Is it possible to make 2 sucky skills work?

Well in an attempt albeit probably futile im going to try and make Ether lord usefull along with Ether Prodigy which in itself is a pretty sucky skill. This is sort of a theme build because i like Ether... it makes me feel good .

Class: Elementalist / Mesmer

Assumed items:
+1 to Energy Storage
+2 to Air Magic

Attributes: (cost)
Energy Storage: 11+1 (77)
Air Magic: 12+2 (97)
Inspiration Magic: 6 (21)

Total attribute points used: 195/200


Skills:
1) Ether Prodigy (elite) - (5,1,5) Lose all enchantments. For 22 seconds, you gain energy regeneration of 4. When Ether Prodigy ends, you take 2 damage for each point of energy you have. This spell causes exhaustion. This is an elite skill.
2) Ether Lord - (5,2,20) You lose all energy. For 7 seconds, target foe suffers energy degeneration of 2 and you experience energy regeneration of 2.
3) Blinding Flash - (15,3/4,4) Target enemy is blinded for 10 seconds.
4) Gale - (5,1,5) Knock down target foe for 3 seconds. This spell causes exhaustion. (50% failure chance with Air Magic 4 or less.)
5) Lightning Strike - (5,1,5) Strike target foe for 47 lightning damage. This spell has 25% armor penetration.
6) Lightning Orb - (15,2,5) Lightning Orb flies towards target foe and strikes for 94 lightning damage if it hits. This spell has 25% armor penetration.
7) Lightning Javelin - (10,1,5) Send out a Lightning Javelin that strikes for 48 lightning damage if it hits. If Lightning Javelin strikes an attacking foe, that foe is interrupted. This spell has 25% armor penetration.
8) Chain Lightning - (10,2,20) Target foe and up to two other foes near your target are struck for 94 lightning damage. This spell has 25% armor penetration. This spell causes exhaustion.

As you can see from the skill descriptions Ether prodigy does damage to you for each point of energy you have left when it ends. Also you can see that Ether lord uses up all of your energy when you cast it sooo.... The trick here is designed to make Ether lord/prodigy work together. Ether prodigy lasts 22 seconds so right before it is ending you cast ether lord so you don't get hurt and then imediatly after you cast ether prodigy again. The timer on ether lord is 20 seconds so as soon as you can use ether lord do so it should be timed about right because of aftercast (.75 seconds at the end of each spell before you can do anything).

Anyway i had trouble finding any skills that were really usefull that required mass amounts of energy and had low recharg. Blind was as close as i got so then i decided to throw in some air damage skills and this is what i ended up with.

Edit: Decided to post some math behind this so 4 pips normal + 4 pips ether prodigy = 2.66 energy per second building up for 20 seconds. So you get around 53 energy to mess around with between ether prodigy cycles. The downside is you will have to wait for energy right after Ether lord is used so you will have some downtime but you will be getting 10 pips for 5 seconds. You could also do some fancy trickery with offhand energy items.

Recasting Ether Prodigy cancels it out causing it to do damage but you could always do it when you are near zero energy and take very little damage thus not needing ether lord. Enchantment removal can hurt you but its probably not going to happen even if it did it can only do a max of about 100 dmg. More likely scenario is your going to miss casting ether lord because no enemies are in range and then take damage.

I like the build. apparently you managed to even make 2 sucky skills be effective in battle. as far as I can see the build is ment to annoy the enemy team (correct??).

There is only one thing you might have another look at. all your skills are fast casting and fit nicely into the 20 secs spare room to fire all you got. The thing is that while most skills have nice recharge rate (about 5 secs) Chain lighting has a recharge of 20 secs and besides that it causes exhaustion. I would propose to replace it for instance with:

Conjure Phantasm
For 2-12 seconds, target foe experiences health degeneration of 5.
Hex - 10 energy - 1 cast - 5 recharge

although personally i think the skill doesnt really do a lot of damage it is keeping the monks busy. Nothing more annoying for a monk when 3 or 4 team members are screaming that they need a hex lifted, whilst they were just concentrating on healing.

but its just an idea.

Skills aren't "sucky" in and of themselves. It's just they're suboptimal in given situations or unplayable in circumstances. That's natural. There are a lot of different gameplay types in GW. You have Arena and Tombs and GvG all the maps there and missions and Explorable Areas and quests in PvE, for example. And what's good or bad changes from type to type. You'd find a tanking Warrior would be an awful idea in GvG but would really excel in PvE play, for example And on that Warrior you'd really want a sprint in the EAs or are soloing but it's forgettable in missions if you have good team tactics. Nothing's bad in and of itself (I'm looking at you, Unnatural Signet) it's just that they're of limited use in some situations. Finding the right situation and the right plan and any skill can shine.

And you haven't come up with a bad idea. I've seen people use other sorts of "lose all energy" skills with Ether Prodigy. Purge Signet comes to mind or Holy Wrath, things like that.

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The problem with this 'combo' is that it's self-defeating. What's the point of using a powerful energy management skill, Ether Prodigy, to set up a lose all energy spell? So you cast Ether Prodigy, losing all enchantments and suffering exhaustion in the process, to regenerate a bunch of energy - what do you gain by sacrificing the benefit of the spell, all that energy, just to avoid the third drawback, the miniscule damage you take?

Your other idea, of just spending all the energy you get from Ether Prodigy as fast as possible so that you don't take damage at the end, is much better - maximizing your energy utilization is the best way to deal with the drawbacks of Ether Prodigy.

Granted, that still doesn't make it *good*, especially in light of recent changes to other energy management spells (Ether Renewal, Energy Drain, Offering of Blood), but if you're going to use it this is the best way.

Peace,
-CxE

Suas- yeah, I know I probably shouldn't have made generalizations about these skills. Instead I should have explained why they are bad in a lot of cases ect.. thanks for covering that for me . It would be hard to make Ether prodigy better without it becoming too good *shrug* i think its fine as it is. Its just that there are better options. In the end I was actually quite satisfied with the end product despite my misgivings althought I still think I can make better use of a E/Me than this.

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