Time to fix the ele problem

Exactly! That's the sort of improvement I think the eles need. More and larger AOEs. I think in the utility department, eles are good enough to do something in GvG. Any other situation and we can really see what they're famous for when they pull out these AOE spells.

In fact, some spells don't even really need a range to be AOE. If they had spells more like Chain Lightning (in concept anyways, since I know it technically does have a range) then the ele would have an advantage. Imagine a spell that hits a target, then travels to another target within that target's AOE, then travel to another target, jumping off from its most recent target.

Well, that's sort of the problem too. I just named about all of them. You could add in Bed of Coals, Star Burst, and stretch it to Incendiary Bonds, but that's about it. 6 good skills. Most of the rest are Searing Heat look-alikes with terrible costs, effects, and recharges. (Churning Earth is particularly amusing - apparently somebody at Arenanet forgot exactly how many hits a "nearby" DOT AoE gets against somebody moving faster than normal. Here's a hint: It's between the positive and negative numbers on the number scale and looks a lot like the letter "O")

One thing that's starting to puzzle me, is how nobody at A-net had noticed that eles are currently under-powered. If they did, they hate eles for some unknown reason, and if they don't maybe this thread will be a wake-up call. I mean, someone put a petition for Role-Playing Districts as a sticky. I feel that this thread should get the same treatment.

Major Balence issue V Player whim? balence every time.

I want to play my ele again

/signed for anet to do something

I still enjoy my ele. All I can say is play around with the different elements and try combos of two different attributes. You might even try using wards to help your team mitigate damage. The AoE thing had to be fixed as it was a little unreasonable for even stupid monsters to just stand there watching a firestorm rain down. They were never meant to do sustained damage throughout a battle but they do quite well at spike damage at a critical point in the battle. There is also a skill for each element that adds damage to wand attacks so you can increase wand damage while waiting for you energy or skills to recharge. Energy managment should not be a problem if you know what you are doing.

Flame away

And where is this fabled conjure earth you speak of?

Eles are perfectly usable for utility and spiking. Every proffession has strengths and weaknesses. You don't hear people complaining that their Monk can only wand for 10 dmg. It goes without saying that monks aren't made for that but where exactly did you get the idea Eles have to fit your idea of their purpose? DPS just isn't their forte and no one ever said it was supposed to be.

I know they've got a huge selection of offensive skills and what I'm saying may sound dumb, but I doubt Eles will change drastically enough to satifsy your asumption of what they are supposed to be.

Ele skills are perfect for spiking so you've already got "a class that does high damage very quickly", the only drawback is that it isn't sustainable.

Eles get plenty of use for the purposes I've stated already. If you want sustainable DPS then (and I know this might sound crazy) choose a different profession.

Here's a few suggestions.

- New armor penalties.

Basicly, there's going to be different types of armors.


- Cloth Armor (Usually Casters) (Fire and Earth 10% more damage)
- Metal Armor (Usually Warriors) (Lightning and Cold damage do 20% more damage)


- An AoE Buff.

One reason why AoE is so ineffective is because you can see it. I can usually dodge a Meteor Shower without getting hit by the first one. I'm not saying you should make AoE invisible. >_>

Fire Storm being Effective:

Create a Fire Storm at target foe's location. For 10 seconds, foes adjacent to that location are struck for 7...29 fire damage each second. Every second Fire storm moves randomly to a different location in the area.

Cost: 10 Cast: 2s Recharge: 15s


Point blank spells are pretty...useless. Anyone have an idea to make them effective?

- Defensive spells really need work.

Ward Against melee and Foes are fine, but Grapsing Earth and Magnetic Aura are just terrible.

My changes:

Grasping Earth
For 8...18 seconds, all nearby foes move 50% slower but cannot be knocked down.
Cost: 10e Cast: 1s Recharge: 20s


Here's my last suggestion.

Fire Magic: Each time you cause a foe to be hit by fire, that foe has a 5% chance of burning.

Each Magic: While casting Earth spells, there's a 10% chance of damage being halved.

Air Magic: Air spells have a 5% chace of having an extra +20% penetration.

Water Magic:
New condition called "Freeze" If you are Frozen, you cannot move and spells take 66% longer to cast. Freeze usually lasts 2 seconds.

Water magic spells have a 5% chances of freezing.


Feel free to disagree, but no flames please.

Let me start by saying that I am an ele sypathizer. I love my ele, he was my first character. I agree that there are improvements to be made, but I don't agree with most of your recommendations.
Eles already have a very high amount of Energy. Current energy storage abilites are fine. It is silly to think that an elementalist should never run out of energy. They are more studied therefore they have higher amounts, and you are asking to take out an important aspect of playing any class... Energy management. This is not a simple game of god mode/inifinate ammo. All players need to learn to balance.

Nothing should be overpowered. One thing that I disliked at the beginning but have come to respect greatly is the relative balance of the characters. No character can't be countered nor does it overpower another. No one should ever be able to say "X profession just can't stand up against Y profession" Causing a huge disturbance is the quickest way to get something nerfed. See above for balance.

Don't get hung up on DPS. Elementalist shouldn't really be using their wands. That's not what they are good at. If you are using your wand, there is something wrong usually.

This directly goes against your glass cannon idea. There are already spells to help accomplish this task. Eles make up for their shortcomings by using their skills. As it should be.

In flavor of the character, some spells are more powerful and require more preparation to unleash them. Casting times should appropriate reflect the flavor of the spell.

Exhaustion is good. This is where I agree that Anet needs to make some changes. There is too much exhaustion for no real reason related to the flavor of the spell. Reduce/remove exhaustion on some spells. But really with proper energy management exhaustion shouldn't be that big a deal.

I don't really want to spark up the whole DPS thing as it has been more then thuroughly addressed in the other thread. In the Factions guide it describes eles and states that no other class has higher DPS. Period. Their words, not mine.

Eles should be high dmg dealers, that doesn't mean that all their skills should be spammable with no drawbacks.

They have taken steps to work on different builds for eles to compliment some of the complaints.

Many complain about the touch spells or close proximity spells. They have introduced new armor to help those who choose to play those skills. They have made many skills more powerful (granted not the ones that many would like) AoE still is a problem. It is unreasonable to say that monsters shouldn't flee from AoE spells, as human players would as well. Better AI makes for more thoughtful game play. There are many skills, particularly in the fire line that are all but useless because of the AoE scatter.

AoE should be used for short burst high dmg where they get a good amount of dmg off before the enemy scatters. Long duration spells that require the enemy to be inside for a long duration to achieve at least half potency causing AoE scatter are useless to most eles except in defensive positions. Firestorm and Chaos Storm being the biggest examples in my opinion.

Too many spells in a single attribute line causing exhaustion is also a problem (air and earth). Exhaustion seems in flavor to be related to exerting a large amount of force (energy) for big impact (very high dmg or great effect). Meteor and Meteor shower are great examples of this. High cost, long cast, long recharge and exhaustion. Quick cast, low energy don't fit in with that flavor. Exhaustion should not be used as an inhibitor for overusing a spells. Modifications to casting cost, dmg amount should be.

Wait, are people really taking this post seriously?

Do you really think anet is ever gonna change these things though?
I agree with most of them and have an ele myself and know how underpowered it is. Im just skeptical about these changes coming about because i mean look at beastmastery. THe rangers have been complaining about this for a long time, but there are still no weapons tied to the chain, and no way at all to control your pet in battle.

They are trying very hard to fix these problems, look at mirror of ice, a high damage spike every10 secs, better than RoF IMO.

I seriously like this idea, but to many abusable aspects. ele/mo, +8 regen, thats almost 3 energy a second... hmm somethings wrong here. maybe if for every 4 levels you get one more pip, but thats even stretching it, id say every 6.5 levels (7 and 13) you get one more pip. I know thats now realy solving it, but if used properly should be able to help at least a bit.

* i would like to add;
I am an ele/ran. my first char IS a water/geo/aero/BM as i hate fire magic... dotn enough consequences to the enemies. Its very sad when i see how people think that eles AND BM are underpowered and i dont see how this is true. My pet responds quickly when i change targets and will defend me when im dead (literally doing 20 damage+ to any caster in my aggro bubble like normal). He is also as i like to say, My energy. Ferocious Strike {E} at 12 BM gets you about 60 damage to rangers, 72ish to casters and around 45 to wars while gaining a net of 4 energy. Add some snares and a few BM skills that do extra damage while they are running to u, got an unbeatable snare (ice spikes, maiming strike). I also get energy from ferocious strike, amazingly. Lets see another 2 hit combo, (Vapor Blade, Melandru's Strike) this makes the best out of the foes enchantments by doing an extra 35+ damage to foes if they are enchanted, and a good 99+ spike if they arent. Unbeatable no, but high damage from either situation is good. Lets also see Enraged Lunge, im still trying to find a good combo for that, but my favorite so far (yes i know its fire, but very low fire for that matter) is Enraged Lunge, Tigers Fury, Mark of Rodgort and a good snare.

First of all, i sense a bit of troll sarcasm from the first Post.

But yes, the elementalist are no longer near its description -and has like many other proffesions a limited scope of operations within a random team

first suggestion
I say that the range of attack for the elementalist spells should be increased - to the entire compase visual range. That way elementalist could act once again as artillery, hitting enemies far beyond the aggro scope

currently only rangers standing on a high altitude could do such things on enemies stadning on a low altitude.

second suggestion
attacking ground to make tactical hinders , perhaps targerting/destroying/triggering traps and bloodwells

I say just kill some exhaustion in elites, make energy storage 5 points per, get rid of the AoE pussy effect, and make non-elite energy management skillz. Elementals would be kool too. like...

Summon Fire Elemental [Elite]
Cost:25 Casting Time:2 Recharge Time:10
Spell.Summon a level 20........30 fire elemental. all your non-fire magic skills are disabled for 10....7 seconds. If you are suffering from burning at the time you cast this spell, all foes in the area take 30....90 fire damage and beging burning for 3...9 seconds.Otherwise this spell causes minor exhaustion.

Likewise for earth,air,water and energy storage lol. earth is while you are poisoned, water is while you are crippled,air is while you are bleeding, and energy storage is while u are dazed. don't ask why.lol.

I can't understand how anyone can think Mirror of Ice is good. You negate one spell's damage every 10 seconds and do 90 damage. The recast is too long to provide any real defense and the damage is weak even compared to other Elementalist spells. And, as usual with Elementalist defensive spells, it's target self so even if Arenanet reduced the recharge to 2 tomorrow it still would be a bad elite because the enemy will just attack someone else and come after you later.

lets see, how is this a bad elite, run into a aoe spell and do a 90 spike to the caster, stop necro hexes, stop mesmer interupts... this is the anti caster spell, and it comes back every 10 secs. i like it.

Many of the criticisms are about exhaustion or the high cost of spells. I think some spells that knockdown have too high a cost once you factor in exhaustion, and time knocked down.

My proposed fixes are either:
1. Runes to put in armor or a set of armor that speeds up recovery from exhaustion.
2. Points in energy storage assists reduces time require for recovery from exhaustion.

If we keep exhaustion but link it to energy recovery, we can stop over abuse by classes such as warriors. If we simply reduced energy cost or got rid of the exhaustion altogether it would lead to other classes spamming the spell.

I still cant understand how a warrior-the class that is supposed to tank, but yet, do moderate dmg at the same time, can out damage an ele, the class with no armor and supposedly to be able to "deal the most amount of dmg"-almost two fold to three fold.....this is ridiculous, maybe more than a lv 10 ss nec/me being able to do double the amount of a lv20 ele, wtf Anet???!!!!

Incorrect - you only lose the 5 energy once for hitting multiple targets (so it's 5 for a single target, 10 for 2 or more). I use it fairly often with Gwenyth.

I'll agree, though, that a lot of the new elites seem better suited for a W/E than for a true ele (three PBAoEs and Ride the Lightning).

Incidentally, on the elementals: level 20-30 is just a leetle high, don't you think? I'd suggest scaling it in level similarly to the Flesh Golem, and probably balance the recharge and the lifetime so you can't have it up permanently - say a lifetime of 30-45 seconds and a recharge of 60 - in order to balance with the Necromancer's requirement to have a corpse.

Elementalists already have high energy as well as energy management skills. If you are a good player you will know how to conserve your energy and not spend it all, therefor you will have more then enough.
Elementalists already have quite powerful skills. If you want skills that do 500 damage I would say this would be unbalancing. All professions were meant to be balanced, while eles have high amounts of ranged damage, they also have low amounts of armor. Wars have high armor and damage, but is very limited because of the Melee ranged attacks. Those are the two professions I see alot of arguement over wich is being better.
I have to say this is the first time I've seen anyone complain because they can't kill someone with their wand...
Another part of the Balancing, High damage but low armour.
Another part of the Balancing, High damage but longer cast times. Longer the cast time the more chance of being interupted may seem like a disadvantage but think how easily a war is disabled by blind, weakness, or anti-war spells.
You just love trying to get rid of profession balance don't you? Exhaustion is part of an ele, without it they can continue high amounts of damage with no limit but low energy. Those exhausting skills are most likely ones that cause knock down or are powerfull.
I can see it now...
Elem LFG.
Ele LFG.
Elementalist LFG for mission.
Ele LF Smart G.
Ele spiker needs group.
GLF ANYTHING BESIDES ELEMENTALISTS!!!!shiftone

Elementalists being the Supreme UB3R 1337 Class=Unbalanced and imo boring game. I don't want to see 50 elementalists in one district, I see enough Mo/W.

Yeah...the only thing missing is the high damage.

Since that is missing, it makes their low armor pointless.

Warriors deal the most damage and have the highest armor....so why does an ele have low armor? I dont know either.

Edit: Just figured it out!!! Highest damage = highest armor. Lowest damage = lowest armor!

Edit2: thought about it more...and laughed at how completely true it is. (warriors deal most, assassins and rangers in a close second, all other classes behind)

Useless? Try telling that to my girlfriend when she tanks with her ele. Better than a warrior too, though it does require skill.

For solo farming, elementalists are fine. 55 HP builds, warriors, and elementalists are the three main ways to solo farm, although MMs of course work in zones where there are some easy starter kills to get you rolling. And PBAoE is a big part of most solo farming builds.

Elementalists are more problematic in group play, but as a solo character they work just fine. A standard Ether Renewal build has AL 222, further defense depending on your weapon choice ("when enchanted" shields are getting popular), two bursts per minute of over 550 points self-healing each, and (very roughly) 10 points per second of self-healing in the 23 seconds between bursts. (Obviously, various kinds of disruption can drive down those numbers.) And they can dish out considerable damage -- featuring PBAoE -- killing anything that's not getting healed in under two minutes and usually in under one.

I totally agree. I mean when a group wants a spiker for the group, who do they call? A ranger.....

Any class can use defensive skills. The fact that warriors start with higher base armour means no ele will ever out-tank one. No offense but clicking Armour of Earth is hardly my definition of skill.

Bottom line is that eles cant sustain the damage. Every break in using a skill to potentially compare to warrior damage not using skills causes any total warrior defense from one source to be laughable. See here http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a.../t-113319.html
You are also forgeting interupts, which people largely do not have to bring specifically for elementalist skills, because many of them simply arent dangerous to warrent it. Coincidentally, elementalist skills are also the easiest to interupt out of all professions by percentage of skills and overal time spent casting per skill at the high end. What is funny is how mesmers get armor bonuses while casting, yet they have many of the fastest casting skills on top of their primary attribute further reducing that casting time, yet a bonus like that would seem to make the most sense for elementalists who spend the most time casting.
I hope you are referencing the named elementalist npcs that are level 24 or above or in groups greater than 8. Most of the ele spells dont hit hard enough or deliver a secondary effect worth the casting time/energy cost of the skill or is far too limited in recast time or exhaustion.

Considering shelter exists and has an area of effect that by far truncates anything an ele can sling, the point is rather moot. Even still, if the target of the spell spreads out 3-4 body lengths from his allies, then there is no issue of cross over damage from ele spells. This only takes a half second to do as well.

All of the DOT aoes need to be buffed or have the game mechanics changed with them. You are paying for the aoe in time, cost, recast, and in most instances exhaustion for a marginal gain in the ability to strike more than one target. You would have an argument if elementalist spells functioned in areas like the spirits affect or have text that reads like heal party, where it just auto hits the entire enemy team regardless of distance or positioning, or cast in less than a second catching the opponent off guard. These are the types of things the elementalist has to compete against when facing off against semi intellegent opponents on top of trying to balance casting with staying power. For hard numbers you can go back to the archived link provided above for reference.

That is the assassin's area of expertise actually.

Ask the question of why exhaustion is always 10e regardless of the initial energy cost before this one. Then ask why expertise is a passive skill for rangers, while its an active skill for all other professions and far more limited. Before you go down the path of, "eles get energy storage, so its the same thing" its not. The moment energy storage gives bonus pips of regeneration innately, give a comparable zealous mod upgrade to elementalists, and remove exhaustion from spells completely, then you have an argument.

What gets me is that parties routinely overcome named monster challenges with simple damage neutering techniques such as prot spirit and shelter against un-nerfed elementalist damage, but players are not allowed to weild such power as elementalists that would acutally cause them to be comparable to warrior damage output in most circumstances.

Your post is irrelevant.

It is absolutely necessary to have the warrior shutdown in your build - of the types you mention otherwise warriors will kill you. That eats up energy - attention and skillslots so in effect there is a substantial amount that you pay to not be raged on by warriors.

Sam

I definitely understand that something needs to be offered to make elementalists viable again. However with the bosses now doing double damage, I dont think increasing elemental damage is the answer, We are already being hit for 350-400 points at a time.

My biggest problem with ele spells isn't the exhaustion, cost or even the casting times. It's how anet has defined area of efect. Right now Aoe is centered on you with spells like lava font or where another person or creature is standing at the time the spell is cast. The most powerfull spells an ele has can be completely negated by walking or running away from them. Meteor Shower is the best example i can use for this. The description reads -

Create a meteor shower at target foe's location. For 9 seconds, foes adjacent to that location are struck for 7-91 damage and knocked down every 3 seconds. This spell causes exhaustion. Cost 25 energy.

It really should read -

Create a meteor shower at target foe's location. For 1 second, foes adjacent to that location are struck for 7-91 damage and knocked down. For the other 8 seconds the foes that ran away watch the 25 energy and 5 seconds cast time you wasted smash meteors into the ground every 3 seconds. This spell causes exhaustion.

Anet could leave everything about ele's the same and just change the spells so that the area of effect is centered on the player the spell is cast on and not the location they were in when it was cast. I can deal more damage with 5 flares for the same cost in the time it takes just to cast Meteor Shower without the exhaustion.

What other proffesion has to deal with high cost skills that at best deal only 1/4th of the listed damage with no other side effect on the person it was cast on. Someone is going to respond to this by mentioning mesmer or necro hexes like spitefull spirit or backfire but those are still cheaper and unless you or someone else has a hex remover you are going to take massive damage from them or be completely shut down for the duration of the hex. With most ele spells with the exception of a couple of hexes you can just run away while the ele wastes his time and energy casting these nearly worthless spells.

And i do know what it's like to play an ele my first char is an ele a little over a year old now and he had 1.1 million xp on him before the aoe nerf. i haven't played him as much as i would like because i can do more with my warrior than i ever could even before the nerf with my ele. I can farm in more locations with a warrior and its alot easier to hench with a warrior that it is with a caster in any situation. i have experiance playing every character now and the ele is the most crippled in my opinion with very little for self heals, spotty conditional damage, and even the best armor is conditional on the type of damage you take. And I'm not saying this as a causual weekend player either I have 3 prophecies accounts the first 1 is a collectors eddition 2 of them are linked with my 2 factions accounts and im thinking about buying a factions collectors also. So this is my opinion on the subject coming from someone with 16 char's and several thousnad hours of play time please do somethig to balance the problems with the ele char's.

I'd call it skill when she tanks 10 Grasps of Insanity and 3 or 4 Scythes of Chaos, and some Terrowebs all at once, being the only tank in our group. And at the same time, doing damage to those who surround her.

226 armor is nothing to sneeze at either.

The only real problem with elementalists is Exhaustion. About the only idea I could get was that for every point in storage the Elementalists gains a 3.5% speed recovery from Exhaustion. At 10 energy an elementalist would have 35% speed recovery from Exhaustion. Since he recovers usually 10 energy per 30 seconds. Youd have 1 energy recovered per every 3 seconds. At 35% it would be 1 energy recovered per every 1.95 seconds. Or give the Elementalist a NON ELITE stance in Energy Storage that does this same function except it would go something like this:

Name (Stance) 15E Cast Time 1s Recharge Time 30s
For the duration of 5-15 seconds you recover 1 energy per every 1.95-1.50 seconds from Exhaustion.

The only reason Elementalists dont get Exhaustion removed is because thats the only balance there is to their inmense energy storage compared to every other caster.

(almost all) Ele Elites should not exhaust, not going to think of them all right now. 1 off the top of my head that obviously should (and does) is Ether Prodigy. Whats elite about exhausting yourself to do average damage with a long recharge, anyone?

Quick addition: Eles are currently the most useless char, anything useful on them can be done on a X/E with ease. If I'm interupting, eles are my least concern, I'd rather sit there waiting for a warrior to use shock and interupt that, I can think of 2 ele skills I would stop; Deep Freeze and Blurred Vision and not for the damage (which eles are supposed to deal) but for the hex :S

oh and Zhou Feng, stances don't have cast time :P

Yeah well I wouldn't...you done?

It's more than any warrior can do. In fact, if you're going to be that way, I must confess I'm not all that impressed with warriors.

have you actually done that? I would like to see your ele tank one grasp and one scythe. Fingers of chaos + strips + interrupts = gg ele...

Fingers of Chaos only strips enchants if you are monk secondary (or primary). If you're an ele it interrupts, which can be countered with Mantra of Resolve. Spells that strip enchantments won't work on Obsidian Flesh (and Spellbreaker if your monk is helping with that) because no spells can get through.

Yes, we have done this. It was a 5-man Tombs team with no warriors and we got all the way to the end. Really good money.

hmmm i did not know that =\

Yeah Armour of Earth, Obsidian Flesh, Kinetic Armour. Spam all 3, use EQ and AS and maybe stone daggers or AoR to keep the kinetic going. Inspired build. Sorry I doubted your gf.

Eles can still do more spike damage than any other class. One ele can line up a few Air or Fire spells and time them correctly and deliver a couple hundred damage on his own in just a few seconds. DoT nukes like Searing Heat are still useful for getting mobs to scatter. Let's not forget...Burning is one of GW's ultimate killers, and eles have lots of spells that cause it.

Eles are great as they are and I wouldn't change a thing about them--they just can't compete with MM and SS necros for AoE damage.

Meteor Shower is rather dumb. The first Meteor hits 3 seconds after it being cast, which means that normally no one gets hit at all. Fire Storm could have the damage doubled or something, it's not like anyone's gonna stand in the AoE for more than 3 seconds max.
If the damage of non-DoT Fire Spells is buffed, people could spike alot easier and no one wants that. So adding longer burning duration would mean more damage but no ability to do some insane overpowered spike. Anyone think it's a decent idea?