stuff, but increasing the ele's damage to be worth the cost of their skills sounds like a less complicated solution.

I just wonder if its reasonable to expect ANet to ever give us an output from those spells to match their costs, epecially the ones that have exhaustion on top of those already insane costs, or if they think that elementalist is already behaving exactly as it should.

I really doubt that ANet will ever change the way the elementalist Primary attribute functions, as it has the potential to change how so many things within the game (that are currently working just fine) interact. I thought the idea was worth mentioning, nonetheless.

Thats a fine idea, but it will be a cold day in hell before anet ever changes anything in this game besides the cast cost, cast time, cooldown, and damage of spells/skills.

Forget any suggestions for new skills, forget any changes to primary attributes, forget new class concept suggestions, forget anything except modifing the before mentioned parameters of spells/skills.

The first thing that anet needs to do is to either decrease ele spells cost to be applicable to the effect of the spell when compared to a normal energy pool (aka without energy storage). OR change the effects of the spell to match the energy cost when compared to a normal energy pool.

I personaly am in favor of the second option... the first option will basicaly make eles spell casting warriors. The second option will make eles the nukers they are supposed to be.

Consider meteor shower, 25 energy cost, causes exhaustion, 1 MINUTE COOLDOWN, 5 SECOND CAST TIME, damage and knockdown comes in 3 second intervals over a 9 second period (easy to get out of), area of effect is addjacent, Damage per wave ~100, damage/knockdown takes place a moment after the animation start of the skill, making it not immpossible to run out from beneath before you even get hit, impossible to hit a running enemy with it.

Is it so unreasonable for this skill to do 300 damage per wave? I think that if you stand in this skill for its entire durration you should die, even if your a warrior (unless you get healed or have protective spirit on or something). In a 30 minute guild match if you cast this skill as often as possible (assuming it doesnt get interrupted) without other skills supporting it, you will cast it a woping total of 30 times. Less actually, your not always in a position to cast.

If this is not anets desire for the elementalist and they want a spell casting warrior then I would support option 1, either way, I support a change of some kind.

I don't know what A.net is thinking actually. I for one would MUCH prefer a thorough rebalancing of ele skills rather than screwing around with energy storage. However changing e-storage is the easiest way to fix the problem.

So far A.net has shown little willingness to address this issue. Sure they've buffed the elementalist in every update, but often the buffs are meaningless in the overall scheme of things. Just look at the changes fire recieved in the last update.

My last hope for this class lies in the Factions release. So far A.net may have held off on major changes so as not to shake things up too much, but with all the new content in factions this is inevitable so they might as well take a serious look at the elementalist and what their role on the battlefield is.

Or, who knows? Maybe they think the status quo is acceptable. It'd be nice to get an answer from them, but I'm not holding my breath.