Constructive Elementalist Ideas

I agree with many others taht have already said a universal effect is not necessary. Just fix the spells that REALLY suck. My example: Have Firestorm and Meteor Shower actually follow the target for the duration (increase recast on FS to balance it). Give the PBAoE spells a bit more area coverage. And give some wand preparations like the rangers have so eles can do something between major spells.

Having Firestorm and Meteor Shower follow the target is ridiculous.

I think the best you could do with those is more damage per second, or larger AoE.

The main problem I see with eles is the fact that because they have a large energy pool...spells are overpriced and have exahstion added in...

Meteor shower is a good example...Bad damage, 3 kds (Most people move before the first...the other people move right after it.) and a rather small AoE. 25 energy (Most expencive skill....on this crap) and exhastion (WTF?...SERIOUSLY)

I would consider using that skill if it was ~15 energy or 25 without exhastion.

You know, I think I like Therlun's suggestion about buffing glyphs. Glyphs were advertised as the unique thing that eles have that no other class has, yet they haven't really done very much with them. I mean, there are some good glyphs, don't get me wrong, but they could be much more effective, perhaps even to the point that you don't even need to make changes to the ele's spells.

For one thing, a glyph should act similarly to Soul Twisting, in that it never goes away until you use it or enter a new zone. You can prep Soul Twisting minutes before a fight and it will still be there ready to take effect.

Secondly there ought to be more glyphs with a wide range of modifications on your spells from negating exhaustion to adding a condition side effect to whatever. And more of them should be non-elite.

Thirdly, perhaps reduce their use time to about half a second.

Why, they could actually make the ele an undisputably awesome class by just fiddling around with glyphs.

I can imagine a Glyph-Caster style like Rune magic, where different Runes/Glyphs influence how your magic will REALLY work in the end.

You could have several glyphs with you to adjust your spells to your needs.

Adding glyphs that work with relative values would be a good step to avoid making them overpowered. So instead of an Elite-Instant recharge glyph, you get one that halves the recharge.

You know what I think would be useful?

Have a nonlinked (and preferably nonelite, although it would need to be carefully balanced with current skills that give energy at the cost of exhaustion) skill that costs 15 or 25 energy and wipes ten points of exhaustion (or five points exhaustion for 10 or 15 energy, or something like that). That way, exhaustion becomes a kind of deferred energy cost (making the total cost of a Meteor Shower equivalent to 40-65 energy if the exhaustion is then wiped by this skill, for instance) rather than something that potentially leaves you waiting for several minutes to recover.

I would dearly love to see a creative and wide-ranging fix for Elem damage. (and the MM nerf shows ANet is both willing and able to introduce new mechanics into the game to fix balance issues).

However, here's a quick-and-dirty suggestion I'd like to see right away. Any comments on specifics that it would break?

For all elem damage spells:

- Any spell costing more than 10 energy gets their energy cost lowered by 1 class. (ie. 25->15, 15->10)

- All aoes (not pbaoes though?) have their AoE radius's increased by one class. (adjacent -> nearby, etc.)

- Make PBAoEs have the standard aftercast again.

(optional) I dont think any damage spell in the game should have a recharge longer than 20seconds or so. Balance aside, it's JUST NOT FUN.


THEN, after these changes they can adjust individual spells and fiddle around the edges like they do now. I don't think the above changes would make Elems overall too overpowered.

I dont really have a problem with the suggestion in general, but when you consider glyph of energy and lesser, it kinda breaks the idea. They should be more usable and they really shouldnt be so penalized in time for using them as well. Its been a year now and they added 1 glyph and changed none of the mechanics, so i dunno if anything is gonna happen with them.

In my head i really like the idea of eles, but rits just seem like what a ele should have been minus the healing of course. This is mostly by effect versus cast time, with the different options for support or offense. Eles by comparison are rather shallow and get used for ether prodigy. Its kinda sad really.

I don't understand what elementalist offensive skill you could possibly think is good if you don't like Fireball. I don't understand how it doesn't have enough punch to spike with even though people often spike with skills that deal less damage. I don't see how it's ineffective as a damage spell because of a two second cast and seven second recharge. Does every offensive spell have to be a 1/5 to be any good in your book? From my experience, Fireball is a reasonable, though not spectacular, investment of time and energy if it hits one target, and becomes very good when it hits two.

What exactly are you looking at that compares so favorably?


Agreed entirely. When you look at the different costs of a skill, most of them are spendy in some resources but attractive in others. Most skills, for their effect, are expensive on two resources but attractive on one, meaning they're either cheap for the effect, fast to cast, or recharge quickly. Good skills are attractive on multiple fronts but have one resource that is spendy. The very best skills are attractive on all fronts. What hammers elementalist skills more than anything is that they are unattractive on all fronts. If you have to spend an energy and time cost that isn't really worth the effect, plus it's on a long recharge, what do you expect people to do?


The biggest problem glyphs have is their cast times. You're already looking at a slowish profession that will miss windows of opportunity on casting times alone, and tacking nearly two seconds onto a spell's casting time isn't something you can afford to do much of the time. You can do it when you're able to prepare your casts several seconds in advance, ala spiking, but otherwise the cast time makes them unplayable.

I agree that they should be made more like Soul Twisting, but in my mind that doesn't mean the duration, that means the usage time. If you can just hit a Glyph and have it work on your next spell, no cast time, even the Glyphs with marginal effects become more attractive.

I don't think you can use this to balance the ele as a profession, though, because none of the glyphs have an associated attribute. That makes it better to just glyph a good spell from another profession rather than a bad elementalist spell, and you haven't done much other than further increase the popularity of the elementalist secondary.


Well you get one attribute line that does a lot of stuff besides DD for offense. Of course that line's offense consists of a one second cast spike skill for 126, a lightning strike for 84, and another strike for 53 that gives you 3 energy instead of it costing you anything. In fairness you have to be within an aggro bubble of a spirit to use them, and you're not going to pressure anyone with that. But they're significantly better than what you're going to get in the air line for the most part, and that's kinda sad.

Peace,
-CxE

I guess after considering Elementist armor being the weakest in general, it would make a little sense if they had a body armor with an additional energy regen and 60 armor with nothing else, all other classes have armor with added energy, but elementist doesn't have nor need this, so having armor with some energy regen would be reasonable I guess.

As for other Classes primaries, Soul Reaping is increadibly effective once people start dying, but unless people die it is useless, I didn't suggest that Soul Reaping have extra effects, I suggested that skills be made for Soul Reaping and more skills for Fast Casting, giving those classes some added incentive to power up and use those attributes, Elementist has 5 attributes, and even he has more primary skills than Necromancer and Mesmer, who have 4 attributes. The primary point of adding more to other classes is balanced improvement to elementist. Anet has decided elementist is balanced, we are debating on ways to improve elementist. If elementist is concretely balanced and giving him any improvements would unbalance him, then it is better to improve elementist and improve other classes as well, which is why I brang up ideas to improve other classes as well, suggesting an improvement to several classes and not just elementist.

Adding a couple of seconds of blind or burning to every elemental attack based on attribute is totaly broken, anyone who doesn't agree with that automaticly dispels their opinion, because it is whether you agree or not. Getting a free 3 or 4 seconds of burn on Flare because you have max fire attribute just doubled the net damage it does, half in projectile damage and half in degen, this is a totaly unbalanced addition. Also Blind is not something you give to every earth spell, Blinding flash cost 15 energy just to blind someone for a maximum of 10 seconds, and your suggesting that Stone Dagger throws 3 or 4 seconds of blind continously on top of the damage it does for 5 energy, and with aftershock, you can blind all enemies adjacent to you every 8 seconds, the whole idea of added status effects based on attribute points is flagrantly unbalanced.

The whole point of this thread is to consider reasonable elementist improvements which would be balanced, not make mindless suggestions which would over power elementist even if it wasn't balanced with other classes. If you cannot respect the limitations and restrictions of balance in the game then you might as well scrap this thread, because it is the same as the last elementist thread with a less agressive title.

Nah, nah, just roll with it for a second. Have a bit of imagination. What can they do with Glyphs?

First of all, I agree the casting time on glyphs is one of the biggest reasons not to use them. Really they should be just like Soul Twisting in every way.

As for their use, you can have element-centric glyphs. "Your next elemental spell does double damage to spirits." "Your next water hex lasts 10...50% longer." "Your next offensive spell that causes exhaustion costs no energy." "Your next offensive fire spell does cold damage instead." Who says glyphs have to apply to any spell? They don't have to trigger on the next spell. They can trigger on the next qualifying spell.

Once you open that up, you have all sorts of crazy possibilities for eles that not only make them very useful, but also allow you combo almost like an assassin or a warrior, making them even more fun to play.

Well, its tough to create pressure damage with any elementalist spell as it is. The fact a rit has to be near any spirit doesnt really change much by comparison. Even the incindary bonds look alike spirit rift seems alot more attractive than a few other choices in the elementalist lines.

Its not just that the lines have depth, but many of them also posess useful and cheap utility at the same time. I dont see any elementalist skills building off of wards the way ritualists build off of spirits or held items.
IF any kind of change should be made, it should be made class specific and related to the attribute levels. Just giving it to the armor is meaningless. However, should a change like this occur, alterations to ether prodigy would be in order as well. The thing is, compared to other attributes (especially expertise), energy storage is very inferior. Its more than just skills, its what the attribute does passivly as well. You can only bring so many skills at a time, so ever bit of tuning passivly makes worlds of a difference. I mean seriously, imagine if rangers were forced to use archer signet to be reasonably efficient with their bow attacks. This is the situation that elementalists face.

Maybe if they start rewarding the ele for having the primary attribute energy storage instead of penalizing them, it could start to have meaningful changes. At the same time i wouldnt mind individual skill changes either, but id hate to see them suddenly become more useful for a mesmer (or insert new ch3 profession or rit etc) than the ele.

I'm not so confident in Anets balancing skills anymore, some of these skills are just worthless. Like DD.

how about(since it seems to be a energy problem)that when the ele is hit by the element it gains x energy?
(like soul reaping)
so when a fire mage,with 16 fire,gets hit by a fire ball or fire damage they gain half that attribute in enegy(8).
same with all the other elements.

fixed............

I think that you are overpowering them a bit there. having a fire ele like mine hit by any fire source suck 8 energy from every fire skill used against them is just too much (I hope you don't mean wand damage too or it would be totally off the hook). Imagine getting hit by a flare: you get almost enough energy to cast a fireball back! Don't get me wrong i love eles above all other classes but you have to live and let live. I think that since the armor gives protection against elements (like pyro from fire) it should also have condition/hex-reducing stats:

Pyromancer armor: Burning on you causes -6 instead of -7 energy degen and lasts 1 second less.

Hydromancer armor: Water Hexes on you last 1-2 seconds less.

Geomancer armor: Weakness on you is reduced by 1-2 seconds.

Aeromancer Armor: Blind on you lasts 1-2 seconds less.

Would have put 'reduces crippled' on the hydromancer but no ele skill causes crippling. (at least not from prophecies)

About you energy-absorbing idea though, if balanced it would make a lot of sense. Why not make the armor give the ele 10% of the energy used to cast the spell? I mean getting hit by a flare would not give anything but a fireball gives 1 energy. (This and the armor stuff above is true only if the ele is using a full armor set of the same type like full pyro, hydro, etc. and pyro only absorbs fire attacks and so on)

I also think that there should be a new staff mod for the eles which gives a chance to avoid exhaustion. I'm gonna put this mod idea in the ideas forum unless it's already there.

Edit: I made the thread about the exhaustion-avoiding thing and you can see it here

it will be useless on many case and overpowerd when you facing a fire ele...

Indeed. Do that, and every elementalist would feel the need to carry four, possibly even five (to have one for when there's no elemental damage around) sets of armour. From a practical standpoint, that's your two bags filled already.

And, besides, that's already a Mesmer trick .

My personal suggestions for fire magic based spells: (first: 33% reduced recharge of ALL spells)

[Note: all with 12 to fire magic, not 16!]

(Rodgort's Invocation) 40-130 basic dmg

(Incindiary Bonds) 2-6 seconds burning

(Double Dragon) no exhaustion

(Fire Breath) 8-48 dmg per second

(Fire Ball) 20-120 dmg

(Fire Attunement) stance instead of enchantment

(Flare) 30-70 dmg

(Immolate) 2-6 seconds burning

(Fire Storm) double sized area of effect

(Conjure Flame) 5-20

(Flame Burst) 20-133

(Mind Burn) 10 mana, no exhaustion, 2-8 seconds burning

(Smoldering Ambers) 10 mana, 20-65 basic damage

(Inferno) 40-150 dmg

(Bed of Coals) 4-8 seconds burning

(Lava Font) 7-42 dmg per second

(Lava Arrows) 10-35 dmg

(Meteor) 10 mana, no exhaustion, 40-150 dmg, 2 seconds casting time

(Meteor Shower) no exhaustion, 40-150 dmg per hit, 3 seconds casting time

(Phoenix) 10 mana

(Searing Heat) 7-42 dmg per second

(Star Burst) 10 mana, 40-150 dmg per hit

(Teinai's Heat) 7-42 dmg per second

(Mark of Rodgort) 15 mana

This is the best idea I've heard in a very long time. Making spells buffable like a warrior or ranger can do with their attacks is the natural thing to do. In fact there should be as many glyphs as spells.

It would also be kinda neat if you could have kind of like a holographic tatoo for each glyph that you're using, and of *course* make them stackable. This may mean nerfing some of the existing glyphs, but not having them stackable is about as lame as not being able to use an enchant with a prep.



Also some better spells like this wouldn't hurt, would they?

Balefire: Target takes xx-xxx amount of damage. Target is teleported to their previous location x-x seconds ago.



Damage would be shadow type. In case none of you know the reference, what I mean by the teleporting is this. Say a warrior comes charging at your team. If you use balefire, he'll take damage and end up at the back of the map again, or wherever he was, potentially exposing a vulnerability in the enemy's battle formation.

wow...no i dont think that last part would work unless that time thing was only like 5 secs ago or something close to that...but other then that sure sounds good