Evaluation of new skills

I dunno man, with the popularity (or atleast strong effect) of obsidian spikers in tombs *cough*MTV*cough* I could see teams atleast wanting a character to carry this...

Though I don't anticipate changes for the following skills too quickly, I think we'll see some major, major changes when people start really using Recall, Death's Charge, Aura of Displacement, Mark of Instability, and Entangling Asp.

I'm not going to go into the exact specifics why Recall, Death's Charge, and AoD will be getting a nerf, but suffice to say, it'll probably have something to do with GvG, heh.

I could see people wreaking major havoc with Mark of Instability, as well. MoI-->Black Mantis Thrust-->Jungle Strike-->Twisting Fangs-->Falling Spider-->Horns of the Ox. Just a fast example.

If you really wanted to get brutal with the above combo, insert Entangling Asp in-between Black Mantis Thrust and Jungle Strike. It would probably go something like this:

Cripple with Black Mantis Thrust, then KD and Poison with Entangling Asp, inflict bonus damage with Jungle Strike, Deep Wound and Bleeding from Twisting Fangs (and another KD if they've gotten up by then), damage bonus and Poison again from Falling Spider, then finally if they aren't dead yet and get back up, Horns of the Ox for a final KD.

Scary stuff.

Images of Remorse was a pretty nasty little addition to my anti-Warrior/Ranger/Assassin Mesmer, and for the cost and recharge, I'd say it's pretty damn good.

Unsteady Ground helped my room mate tank 2 warriors while the rest of his team waxed the casters. They came back just in time to see the lone Ele standing there with a couple of corpses at its feet.

Shockwave was a hallarious near-instant cast AoE. I fell in love with this when I finished off 3 out of 4 of the opposing team in 3/4 of a second. Also confused some people when you ninja-raided their face with Death's Charge, Shockwave, Shock, Aftershock. Aftercast was as bad as aftershock, though.

Eqinox + Arcane Languor could cause total havoc to certian casters in large battles where they might not notice the hex right away.

Rising Bile if used en-masse on warriors was halarious if you could live for the 30 seconds the spell takes to run its course.

Overload was a nice little bonus for all those people who liked casting through Backfire.

Lyssa's Aura made the Necros hate Mesmers even more.

Brambles was tons of fun on a KD earth Ele.

That's all I can think of for now. If anything else comes to mind, I'll update.

Something we agree upon, and yeah I thought the same thing in order...
'OMG total ele ownage spirit' - 'Well really tho who would bother with that elite'

Necros - omg the love - reminds me of how EQ treated Necros as well doing everything...
Eles - omg the hate - 2 elite exhausting energy bits, other skills other classes can do better without exhaust and or using an elite... just plain bleah

Also yeah through 're-balancing' and very lackluster Factions offering I'm left thinking the same thing.
I see other posters mentioning some other tricks and they are there. I just dont see them lasting in real PvP encounters, nor having nearly as effective tools my necro or warrior have, nor other classes.

I don't think Archer's Signet was all that great. With you're Expertise high enough to get 5/6 attacks for free, you shouldn't have problems with energy. To me it might not be worth a skill slot, let alone an elite.

I don't see how anyone can like bitter chill. Even if you satisfy the condition _every_ time it's hardly better than a flare or a stone daggers. If you don't satisfy the condition it has a 10 second recharge, which is laughably bad. Make it 2s and we'll talk.

I wasn't here for much of the event but still I got to try out a few skills and see a few I wanted.



Beastmasters no longer have to sacrifice attruibutes to heal themsleves after this so you can go 16 Mark and 15 Best and shoot arrows and claw with your new crab and you don't need to worry about healing. It has a crappy recharge thou.



Who doesn't like this skill. Well the guy fighting the flesh golem . An added point as you can see the Golem maxs lvl at 12 Death Magic so Ri/N can use it well.



Thank God. Sword now has some better elites then HB.




Funny the first time heard of Greater Conflagration I wondered about the regular version.

You use it with AotL and minions. It's for initial damage. Much like Deathly Swarm. I still like DS better despite the high cast speed. The real winners in the Death Magic damage line tho seem to be Discord and Rising Bile. Sadly, I didn't get to try either but these are two skills I look forward to. Death Magic is too indirect in its damage. Glad to see some non-corpse dependent viable damage dealers. It's a nice improvement of the attribute.

Quivering Blade is kind of strange... I mean, despite its low cost, it seems hard to "accommodate." But the other one is decent.

*cough* plague touch *cough*

Now that's just being cruel right there...

You noticed how there is many new ways to daze and blind...

It's still pointless. Even with AotL it'll let you get enemies down to at most 200 health or so. So you've wasted a skill slot on a skill that can't even kill anything efficiently by itself and requires AoTL? Why not just stick with DS?

Discord and rising bile are great skills. But I maintain that Bitter Chill is trash.

Arcane Langour:
Very confusing skill if you arent looking at it right.

Lets say you have an 8 in FC. That's 3 seconds of Arcane being active. Now if you think about this spell in terms of a hex, then yeah its gonna seem like crap.

Energy Cost: 10
Casting Time: 2 seconds (If you have no points in Fast Casting, which would be weird)
Recharge: 15 seconds.

So what we really have here is a spell that is Fast Cast under a second.

Now think about it in that term.

Enemy Ele is Casting Meteor Shower. You fast cast Arcane Langour. Now while they are casting Meteor AL pops and they recieve Exhaustion for Meteor. Think of it as like an Interupt Style spell. Used while someone is casting, not prior to it.

When you use it that way, it becomes evil.

Or... you can borrow Equinox from a ranger

No, that is not what you have. Even 16 FC doesn't get you under a second.

BFD. So you add a bit of exhaustion to someone's bar every 17 seconds, provided you actually manage to catch them while casting. This is worth an elite?

It's a 1s cast even with max fast casting. It still has a 15 sec recharge. It's still crap.

oh yeah, really crappy in say.. an energy denial build....

And how many mesmer skills have 15 second recharges..?

Compared to Esurge? Absolutely.

Psychic Distraction

10e 1/4 2r

Spell. All of your other skills are disabled for 8 seconds. Interrupt target foe if that foe was using a skill that skill is disabled for 12 seconds.

Its can interrupt any action, recharges in 2 seconds, and disables any skill. Everything on your bar is a skill. I loved using it hope it doesn't change.

New monk skills = awesome, the end.

I quite liked playing around with boon sig over the weekend - it worked for me in TA, but whether I'd choose it over oob or recall in other match types, well... i don't think so, but I don't know, it's a very different form of energy management in that it's something you have to keep doing over and over again - i imagine it would be very nice in enchant heavy builds, and I'd like it a lot more if the healing it provided was comparable to that of signet of devotion, but maybe then it would be too good :\

And that's about the only elite I tried, go me - I liked the looks of expel hexes actually, and am glad that there are more hex removal options.

Some of the warrior skills were weird - shove was strange, but I can see uses for it, some of the mesmer ones were nice - very fast recharging interrupts are nice

Actually, if the hex applies Exhaustion at the same time the caster would usually get it, it's at the *start* of the spell, not at the end, so this elite is even more useless.

Wow...your right. Man, that is pretty worthless.

If the spell behaved like I thought it did, it'd be viable. But not now.

It's like an elite diversion meets interrupt meets blackout. I like the idea the more I think about, and the more feedback I see from people who have used it during the FPE. Wonderful, seems like a whole new viable build in here.

As for Arcane Languor... it's a sad addition to the mesmer skill set. I'm not even remotely interested in trying it out. I can tell you I'd take Fevered Dreams over this 100 times, even before FD was buffed... And that's pretty bad... I think that when considering additions to the primary atts, esp. since it's primary atts, they should've put a bit more thought into it. On the flip side, I was considering trying out Stolen Speed. I liked the concept/progression of the skill.

I must point out that in-game. Clumsi will trigger on mid swing and interupt an attack. This is best demonstrated with Longbow rangers, if you hit clumsi on mid flight Clumsi will trigger on arrow impact preventing the damage/dealing its damage. Though this may be a bug, who knows.

Now my math is not wrong, I rounded up clumsi to a 100, its a nice round number. Now what I was trying to show you, which you must have missed, is the skills abilities to have significant affects at one moment, aka spike. Hell perhaps you have this idea for PvE but even then IoR's overtime effect and inability to spike make it inferior to a single spike of clumsi. Remember why nuking sucked? Well this isn't all that different, you are giving very conditional damage and a weak/short degen. Sure there may be some stupid mbo with out a monk here or there, but if there is a monk IoR is rendered, well useless. One orison and all of that is gone, and you can't spike that little final HP of a target unless they are so dead that it won't matter. Look at clumsi, sure its not a degen skill but I don't see Orison coming in and countering that 100 HP spike at the foes HP in the end of the battle.

Also why are you comparing the damage of the degen in this? It is so slow and short that I doubt its even a viable choice... not to mention that you are looking at the skill wrong. Sure IF they stand there for 9 seconds they will take 100 damage... but the way you seem to use it is well, 1/2 a second duration? Oh wow thats ALOT of degen there... alot. What 2 HP? So you dealt 52 damage, congrats! If it just sits there... well you deal 50 slow over time damage. There is NO hundred here, so your math is wrong. Perhaps you fight foes who time to hit at the 8th second? So lets correct your math. It should really say:

Clumsiness = 100 damage vs 2xIoR = 50 + 50 (5 second apart damage) or 100 constant degen damage. Can you see how inferior it is now? Hell I will go so far as to say its EQUAL, even though, as I have explained it cannot and never will be able to spike.

Images of Remorse, at level 16, chews up 100 health through unconditional health degeneration. On top of that it deals 55 additional damage to anyone who happened to be attacking when the hex lands.

In other words the skill is ridiculously good and I expect it to be a staple Illusion skill if it isn't changed before retail.

Peace,
-CxE

QFT. Like I said, Theos, we have a failure to communicate. The degen is UNCONDITIONAL, they don't need to be attacking to get the degen, they get it ANYWAY. Why I told you in my 1st response to you it has more uses than Clumsi, because you can degen just about anything, no problems... It's like a shorter duration 5 nrg Conjure Phantasm that, ON TOP OF IT, does spike damage if foe is attacking.

I loved heal as one as a R/W

Images of Remorse, from what I could tell, didn't act like empathy, which may've been an earlier source of confusion. Ensign got it right as usual.

I like auspicious blow, finally some energy management for hammer warriors. Still, the weakness part of it... I think Anet's trying hard not to buff staggering blow, which is utter crap (not even 5/17/21 progression on weakness? wtf?) and we'll see devastating hammer used a lot more now.

Psychic Distraction (E)

All of your other skills are disabled for 8 seconds. If target foe is using a skill, that skill is interrupted and disabled for 5-11 seconds. This is an elite skill.
Energy Cost: 10
Activation Time: 1/4th of a Second.
Recharge Time: 2 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Domination Magic. Increases duration.
Skill Type: Spell.


2 second recharge interrupt that will lock down skills

ops already listed this one......just like it too much....lol

I wish there was a more meaningful effect associated with hammers. Weakness is really worthless for what warriors should be targetting and just promotes a war vs war random arena mentality for the whole line. I don't mind things like counter blow, which can punish casters if you catch them wanding at least.. but it seems like they really solidified the line as anti-warrior with more skills that cause or need weakness.

I think the condition should just be replaced by bleeding.. and justify it by saying it's internal bleeding since it's a blunt weapon. Still a crappy condition, but at least it's less crappy against targets warriors would actually be attacking.

Help me understand ANET guys,
is ANET trying to nerf eles more? or just trying to emphasize the fact that eles are not to be used? i mean they nerfed eles even further. Happen to have done an excellent job too.
Congratz ANET, your doing an awesome job in continiously nerfing the ele class. Gave us searing heat like spells, and gave others even better ele killer spells. Call me a whiner or what ever, but I seems to be right while drawing this conclusion.
I would specially like to thank Anet for:
1) Thanks for the lame elites. who wants PBAoE elite for fire? Double dragon sucked.
2) More damage over time ( baby searing heat and searing heat like spells )
3) for better and faster ways to loose enchantments,
4) And specially, gain more exhaustion while doing ridiculously long cast time spells with exhaustion already involved.
Regardz

Totally agree with Xploiter

Elementalists are already kind of gimped. All you see are them being used for their secondary purposes, wards, energy storage->heal party and so on. Hardly ever see anyone actually attack meaningfully with elementalist spells.

IIRC elementalists were meant to be the most powerful offensive class, no? I think ALL the elemental attack spells need a buff, right now they can't even begin to compare to a warrior in terms of damage, and the 60 armor means they're far less tough.

Is it just me or does anyone else think the sword warrior is somewhat revived now?

They should remove exhaustion from DD and lower recharge to 20.

Don't underestimate the spell though. It is very powerful. With 2 ele/a they can spike any target at any time.

I never said they needed to be attacking to get the degen, I was actually under the impression the skill was like clumsi meets conjure and that it degens while it is on but disappears when an attack hits. My wording was perfectly fine and I did not actually disagree with its unconditionality I was simply under a misguided impression of the skill.

As much as I value Ensign's views and opinions I have to wonder how viable that 55 damage will be. At 10 fast cast thats going to be near impossible to land on a warrior, useless on a caster, and only really of any use on a ranger. Perhaps my timing sucks? But two seconds with even 10 fast cast will be hard to nail mid-swing on a Warrior, especially a frenzied one, but that is beside the point.

Now that I have actually understood the skill, my prevous skill listing was clearly flawed, I can see potency in the degen, not the conditional damage. I'd say it was a great cover hex, but there are better ones. So its a degen skill with a small plus if by some chance you land it in that split second.

I will not disagree that it is spammable, and inreality potent through that respect, but to me this seems like a lowered version of Conjure Phantasm. Inform me if I have yet again miss interpreted skills, I must truly work on my english skills.

Well, every one is just a caster kill now any way. i hope anet doesnt somehow find a way for an ele to kill another ele while helping other professions. Forgot to say, remain bad at killing other professions effectively with some sensible buffed skills.

Your right, but why a fire ele has to get close to foes now in order to use an elite with an armour as weak as ours? DD sure is a fire skill, and if i recall correctly, our actual armour skills are earth related skills, would a fire mage spend attributes in earth skill just to have enough armour to tank and then use DD to do a major damage?
OR
are we just keeping an elite for "Incase a poor warrior or assasin" gets close behind our asses and start hitting us? mind you, skill can easily be interupted while a meele foe is hitting with all he or she got to kill. If you meant Ele/Assasin just so we can tele back away from foes, well i do not see a point of me changing my secondary just to use an elite properly.

i noticed our skills are more PBAoe type skills now. not much available in new skills for ranged damage beside couple of "baby searing" ( love the name. Description of baby searing. A spell, which damages over time like searing heat does and has about the same affects ) spells.

Regardz

I think, the decision to make PBAoEs the "new" thing for Factions is mainly due to the fact (and I know that a lot of people might not like this) that ranged Ele skills would become too powerful if buffed. I think Ele skills aren't bad... not bad at all... It's more a matter of how things fit together... I personally don't play Ele much but I have fought more than a few skilled Eles and I know Eles can be very painful. However, there seems to be a lack of synergy. Even though different attributes can combine effectively, they don't necessarily "flow" together. But this said, I'd rather keep it to actual new skill discussion, and save the Ele discussion for a different thread.

No, it's really easy to get that damage to trigger. It doesn't matter if they're mid swing, about to swing, just finished swinging.. if they're attacking something it's a constant thing. It's as simple as they're attacking.. and their target is in range (and I believe this a new change, where people aren't considered attacking or casting if you're in the process of getting in range of your target to do so).. the damage will trigger. Frenzy just doubles the damage, doesn't make it at all harder to land. The damage should be harder to trigger on warriors now if they're being kited since that new change, but again.. this is a super efficient spell.

Conjure is 15 secs for 10 energy, and this is 10 secs for 5 energy.. so it's already more efficient than conjure without this conditional damage.. when it does trigger, it does more than conjure. The only downside is that conjure lasts 50% longer, but has the same 5 sec recharge. So you're not going to be able to keep this on as many targets at once as you are with conjure.. but I agree that it's a staple illusion skill now. I used it for the majority of the weekend and found the conditional damage triggered often and I used it in conjuction w/ conjure.

I also like the new ethereal burden duplicate. If you'd otherwise only be using inspiration for energy management, this allows you to go strictly illusion and you can use ethereal and it's duplicate as your only source of energy management. With 40% faster recharge items, these two skills give you a large amount of energy, saving you the points in inspiration, and providing a pretty consistent snare.

I think eles aoe will be signicantly better now with assassin secondaries. The faster pbaoe spells should be buffed considerably by going assassin, although I still think these pbaoe's over time are still really bad.. even the monsters think so now.

One spell I really liked was Vapor Blade, for Elementalists. At 16 Water, this does a nice 127 damage - with the downside that Vapor Blade only deals half damage to enchanted targets.

Shatterstone was also a fun elite to use - a high damage water spell (around 120ish at 16 water split into two parts, with no exhaustion) which makes a great combo with Vapor Blade.

Another spell which looks like fun to use and experiment with is Mirror of Ice, although I didn't get to play around with it during the preview event.

Unfortunately I found many, many utterly useless new Elementalist Skills, which is pretty saddening for me. =/

Stuff like Lightning Hammer (deals the same damage as Lightning Orb, except it hits instantly, costs 25 energy and has a 15 second recharge if I recall correctly), Shock Arrows (low damage projectile with a 1 second recharge.. o.0), Second Wind and Energy Boon is just horrible.

I really hope these skills (and others) are balanced by the time Factions comes around, as I play an Elementalist almost exclusively and being given the "shaft" in regards to skills is annoying. -_-

~ Formina

Hello my friend, just for the sake that this post may not belong to this thread also, my apologies.
At this point, eles have so called "powerfull" skills which seems that they make eles painful others, is an overstatement. i am being honest, been an ele since i have started to play this game, and know way more than a regular elemental does about his/her character in almost, 3 different elements. My claim can be proved with other threads, used to argue for eles in other threads. At this point, can be confirmed with other threads also, every one else has been given skills, and a nice number of those skills are just to kill eles alone. Check out couple of elites, dupes, and what not for mesmers. Increasing our exhaustion while we are casting, couple of spirits, and mind you, close range is usualy never a friendly moment for elementals unless geomancer armour is up. Eles used to be one of the most devastating class, then the hammer of nerf fell over this profession, and ended up with leaving eles as possibily the most unwanted class for pvp, and other mostly farmed areas ( beside fow ) I can easily mention the new skills just to make it up for the Topic of this thread which we had no need for, and they are just a waste as claimed by most eles who tried them, including my self. The post right above also states the similar facts and feelings about the new skills by an Ele/Mes character. Long story short, we have been nerfed enough, and adding couple of buffed skills won't really make us overpowered, they will just bring our values to some balance.
Just out of curiosity, if our ele skills are considered too painful, why does an Spiteful spirit with 15 or 10 ( don't remmeber exactly number ) mana, does a shadow damage of 37, continously for 21 seconds, when attributes in curses are 16 as stated, and a fireball, stated at 117 damage at level 16, does a damage of 32? doesn't seem to be very painful now, does it? If the answer is that this happens to be an elite, let me know of a fire skill in elites which does a damage that high, and does it over the number of foes adjacent over time and *doesn't* scatter the foes. This just gave me an idea for a new thread, i may create one, thanks in advance for this idea. Keep an eye on the threads, the new one might appear any time soon.

Regardz

Both of those spells are terrible. Lightning Orb is strictly better than Vapour Blade, which is saying something because Lightning Orb isn't good either. The implied conditional of Lightning Orb's projectile is more likely to work than Vapour Blade's enchantment one. Shatterstone is even more terrible - if you want to waste your elite on the bad "after 3 seconds" mechanic, take Lightning Surge - at least it knocks the enemy down. If they're going to split the damage in two parts, they should take advantage of that to make it do much more overall. Or they could stick a slowdown in with the 3 seconds duration, so it also helps out your team's Warriors a little.

The reason much of the new damage spells (and the few good ones) for Elementalists are PBAoE is because Arenanet is terrified of making the Elementalist a spiking machine, and you can't spike with PBAoE's because there's too much delay getting to and using them on your target, even with teleports (plus the possibility of missing running targets when you get there). Basically, they're turning the Elementalist into a Warrior because they apparently can't figure out how to make good ranged damage spells that can't be used for spike.

i see healing light becoming the standard heal elite in HA, replacing woh

it gives a very nice unconditional heal and then the 3 energy return makes this too good to pass up. Even if you dont have a bonder, taint, or any other blanket enchants i still think this skill is worth taking with just aegis, seed, prot spirit, and channeled monks.