Time to fix the ele problem

There seem to be a lot of threads complaining about "the ele problem" as I like to call it. I have tried to stand up for eles and I'm sick of it. Instead of complaing about or trying to prove how utterly more UBER your warrior is to my ele, let's think of some sort of solution rather than poking at a piece of dirt with a stick hoping it'll magically turn into gold. (I have got to use that metaphor more often)

By the way, what we're going for here is a class that does high damage very quickly. I want to be able to outdamage warriors, but still be weak to attacks. A glass cannon is a very good metaphor for that, but please, nobody take it too seriously. I don't want some sort of philosopher coming along and saying that a cannon takes a while to load as the ele should be the same. No bullGO RE like that ok? Every class has it's place. All I want is a class that does high damage very quickly. Warriors have the high damage over medium time, slot and rangers are very versatile and can sorta fit anywhere.

Alright I can think of seven ways to improve eles:

1.Energy Storage.
2.Overpowered Spells.
3.Better wand attacks.
4.Better armour.
5.Shorter cast times.
6.Get rid of exhaustion.
7.All of the above.

Energy Storage

Give eles a ridiculous ammount of energy so they can cast spells all day long without getting their energy depleted. This works using the warriors-are-great-because-they-don't-run-out-of-energy school of thinking. Basicly, if the ele never runs out of energy, they never stop casting high damage spells. The one flaw I see with this is that every other thing would like high-energy and will therefore choose ele because of their high energy and just use their secondary more than the actual ele. Or how about that as you get more levels in energy storage you can energy pips as well? Then we could meet the 8 energy pips that are "required" to out damage warriors.

Overpowered Spells
This idea is brilliant in its simplicity. Give elementalists high damage spells for very little cost and no exhaustion. Then elementalists fulfill their role of high damage and get lots of ele-hate which is a good things aparently because it means they are causing a huge disturbence.

Better Wand Attack
All this does is bring them up to warrior level DPSwise. That means that the warrior is not beating them with DPS and therefore the wammos with brains (what a parodoxical phrase) will have to find some other statistic to bend to their will.

Better Armour
Make 'em less squishy. Give 'em more spell time to unleash their fire fury or lightning lashing.

Shorter Cast Times
Just to stop the whole I-can-beat-your-ele-because-my-warrior-has-a-half-second-cast-time-for-everything people. No-one really likes them so let's kill them all with our 2 second cast time meteor shower and our one second cast time rodgort's invocation.

Get rid of Exhaustion
We need to get rid of exhaustion. I have tons of spells that would be fantastic if we were to get rid of exhaustion and take the spell cost down a bit. How the hell do you expect me to keep up high damage if I can't get enough energy for standing up straight? (Which is quite funny, because the classes can't stand up straight whilst fighting).

All of the above
Do I really need an explanation? All of the above basicly means all of the above. Better armour shorter cast times, overpowered skills and better wand attacks. You can get all these things separetly, but not all at once in an ele build. Let's bring eles back from the slag-pile to rule over Guild Wars again. Yea! I say, Yea!

Elementalists already have a huge amount of energy at their disposal. Which is how the Heal Party E/Mo exists. This is something they already have.

Not sure what you mean by this, elementalist spells are pretty decent at this already: Obsidian Flame, Double Dragon, Mind Shock, Mind Burn, Mind Freeze...

Its called a Ranger/Elementalist ups their DPS to a respectable (and them some) level. If you bump their wand speeds, all the other casters would have to get a bump as well. If you are interested in not having enough juice, just purchase a +15, -1 Regen Wand and Offhand, giving them an Extra +30 Energy for the initial spike...

Ranger/Elementalist, Warrior/Elementalist, and Assassin/Elementalist (haven't tried it yet), all do this pretty well. If you are interested in not having enough juice, just purchase a +15, -1 Regen Wand and Offhand, giving them an Extra +30 Energy for the initial spike...

You know there is an entire class that gets Fast Casting as their Primary ability. They do pretty well with Energy Management issues, but just purchase a +15, -1 Regen Wand and Offhand, giving them an Extra +30 Energy for the initial spike...

Fine then. I shall add another small thing that says all of the above. Happy now?

Elementals did a great deal of damage in PvE as nukers before the AoE nerf. I used to farm with my Ele all the time before that... with great success I might add.

My GW manual says the following about eles:

"They can inflict more damage in a single strike than any other profession."

I sympathise with your view because its simply not true. Ever seen a warrior use eviscerate on a mesmer?

I think I'd better poke at this post.

That is true, but that's only half the problem. While they have a huge amount of energy, the spells that actually do a respectable amount of damage cost 15, 20, or 25 energy to use. And those spells don't do as much damage as a Warrior or even a Ranger at times.

Again, concider the cost/recharge time on these skills. Sure, they do a great deal of damage, but at what cost? Is the damage comparable to a Warrior just attacking and not using skills? Most times, the Warrior is dealing a higher DPM without skills than the Ele that unloads.

This is simply wrong. If you take Ranger as your primary, then you lose energy storage. Even with Druid's armor, the Ranger simply won't have enough energy to cast spells the way that an Elementalist can. Thus, defeating the purpose of the build. You say "Just make them R/E!". I say, that just makes them a Ranger, not an Ele.

Again, same thing. At this point, they are no longer an Elementalist, and the purpose is defeated.

It seems to me that you don't quite understand the problem. You say (repeatedly) that they should just get a +15e -1 Regen focus and just use that for the initial spike, and change the primary to something else. My problem with that is the fact that an Ele can do this on their own due to Energy Storage, but they simply don't have the offensive power to keep their high damage up. Once they spend their energy, they're done. And the sad part is, even with 16 in their favored attribute, they only deal damage that's on par with a Warrior, and generally that damage is not even comparable to a Warrior not using skills.

Heal Party E/Mo's have nothing to do with the maximum energy boost of Energy Storage and everything to do with Ether Prodigy.


Obsidian Flame is the only one of those that is any good at all. Mind * do average damage even compared against other Elementalist spells let alone other classes. And oh yeah, they have ridiculous conditionals and Exhaustion on top of it. The #1 thing that bugs me about the Elementalist class is that excepting energy management, their elite spells aren't elite; they're slightly more efficient/faster conditional spells that I have to think hard to even come up with cases where it's better than the non-elite equivalent. Unlike, say, most Mesmer elites, where nobody's going to argue which is better of Energy Tap and Energy Drain or Energy Burn and Energy Surge.

I don't think upping wand damage is the right answer because in a best case you just make them Rangers with a different projectile, but Elementalists do need something useful that happens when they're not casting. For example, I've lately been of the opinion that Elementalists should have increased energy regeneration when not casting, which would allow people to actually execute the "glass cannon" idea that's been frequently implied for Elementalists without spending over a minute sitting there recharging energy afterwards.

Of course, that also requires the spells to actually be doing more damage than a Warrior when you *are* casting. The spell damage pretty generally needs to be increased across the board (not a lot; if Lightning Strike and friends did ~80 and Orb did ~170 it'd be plenty), and the AoE spells simply need to be bigger; there's no excuse for a 25/3/15 spell having "nearby" as a radius; the only reason people put spells like that on their bar is because the other options are even worse. All the DOT spells need to recharge faster, either cost less or do more damage, and replace the "when this spell ends, something that nobody is around for will happen" with secondary effects that are meaningful. The damage elites need to be, well, elite. There needs to be non-elite energy management that's worth a damn. (Why did they add two more elites for that? Did they want to make it look like people take elites other than Ether Prodigy by giving them a couple more options to do the same thing?) For the love of all that's good in the world, they need to stop adding ridiculous target self defensive spells. Nobody used Mist Form so what on earth made them think Mirror of Ice would get played? And finally, "after 3 seconds" is NOT an advantage unless your target is clueless, so stop pricing it like it is.

Whew.

Problem with ele's as I see it:

Long recharge times on spells: Sure that meteor is nice and all, but if you can only cast it once every 30 seconds, why bother?

Necessity of energy management elite: Ele spells are so expensive, yet there are no effective non-elite energy management skills. Filling up half your bar with mesmer skills isn't really a solution, shouldn't you at least have some hope of the class working by itself?

Tiny AoEs: Firestorm sure looks like it sucks when you're hitting at most 2-3 people who can move out of it in a second or so, even when snared.

Low damage: Spells that actually do appreciably damage are few and far between. Most of them just do damage comparable to a tin can with an axe swinging merrily away.

Fix those guys and ele's will be fine. Until then, it's a desperate hunt through my list of skills until I find 8 that work effectively.


My list of craptacular ele skills:

Flare, lava arrows, stone daggers, ice spear, shock arrow - low damage
Breath of fire, firestorm - tiny AoE, high cost, long recharge
Any and all PBAoE except flame burst - long recharges, mediocre damage, and that stupid 1 second thumb up the butt period after casting
The entire line of water skills made to do damage - Vapor blade? For 15 energy I can do 2 flares worth of damage IF the other guy has no enchantments? What the hell Anet?
Unfortunately, I'm depressed now and don't feel like listing more.

Lemme get this straight, you basically want eles to be the most overpowering class in every way shape and form? I thought thw whole point of this game is that every class has its weak and strong points. As far as not enough energy, have you heard of glyphs? and glyphs also help the fact that they have long casting times.

Besides the whole point of the ele is not to spam meteor shaower and rodgorts, its to deal very large amounts of dmg in a sort amount of time.

And yes eviserate may do more dmg to one target but i'd like to see 1 warr hit 3-5 or more targets with one eviserate, so the whole more dmg in a single strike is collective targets for one attack.

As far as armor, they have 60 base AL same as every caster, and thats not a problem if u know how to stay back and if u have good monks.

And the better wand attacks is rediculose, if u want high DPS from no skills get an assassin/warrior/ranger. Anyway eles arent exactly ment to be wanding ppl to death, and even if they want to they have conjour spells

~Duke~

With all of this...an ele might be worth playing...well except for #1. Energy storage is worthless.

Its sad that you can list off this many things wrong with an ele...Too bad you didnt even scratch the surface of the real problems.

And your theoretical smart wamma will still outdamage your ele because his damage ignores armor.



Actually...heal party E/mo exists because of ether prodigy. If that single spell wasnt linked to energy storage, no one would bring an ele.

Erm... you mentioned two of the least crappy ele skills there are. May I ask what skills your highness is using to outdamage those? Also, warriors just got triple chop, which tends to outdamage fireball, making me cry, stomp my feet and jump up and down. Pretty much the only skills worth looking at for what you're talking about are fireball, rodgort's, and the EQ/AS combo.

Better DPS is exactly the problem here. Very, very few ele builds can out DPS a warrior even when using skills, and those builds that can are shutdown faster than a flare spammer runs out of energy (fast).

There are exactly two glyphs that help with energy. One of them is elite and is used as much for the Exhaustion negation as it is for energy, and the other one is OK but is underpowered because it's a no attribute skill.

Which is why people are complaining that they are broken. They don't deal large amounts of damage in *any* amount of time. Pick a time period; 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10, a minute, whatever - a warrior still wins.

I'd like to see you do that with any Elementalist spell in a PvP match. Aside from a random lucky shot once in every couple dozen casts or so, the only case where it happens is when multiple enemy teams are fighting over a dais in HA.

I'm not gonna quote everyone who posted back to me... A large amount of quoting already so I'll readdress. I'm an Elementalist player, enjoy the class so on and so forth... I'm in agreement that Ele's need to be upgunned, I'm just not thinking that any of the methods outlined would be viable, they are too easily duplicated by other class combo's.

Eliminate EXHAUSTION would be my first choice. Beyond that, I'm still working on my own ideas on revamping them. The AoE is here to stay, doubt we'll see it leave, so no point in bringing that back up; but I do think it should be applied to all the Kinda-AoE spells such as the Warrior AoE attacks and SS.

Exhaustion, when applied properly, is one of the few good things about the Elementalist mechanics. Can you imagine what spells like Gale and Obsidian Flame would cost if they didn't cause Exhaustion? The problem is that Arenanet apparently got tired of making spells that use it well and just started slapping it on random spells, especially elites, for no good reason.

have you seen triple chop?

anyway, i dont have a problem with high cast times as long as they hit for extreme damage. I wouldnt mind high cast times in pve at all, but buff the AoE size!!

Thunderstorm 30e 4s 40r
Targets in (double size of "Area") are struck by lightning bolts every 2sec for 16...36s for 38....78 dmg. This spell causes exhaustion.

This seems to be the issue to me. If we agree ele's should be viable damage dealers, they must outdamage warriors over some time period. Short time period is already dominated by rangers, so that would add nothing to the game.

Thus, it seems to make sense that in a perfect world ele's would outdamage warriors over long periods of time. There are two ways to achieve this:

moderate damage, spammable spells -- things like Flame Burst or Fireball. something with a moderate packet size (60-ish) to deny spike, but with enough packets (AoE helps with that) that the total damage output is high and must be dealt with

DoT spells -- these would almost certainly want to be AoE since the only other choice is hex or condition, and that's fine, but the current DoTAoE's are too small and do too little damage

AoE is not a required mechanic, technically, but it helps increase packet number and therefore increase DPS without increasing spike potential. The trick, of course, is that the area must be large enough that you actually do hit more than 1 target. The AoE on stuff like fireball is just bonus freebie, but something like Firestorm better be big.

Long cast-time high-damage spells do NOT accomplish this task, since they would just lead to spike.

Energy Storage should be totally revamped. It should give the elementalist more ability to spam spells, and to me the obvious choice is to do like Expertise: lower the energy cost of spells.

That has got to be one of my biggest gripes with eles. It seems like every elite, or at least 75%+ of them cause Exhaustion. I personally don't think that Elites SHOULD cause exhaustion, except in extreme cases. That brings up another issue, which is...Why is it that EVERY SINGLE (except Elemental Attunement) elite ele energy management spell causes Exhaustion?! It's like a slap in the face. You almost have to bring some sort of energy management elite, because regular spells don't have super strong ones, but....why should your method of gaining energy decrease the amount of energy you can gain? Ether Prodigy makes sense, just simply because it would be a tad bit too powerful otherwise (5 seconds of +6 regen on anyone is potent, so it is good to make that not a viable option). That and...what on EARTH is up with PBAoEs? Why is there that second freeze period? You already have to be in the enemy's face, not a favorable location for a spellcaster. So...why is it you should be basically stunned for a moment after using your PBAoE spell?

On another note, if you use Triple Chop and Cyclone Axe quickly enough in succession, it does trigger AI fleeing, as I recall. Just thought I'd state that.

Getting back to eles (yes, i'm slightly disjointed), AoE size is another issue. That and those oh-so-wonderful AoE spells that do damage (read: alert enemy to use, allowing flee time) and then apply a condition, such as blind, burning, etc. Overall, i think Exhaustion was applyed where it shouldn't be, especially on many elites (they should be ELITE for crying out loud!), and Energy storage doesn't help as much as would be ideal.

The problem, of course, is that you can't just go increasing energy regen pips...eles would be used JUST for that. So...it's a pain figuring out what to do. I do think that all spells with Exhaustion need to criticed to see if they really need that, and to remove it from most elites. Also, AoE spells need a bigger area of effect, especially DoT ones, cast/recharge times need to be re-examined, and PBAoEs should NOT cause you to just stand there with a big fat target sign on you for a second or so.

Relating to Exhaustion, it does serve a similar purpose to "lose all adrenaline" skills of warriors (like Final Thrust, Wild Blow, etc.) One thing to note is that...I can't think of ANY warrior elites that cause a lose of all adrenaline. If applyed to eles, that may make certain elites a tad bit strong (read: ether prodigy), but I think Exhaustion was thrown around a bit...overzealously.

Anyway, congratulations to any who followed that.

Im not sure about lower the cost of spells, but rather.. add numerous other skills in Energy Storage that are not elite that aid sufficantly in mantaining energy.

Heres two I came up with:

Fire and Ice Attunement
Enchantment Spell. For 23.. 45 seconds you are attuned to Fire and Water. You gain 15.. 33% of the Energy cost of the skill each time you use Fire or Water magic.
Energy Cost: 10 Activation Time: 2 Recharge Time: 15

(Also Attunements for Fire/Lightning, Fire/Earth, Water/Lighting, Water/Earth, and Lighting/Earth.)

Elemental Might
Enchantment Spell. For 30 seconds you gain +2 energy regen. This enchantment ends if you cast non elemental spells or after you cast 3.. 12 elemental spells.
Energy Cost: 15 Activation Time: 2 Recharge Time: 45


Hows this for a AoE damage spell?

Fire Pop
Spell. Foes in the area take 6.. 36 damage.
Energy: 10 Cast: 2 Recast: 3

36 damage in the area every 5 seconds should be pretty nasty without being ridiculous.

Hahaha, thats ridiculous(ly underpowered). Unless of course that damage ignores armor (I would assume no, because of the "fire pop", it would deal fire damage which = useless)...in which case its decent. Because in all honesty...6 damage every 5 seconds (factoring in armor XD ) is nothing worth taking.

Please my air ele can chain spells with no AoE and no ehaustion for over 100 pts of damage per hit and still hit the entire crowd, then finish them off by knocking them on their collective butts.

I don't completely agree; I think Elementalists should outdamage everything over a medium period of time (say 30 seconds) and then have to recharge for a reasonable period of time (say 20 seconds). This allows you to have overwhelming pressure for a period of time where you can and should get a few kills, but if the enemy handles it they have some time to work before you can do it again.

Right now, Elementalists do at best Warrior Frenzy damage (and usually closer to Warrior normal damage) over those 30 seconds, and then unless you take Ether Prodigy you're recharging for about 60.

Can we leave the unfounded hyperbole out of this thread please. It has been well demonstrated that elementalists cannot out damage warriors in any scenario that really matters.

Respectfully... how?

Closest way to do what you're saying I can see is by comboing with water - open with a AoE water spell with the slowing effect, hit them with Lightning Touch, then finishing with Whirlwind, spacing out the spells so as not to trigger the AoE panic (possibly finishing with Aftershock if you're willing to go for three elemental lines).

Or is my online sarcasm detector malfunctioning again?

Yeah, my ele can do that without skills! Or a weapon! In fact, my ele just shows up and everyone dies!


Woo eles kill everything instantly! </sarcasm>

maybe knock a second or two of the recharge.
Its right inbetween Energy Surge in AoE and Lava Arrows in damage.
Its a little expensive to spam, but again, with proper energy spells 10 should be spammable for an elementalist using eley spells.

The main reason it is unusable is because its player based, with a 2 second cast time. Thats 3 seconds of doing...well...nothing. You have no chance to survive, make your time.

I suggest 2 seconds cause its a lot of area, like Energy Surge.
The damage is low enough to go under 10% max damage reduction spells. (an eleys bane)
12 seconds of casting, this would potentually out damage a fireball to more targets.
Its an DotAoE that you can put where you want.

.. I thought it was fairly balanced.
If anything was ridiculous it was the name. "Fire Pop"?

Anyways, the energy spells are undisputedly tight. If you cant spam Fire Pop you may as well have a means to spam Deep Freeze, Searing Heat and Rodgrots Invocation without having to catch your breath so much.

The fact a warrior might do more damage then a ele is a myth , kiting , stance , ward, evade spell , hex spell etc etc reduce the damage a warrior can deal.

it completely depend con the situation .

Finally! A constructive thread for imrpovement of Elementalists! Here we go:

Revamped Elementalist 1.0
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New Primary: Meditation (All skills in storage moved to Meditation)
Meditation: For each point in Meditation that an Elementalist possesses, there is a 5% chance that the Elementalist can not be interrupted or knocked down while casting a spell.
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Reduce all spells's costs to reflect the Ele's loss of e-storage. For example, Flare becomes 4, Fireball is 8, Rodgort's = 12, Meteor Shower = 15 (nothing greater). There is no good reason for all spells costing a multiple of 5.
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Reduce spell recharge times slightly so that ele can deal more damage per second. For example, Fireball = 4s, Rodgort's = 8s, Meteor Shower = 20s
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Keep exhaustion as a special limit on spells like Meteor Shower. This will prevent Elementalsists from simply spamming a spell whenever it shows up again and make them consider the wisdom of casting the spell as soon as it recharges or after enough time has passed so that the sacrifice is worth it. Like Obsidian Flame. I think the choice to exhaust or wait is essential to the elementalist, and ought to be retained.
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Out of combat, have exhaustion fade faster to facilitate the team (which is otherwise burdened by the waiting elementalist. The choice aspect of using an exhaustive spell isn't intriguing outside of combat anyway ... it's just annoying.
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Don't raise damage and keep e-management skills.
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Summon Elementals: This is more like a personal request than a necessary revision ... if necromancers can summon the dead and ritualists spirits, why can't elementalists summon elementals? Make them all elite, one for each element.
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That's it. I think the reasons for most of the revisions are obvious. I'll explain in detail if need be, but for now, i need my sleep.

Mind Spells are HORRIBLE......

Ele was my first character and I'm a pyromancer, though I can easily switch between elements (seen the Mirror of Ice elite ? that one can kick serious butt on casters ) As to this thread, yes, ele's get constantly neglected, SS are always favoured out and you know why ? The damn exhaustion meteor and meteor shower have, as for elite I carry with me it's Energy Boon, I love the skill, but I rarely use it, because again exhaustion. I hate to slow my team down because I need to regen (which doesn't happen often, as I'm not one of those nukers who meteor shower every inch of a map -_-) And is it just me or is there no great elite for ele's ? the fire elite are so laughable, stardust really is funny, wow, 91 damage and 5 energy loose for each other foe you hit with it, hmm, no thanks, I'll stay with Inferno, nice 150 damage to all for 10 energy, slow reload though, but then again, with a little luck I get the 20/20 from the Kindlerock and Rago's Wand. The reload time for each is good I think, only the exhaustion annoys me, remove it from meteor and Energy Boon, and leave it on Meteor Shower, that's the best in my opinion.
And then there is the armor -_- I stand it the frontline quite a bit and enemies love to get to me first, so I have the Cantha elite geomancer and Elite Luxon Battlemage. The Battlemage is my favourite, but still gives only 70 armor against physical attacks, which leaves you weaker with the normal pyro/aero/geo and hydro armor. the geomancer is nice, giving me in some situation 80 armor, but still, warriors outclass that so.
Conclusion: git rid of some exhaustion, get a slight armor boost (+10 would be nice) and people will start respect ele again. As for me, I don't care what others say, I just keep playing my ele.

Seen Lyssa's aura? Its a much better elite on anyone...(dont get me wrong, mirror of ice is great....its just very limited by the fact that the spell must deal damage...meaning it cant trigger on hexes, which are a lot more scary than the million versions of flare) Lyssa's aura triggers on all spells and steals energy...fueling your offence/defence. (Okay so I admit, I was using it to fuel a monk...)

Mirror of ice is good, but its slightly limited. Especially by the fact that it only hits 1 spell.

Somehow I have this feeling that they're discussing PVP/GVG and not troll farming...

I've always believed the AoE update is what killed the player Ele. I know, it's here to stay, and it should stay. It should however, be "fixed".
Fixing the update would go a long ways in fixing the player Ele.

"Player Ele" is said, simply because if you've ever watched the AI use AoE spells, and are playing with henchies, the henchies enjoy a group hug within the AoE effect. However, a player Ele casts an AoE and before the second damage number flies up, the AI is fleeing out of the area. This is always good for a laugh if nothing else.

This also opens up a nice AI exploit. Simply cast the least expensive (energy wise) caster centered spell you have and the AI will run away from you choosing a new target most of the time.

How to fix:

Spells that hit AoE should remain in effect on the foes even if they run out of the area. For example, An Ele casts fire storm. Within the AoE damage still applies as normal but a burn (degen) should be applied so even when (the mobs and players) or if (the henchie group hug) the combatants leave the damage area, the spell is not a waste.
Earth, Water and Air should all have some sort of degen or side effect to being hit with the spell.


Does this make the Ele's too powerful? I think it will make them feared a little bit and Ele's should be feared and respected on the field.

The built-in disadvantages to ele's are fine. They're supposed to cast big impressive spells slowly and have energy management as part of their skillbar.

Everyone is making this more complicated than it has to be.

Every ele spell that does damage just needs to do more damage. Maybe 30% or 40% more. They have to be able to out-DPS everything as they were intended to.

Just want to post my idea of an ele.

A HUGE and i seriously mean HUGE dmg dealer with medium casting time and medium recharge.. The ele should be the warriors hardest opponent.. Just my idea of the ele.. I tried to play as nuker but damn.. Not worth it..

I still don't understand how you (Dr. Strangelove) consider 100 pts of damage "low". Stone Daggers on my Air/Earth ele do 50pt each, two daggers, AND they are nearly insta-recharge for 5 energy. So, if nothing else, that's a neat little spammable ~100 pts of damage every however-long-it-takes-to-cast-it. Lightening is usually 25% armor penetration and at 80 or so damage per zap plus 25% penetration, that is also respectable. Obsidian Flame is a sweet little skill and if you're managing your energy even halfway well, the exhaustion it causes is negligible. Even Aftershock or Crystal Wave does nice damage if used properly.

Of course, fire does more noticeable damage (supposedly) and so most eles seems to be pyromancers. And I'll admit, a well-placed Meteor Storm is a joy to behold when annihilating a group of foes. But please don't paint us all with the same brush.

Elementalists are support players. We're the ones who rain the wrath of the elements on the heads of the foe whilst the warriors take the fight to them face to face. Meteor Storm and its ilk should cause exhaustion....it's a helluva spell! Some of the others maybe shouldn't, but there are arguments for and against every one of them.

If you want to be a massive all-in-one godly damage dealer, find a different game. Or better yet, learn how to play your class, whichever class that may be. All classes are capable of dealing a great deal of damage even if it isn't immediately noticeable.

I'm against buffing the ele's spells, as quite frankly, they scare me.

I'll say this though, the ele shouldn't try to compete with the warrior at what the warrior does. He should have his own specialties. One of the things I personally (as a monk) think the ele is best at is causing large damage to multiple foes at once. Monks have a hard time healing that. I think there should be more spells that cause AOE damage in one-shot, like Fireball or Chain Lightning. In fact, I don't think damage over time AOEs are as nerfed as people say they are, if one uses them correctly.

As for PvP, well that's fine. There eles have all sorts of other utilities. They're actually pretty good at spike damage against targets that you cannot physically get to, and with certain spells you can spike an enemy with which you don't have direct line-of-sight.

Though, the ele's spells could use slightly less penalties. I often wonder why the game has spells that cost 15 energy and 25 energy, but never ever 20 energy.

WTF kind of world are you living in? You can destroy an entire crowd with air skills? Air skills have basicly no AoE so chances are after you've killed one person you have to repeat till fade until you get killed.

I've listened to your suggestions and the one thing that seemed like a brilliant idea is just to eliminate exhaustion. No other class had a ridiculous penalty like that and elementalist skills would be brilliantly fine. I have 8 pretty decent fire skills I could be taking, but I don't take them for fear of exhaustion. I'm going to be adding take away exhaustion to the list and also changing energy storage so that it gives more pips of energy and not just more max energy.

Keep up the posting.

You must be using a different Stone Daggers than the rest of us. My Stone Daggers does 2 hits of 29 damage at 16 earth.

It's 140 damage for 15/2/5 for Lightning Orb, which is average at best and really should either be costing 10 or doing more damage. I'm not even going to get into hilariously bad spells like Lightning Hammer.

Obsidian Flame is the best Elementalist spike spell in the game, so no argument there. Aftershock is an OK skill in 4v4 and HA but that's about it. Crystal Wave is overrated - the condition removal is non-trivial, the damage is average (although armor ignoring), and the recharge isn't that good. It's only really useful to rape the idiot warriors that plague random arenas.

Meteor Shower would be completely worth its "most expensive spell in the game" status if it had a huge AoE and actually hit human players. Excepting dais maps, it doesn't.

The AoE's (and by AoE I'm referring to Fireball/Rodgort's Invocation/Flame Burst and not Searing Heat/Firestorm/Eruption) are more than people give them credit for in non-positional gametypes, i.e. arenas and HA, where it's usually pretty easy to hit multiple targets and add up the damage even with "nearby" AoEs. In places like GvG, the spells are generally pretty worthless. It's all a matter of AoE size and how the Elementalist spells don't have enough of it.