Back to fire once again...

I guess it's time I explained myself (and helped out those others who agree with me). I've mensioned several times on these forums how using anything other than fire puts you at a disadvantage as an elementalist(edit: from the beginning, the opposite becomes true as you progress). This is true. Now, before you click reply and tell me otherwise, remember we are talking about primary elementalists here. I am also not saying that the elementalist is unbalanced. What I am saying, is that the powerful, plentiful, efficent fire skills are much more effective, much less situational, and will bring you much more success when playing an elementalist (and by success I mean kills). Let's look at some numbers:

Flare: 16-40 fire damage if it hits, cost=5, cast=1, charge=0
LStrike: 5-41 lightning damage+25%armor pen, cost=5, cast=1, charge=5
ISpear: 10-46 cold damage if it hits (half range), cost=5, cast=1, charge=0
StoneD: 2x(3-20 earth damage), cost=5, cast=1, charge=0

Flare gives the most damage, period. At least two flares can be cast in the time of one lightning strike, making LS -25%AL next to useless as it still won't do enough damage, and flare can be cast at any range, so you don't have to get in close and risk a quick death, like you would with Ice Spear. At half the range, however, Ice Spear takes over for the most damage, but losing half the distance between you and your target is a high price to pay when your a caster. This comes back to Lightning Strike which is only truely effective against heavily armored foes, the likes of which you will want the least amount of contact with as possible. Stone daggers can match flare, and they do take over for max damage when up against moving foes as you only need one of the stone daggers to hit for damage. So here you have three skills that can beat flare, by a little bit, when your given the right situation. This alone makes them useful...but as useful? Not really. Here, fire wins.

Let's try Point Blank Area of Effect, or PBAOE. Air has whirlwind...and, well, whirlwind. Oh wait, we said area didn't we? Whirlwind doesn't have much 'area of effect' so don't bother. Lets see you kill people in melee using whirlwind with it's wimpy 15-51 cold damage and laggy recharge time of 20 seconds. "But it has knockdown!" you say. Not worth it. Only attacking foes that are directly next to you get knocked down. You don't want to be in that situation if your a caster. And 'maybe' interrupting them every twenty seconds isn't going to save you. You won't last 20 seconds whirlwinding them to death.
Let's try water. Frozen burst! Wards! ...hrmm...you won't kill people with wards. Frozen Burst? That sounds cool. A cost of 15 energy? Must be decent. 20-68 cold damage and foes are slowed for 5-10 seconds?!? 30 recharge? THIRTY RECHARGE!! Nobody cares about 68 damage every 30 seconds. That slowing might help though. Might help you run away from that which you wish to do, and not really help your situation at all. Ok, it has some uses, but you can't kill anything with it.
Earth must have something. Crystal wave, after shock, grasping earth, and some more wards! What's this? More than ONE pbaoe damage spell? Rock on! Earth has a whopping two skills that cause pbaoe damage. Aftershock is hard to use...but feel free to hook it up with that wonderful whirlwind we talking about earlier. Crystal wave is nice, and its a little larger than melee too. Could help out. Ignores armor and resistance, 82 damage. Some real potential there. It only costs 15en, and takes 20 seconds to recharge. Wow. Sure makes me want to invest points into earth for ONE skill.
Now, let's go back to fire. We've got lava font, flame burst, inferno and phoenix. All damage dealing. Each doing nearly 100 damage. That's. Two of them have recharge times below five. Time to spam. Might as well make two of them only 10en too so you can spam and spam and spam. I think fire takes the pbaoe battle too.

Ranged aoe? Don't even bother. Fire has fire storm, meteor, meteor shower, rodgorts invocation, searing heat, incendiary bonds, fire ball.....water has a couple, but only one that will really hurt your foe. Earth has two or three at gianormous costs. Air has an incredible three, of which only one actually does damage, and it just happens to cause exhaustion. Fire hits it once again.

So what are the other elements good for? Good question. The answer is simple really: support. You won't be killing anything with earth, air or water, but you will definitely become more effecive when you use them in combination with your fire skills or your primary profession. (Heck, they might as well just make fire the elementalists primary profession.)

My only complaint is that you can't really be a ______ elementalist and expect to kill things like you would a fire elementalist. You just can't, plain and simple. It would be fun though, and I would sure as heck like to not have to rely on fire so much. In that sense, it isn't balanced. A lightning strike with no recharge or armor pen would be nice, just so you could have fun dabbling in that element and not feel guilty. Until then, be friendly to fire, and it will be friendly to you.

I'm not so knowledgable with elementalist skills, but from my understanding with the description Air is "supposed" to exceed in single target damage with its armor penetration, and Fire for its really high damage aoe spells, and water and earth are more for support with conjuction to work with the two... I don't remember which skill it was but it was something like if you used some sort of water or air skill it'll work even better if that opponent had some sort of air or water hex on him...

Your thinking of shock, and your absolutely right about what the elements are supposed to do. And they do...somewhat.

A large portion of the 'complaints' about this have just been because x person wants to use x element for x purpose...and they can't. I'm one of them.

Ok you know I was gonna number crunch and what not but I give up. Fire is superior in AoE, thats it. Anyone who has PvP's for more than an hour realises that AoE has very few actual uses. ALso your little flare thing? cute it is really. Sorry but Flaregunning has been tried and you can try it but it won't do you much good.

1)AL effecting it makes it do crap damage. 75al for instance makes your 40 damage do 30. and I hope you never plan on shooting a tank.

2)Sustained DPS does nothing in PvP that can't be easily countered you want short burts of high DPS to a single target 70% of the time. Air is vastly superior in this respec.

ok time for some AoE smackdown:
Pbaoe and AOE? who are you going to AoE besides the tanks pounding on your RUNNING monk? Even if you do hit them you are gonna be going up against 50% DR oh nows 50 damage! casters dont stay close together and they surely move. Ranged AoE? 4/7 of those spells have exhaustion and cost 25 energy.


LAWLZ. wow. I think you disregard any point of armor. Take a Lightning Orb + Lightning Strike + Ennervating Charge and it will out spike any decent fire build you put together. There are complexities to GW that you're just not grasping and this is one of them....Fire is AoE and weak DD. Air is superior DD based on the fact of Armor reduction alone.

Attacking in melee with elementalist's 60AL armor using PBAOE is a great idea to damage the enemies.. if they have the same intelligence as the AI mobs. Once you bring this build to serious pvp, it won't be nearly as effective as the numbers are showing you. People don't just stand in your point blank area of effect for no reason.

They would only risk standing in AoE if they know for sure they can kill you in the next 5 seconds. If you are not their target, all they have to do is get away from you, and kept on attacking their intended target. Basically, you are not doing enough damage while your teammates are alive, and are not going to live long enough once your teammates (mainly monks) are dead.

The idea of using PBAoE applies to very narrow situation, like a king of the hill map, for example, where everyone is trying to kill the guildlord in the last two minutes.

The DPS is good, but will be hard to carry out. Please don't assume others like to get themselves killed as much as you do.

Well lets try not to bash others opinions now eh remember carebear episodes and all of you should be fine... ahem anyhow in all due respects each type of elementalist is good for its way of dealing so you really can't say so and so sucks and air elementalist should be meant for single targets while a fire is more for aoe. I remember in PvP randoms two wa/mnks tried to gank on me when I played the pre-built Pyromancer, and I blasted them to smitherines hehe... but thats because they couldn't heal themselves since a mesmer/monk basically killed their energy with a mesmer skill forgot what it was but it was like chain shackle or something (too lazy to look up the skill) heh But yeah its really just depending on the group you are facing, situation and what not all builds if played correctly is good

Are you looking to build a PvE farmer? Fire is by far and away the single best element for farming, for all the reasons you state.

But if you're trying to kill one specific individual, err, is there any element worse than fire? There is certainly better (*cough* Air *cough*).

What are the other elements good for? Well, almost anything other than farming...

Sure. No one is saying fire is useless in PvP (or they shouldn't). It's just not the very best.

Lightning touch, that is.
Actually pretty painful (to an area) in conjunction with deep freeze, and it's ~a PbAoE, as you have to touch them to trigger it, and lacks exhaustion.
But, the recharge time is a major pain on it.

Nitpicking aside, I enjoy each of the elements the way they are.

Edit: to the question about the skill that increases damage with the water hex as asked above a number of posts >.<

I regretted reading your post enough that I had to reply.


Just as you've been wrong every time you've said this before, you're wrong again. But this time we'll explain in detail.


Oooh! I love this game.


First, what the hell are we doing talking about Flare? That's a skill that you should leave in lowbie Ascalon - Conjure + Wand just plain beats it out at higher level.

Second, let's use realistic numbers for these skills - 16 attribute, armor penetration calculated in:

Flare: 48 damage, 5 energy, 1 second, 27.4 DPS, 9.6 DPE.
Ice Spear: 58 damage, 5 energy, 1 second, 33.1 DPS, 11.6 DPE.
Stone Daggers: 50 damage, 5 energy, 1 second, 28.57 DPS, 10 DPE.

Then the one that doesn't quite fit:

Lightning Strike (60 AL): 69 damage, 5 energy, 1 second, 5 recharge, 39.4 DPS, 13.8 DPE.
Lightning Strike (100 AL): 82 damage, 5 energy, 1 second, 5 recharge, 46.9 DPS, 16.4 DPE.

Obviously Strike is a whole lot better than any of the above per cast (plus it autohits), which is why it has a cooldown and gets to be worked into a casting chain.

So let's compare the top 3 to my personal favorite: Conjure + Wand. Ignore criticals and convert to the appropriate spell:

Conjure + Wand: 36.8 damage, .143 energy, 1 second, 21 DPS, 257 DPE.

Of the three comparable skills, Flare does the least damage. It does have a higher range than Ice Spear, but even at long range it's basically strictly worse than Stone Daggers - less damage, more common/resisted damage type, more risky (one projectile vs. two.)

But the more fun comparison is Flare against Conjure + Wand. As you can see, Flare does damage 30% faster, but consumes energy 1,643% faster. Is that a fair tradeoff for your energy?


First off, why? PBAoE is even worse than Flare spam. You have to run up to your target, introducing all the problems that come with it - the time wasted, the vulnerability. Then let's look at the marquee fire PBAoE spell - Flame Burst, at level 16:

Flame Burst: 119 damage, .75 second cast, 15 energy, 5 second cooldown.

Oh, and a 1.75 second aftercast. What's that? You didn't see that in the skill description? That's because it's a secret. PBAoE got a silent nerf - after casting Flame Burst, Inferno, Crystal Wave, or any of the 'fast casting' PBAoEs, you get to stand around and do nothing for a full second longer than you normally would. What does that do to your DPS?

Flame Burst: 47.6 DPS

Congratulations, you deal damage like a minimally acceptable Warrior (which currently kick up into the low 70s on melee DPS. Yeah, it's a bit high, but what can you do?)

Look at the Earth PBAoEs. Aftershock deals 105 damage, plus bonus on knockdown, and it costs less (but recycles more quickly). Crystal Wave ignores armor, making its damage truly exceptional against higher level mobs whose armor easily hits or passes 100. No, fire is far from a standout on aggressive PBAoE.

Where it does have a bonus is on slowcast PBAoE, the 'reactive' PBAoE that is really only useful when you're the focus of a melee mob - it doesn't cast fast enough to be used proactively. This would be Lava Font and Phoenix, two solid skills under these circumstances that you should seriously consider running.


It would be a whole lot easier to take this sort of argument seriously if you filtered out the skills that are utter shit, instead of just listing every AoE skill available. You don't get to use every skill, only the top few make the cut. Searing Heat? Rodgort's Invocation? Please. Those skills are beyond awful, and it's people leaning on skills like those that have fueled the 'fire is awful' mentality for so long. Rodgort's Invocation is impossibly slow at 5 seconds, and what do you get for it? You tack 3 seconds of burning onto your Fireball? For 25 energy? I have no idea why people think this skill is any good. Searing Heat? Just take it head to head with Eruption:

Searing Heat: 31 DPS over 5 seconds, 42 burn damage on end, 25 Energy, 3 second cast, 30 second recharge, exhaustion.
Eruption: 36 DPS over 5 seconds, plus blind on end, 25 energy, 3 second cast, 30 second recharge, no exhaustion.

The difference? Searing Heat deals 17 more damage over its lifetime, at the cost of losing blindness on the target and suffering exhaustion.

Why would anyone ever use Searing Heat over Eruption?


Ginormous costs? Have you looked at the Fire spells you're talking about recently? 15 energy, 25 energy, 25 energy, 15 energy. Incredibly cheap, no?

A direct comparison between some of top nukes of the respective lines spells out what the different lines are good at:

Fire: Immolate, Fireball, Firestorm
Air: Lightning Orb, Lightning Strike, Chain Lightning
Water: Ice Spikes, Deep Freeze, Maelstrom
Earth: Stoning, Earthquake, Eruption

You don't even have to dig very deeply to see what's going on here. Fire is the standard for AoE damage - it's expensive, but it's fairly fast and effective. Air is much more effective at knocking out single targets, particularly those with heavy armor (which, for our purposes, is everything). These two are your top two raw damage lines, and it's apparent that they each have their own purposes - with a bit of crossover evident in Immolate and Chain Lightning. If you need a key target dead now, use air. If you need crowd control, use fire.

What about the other two lines? Water, roughly, is a hybrid of air and fire that sacrifices roughly 25% of its damage output to tack on hard disruption - chain knockdowns with Trident, slows with Freeze, interrupts with Maelstrom. If your tactics have evolved even slightly to incorporate things besides damage and healing, you'll understand how this can be an outstanding tradeoff.

Earth? It's harder to see from the nukes, but it's apparent in the rest of the skills - Earth is a defensive line, with wards, armors, and attack skills that knock down, blind, or otherwise impede the ability of the opponent to deal damage. Even if you haven't recognized the value of disruption, as with water, you should recognize the value of armor and added defense.

So what are the lines good for? Fire is best at AoE and rawdog damage. Lightning is better at pinpoint damage and at knocking out key targets. Water is damage with moderate disruption, Earth is damage with defense. All have their places.

It's that simple.


Sure you can. If you're looking at a single target, Air is going to kill it *faster* than a Fire Elementalist could even dream - AoE is wasted, and it can merely look at 130+ damage Lightning Orbs in awe. Water doesn't kill quite as fast, but it is potentially even more deadly - it can kill an opponent before they even have a chance to close. Which is better, killing three seconds faster, or killing them before they get to take a swing? Earth doesn't need to kill as fast, because while it might be dishing out 2/3 as much damage, the Earth Elementalist is only taking 1/4 the damage. In a race against an opponent, I'd gladly trade 1/3 of my damage for 3/4 of theirs.

How does a Fire Elementalist kill? As fast as possible, because he has to - enemies will be in his face quickly, and he has no recourse. He's at his best against packs of weaker enemies - but when he comes up against a strong foe who's a serious threat, Fire is the last line he wants to be relying upon.

Peace,
-CxE

I thought I understood how armor penetration worked but apparently not. I thought casting lightning at a 100 armor target with 25% penetration acted like casting at a 75 armor target without penetration, and that casting that lightning at a 60 armor target was like casting at a 45 armor target with something else, but your numbers show you actually do more damage to high-armor targets with lightning?

One other question, you say warriors get over 70 dps? I have been thinking of making an illusionary weapon mesmer, but can't see approaching 70 dps with anything let alone IW. If that's so, why doesn't everyone make warriors?

*raises hand... I also still a little iffy upon armor penetration... But really interested with Air elementalist..

Multiply don't subtract and you have it. 100 x .75 and 60 x .75

to your seconds: It can happen and KOR proved it. SIde note: IW is crap

@Daemon- I've rarely seen someone be so smug about being so wrong.

Please make sure when you post something in our forums, you have your facts in order. This is how people get misinformed about the game- people bragging that Fire is hands down the best line without the facts to prove it.

I think Ensign's done a terrific job of thouroughly disproving every point you tried to make, but I'd like to introduce a few others.

The fact that you consider Flare a skill worth playing already displays an ignorance of what contitutes a worthwhile skill. That you fail to grasp the difference between Flare and the others is less surprising, but when you continually tout Flare as the best among them...
Yet two lines later you contradict yourself.
Ignoring Immolate is a sin. It used to be far and away the best Fire nuke in the game- doing 83 damage for 10 energy and a 1s cast time, + 0.75s aftercast. True, you can cast nearly 3 flares in 5 seconds, but if you're chain spamming flare you're shooting yourself in the foot-opening yourself up to more counters and interrupts, spending your energy inefficiently, and not spending any time casting spells that are actually effective. What you want is a chain of good spells- Orb + Surge + Strike, for example- not repeated amounts of piddly damage- i.e. Flare, Flare Flare.

I shouldn't be surprised that the improvement to Fireball and Incediary Bonds escaped notice, but they both recieved significant boosts, namely a reduction in cast time and an increase in damage, respectively. But then again, you don't care about spells that might have gone from trash (fireball at 3s cast time) to useable (fireball with 2s cast time). Instead you want to Flare Spam someone while charging in to use....Inferno?

I think PBAOE has been covered in-depth, but if you want to claim that flare is superior to ice spear because it doesn't require you to run into melee range of your enemies, then why are you even stopping to consider PBAOE attacks?

The fact is that Fire is the least versatile of all the damage lines. You have damage attacks and....damage attacks.
It has more AOE attacks than the others, but Ensign has pointed out that Fire excells at killing groups of weak enemies, so it shines in PvE where you run into many packs of enemies like that.
When you fight anything harder than a pack of moss scarabs 7 levels below you, you might need to start employing a little more thought to your tactics.

While Fire has the most PBAOE attacks, they are all completely one dimensional. They can do damage...or damage.
Every single other line offers a defense mechanism, which you have clearly overlooked, since in your zeal you have decided that rushing in to kill with Fire PBAOE is better than getting away from the enemies intent on killing you.

Frozen Burst, Whirlwind, and Grasping Earth all snare your enemies, allowing you to escape. If you are a fire elementalist, and your initial volley wasn't enough to kill an enemy, and Inferno (with it's 1.75s aftercast) wont either, then you're probably wishing the target was snared or knocked down, rather than the extra 10 or 15 points of damage that Inferno gives you.


For everyone else, please make sure you have your facts in order when you decide to post here. Guru is the most informative Guild Wars site for a reason- because we have the quick, reliable, and most of all, accurate info. Without accuracy, the rest don't matter.

Some great information to finally get squeezed out, and thank you. But I still stand by my point (and I'll apologize for the frustration). All of the above examples are talking organzied pvp, to a degree. You're right about lightning against higher armored foes....I even said that. But not all foes are heavily armored! I wasn't making any build, so I don't know why it was referred to as that. I was simply stating that from an overall viewpoint, pre-searing to tombs, fire will kill more enemies by doing more damage, less situationally. Forget continuous knockdown of water trident, the foes have to be moving. Forget the amazing pin point damage of lighting, cast times/recharge times/damage output just aren't enough to be effective until much later in the game (15en and 2 cast for lightning orb? give me a break...). Earth is defensive, but you can't kill someone that way. I don't disagree with anything that was said, and most of was just an elaberate tangent flying off of what I already mensioned in what I thought to be laymans terms. I'm talking basic here.

Now, to support the other side, let's use mesmers as an example. They are, and correct me if I'm wrong, the most situational of all the classes. This doesn't make them deadly, but it makes them devastating when used in those situations, just like the other elements of the elementalist. Now, organized pvp is all about getting a strategic hold on those 'situations'. Fire is the opposite. It's simple, it's easy, it's damage, it's what some would argue the elementalist is all about.

I never once said any one element was better. I thought would make enough sense.

I think we could all use a some clarification on just how AL and armor penetration works. Any links would be helpful


EDIT: After reading Scaphisms post too, I will re-read my first post to see where this misunderstand is coming from.

I thought that was the point I was trying to convey...

So you are talking about PvE? Why even waste bandwidth? Anyone can kill in PvE even Nec/Rang. Organization > Attributes used in PvE

I was, hopefully, talking about all of the above. Special situations aside, fire puts out more damage. That doesn't mean it's any better, or any worse as it's now been put. Like I said before, the elementalist is not unbalanced. Fire is very useful in pve. You get it quickly, and it thwarts your foes very nicely. In pvp it's much less the concept, but not entirely obsolete either.

EDIT: Sorry for the identity switch, I'm the same person. Just checking pm's from my old account and forgot to switch back.

EDIT: To the post just below: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

You know what. When all those melee creeps come up against my air ele, I'll just throw up Glimmering Mark and watch them swing at me for a while, just because it's so damn funny. Or maybe thunderclap, and knock them all don, even though that'll drain my mana like no other.

Besides that, I understand where you're coming from now. I thought at first you were talking about PvP, and I was thinking, "does this guy even understand interrupts?" Had I known you were talking more about PvP, I would have agreed more. But next time I suggest you not jump to conclusions about things. It was an interesting read, though.

So I take that to mean that anyone that might be interested in playing PvE shouldn't be granted the same right to information as those that choose to participate in PvP?

That would seem a bit narrow minded, don't you think?

Having toyed with the idea of running a Pyromancer for my PvE build it would now seem like a good choice and I was thinking also of a build centered around Air magic as my PvP build would be a good choice as well. Good info from both side on this one, now we just need the release to put the ideas to the test.

Such a heated debate on what is needed for PvE isn't really needed because you, as I have said, can do well in PvE with almost any build.

Uh, it's effective at level 20, which happens pretty early on in this game. What happens much later in the game that would make them more effective? You make it sound like you spend more than a fraction of your time in this game under level 20.

Incidently, this game is situational by nature. Being prepared for the situations you're likely to encounter will make you much more effective in general than trying to design a single build that works "in general". Only when all situations are about equally likely will a generalized build actually be better in general. When some situations are significantly more likely to occur than others, less generalized builds will actually do better in general, paradoxical as that may sound.

I think your right Daemon, I think everyone should be a fire Ele. That way when you get into pvp with me your a tasty morsel. Please Please Please everyone go with fire. It is so great OH fire Oh wicked, wicked fire~ fire Elementalist is the way to go wooot woot! I think it is funny how posts like this only speak about how much damage I can do in what amount of time. Completely ignoring the other 'skills' in any other line. Please everyone be fire elementalists. I agree with you Daemon. Go Fire Ele go fire ele. So .. its agreed .. fire elementalists are the way to go !

Instead of posting so much on why he's wrong, let him go with it. I'd love every other ele out there to be fire. It will make my alt more effective

I suppose that really depends. During the betas a vast majority of the players were sub 20. It's impossible to not play sub 20 (unless you stick to pvp pre mades...). Whenever you start a new pve character you will be sub 20. The only time you will be over 20 is when you play up your main characters and continue on from there, or stick with the premades (assuming they will exist in release). Now, getting to max level takes far less time to achieve than in other rpgs, and if you like to play the majority of your time after that then yes you are more than correct. It would be hard to say that more play occurs after 20. To add to that, 'much later' doesn't necessarily mean 'level 20' either.

Actually, assuming the ratio of occurence is balanced between generality and specificity, both generalized builds and situational builds will be equally effective. If it is unbalanced, it becomes paradoxical as you say, as neither a general build or a situational build will be possible since all events will be situational and all builds will be situational, making that the general build, and vice versa.

And once again, I was not creating any sort of 'build' set up, and I don't know why this keeps getting brought up. I didn't even mension the word 'build'. I was pointing out how one cannot expect to start an elementalist and not use fire skills, and yet be just as effective in damage dealing as when using fire skills.

This thread has shown that this is absolutely true when you first click 'create' and works it's way to become absolutely false once the game has progressed to the point where fire just doesn't cut it for damage in a given situation. Hopefully that about sums it up.

You sound like you know alot about the game, when really, you don't.
In my opinion, of course, pretty much you're entire post is BS.

What's true:
Fire has good AoE damage skills.

That's about it. Earth is very non damage focused, water isn't very damage focused, but lighting is quite focused at damage dealing, and can do it very well.

Lets start off with your direct damage comparison. You mentioned the spell damages at level 0 to 12. problem is for elementalist they can get up to 16, (or even 18 if you use glyph of elemental power, but wouldn't want to for these skills). This makes Ice spear deal 58 damage, and flare deal 48 damage at max attributes.
Not only that but you totally neglected to mention two 5 energy spells which ACTUALLY deal the most damage, period. Not flare (which isn't even the third most). One is water trident, dealing a hot 5-53 damage, a whooping 69 damage at 16 water magic. Combine this spell with arcane echo and you'll be pumping them out as fast as flares, which isn't even nessarily a good idea because spamming leaves to vulnerable to those "every time foe casts a spell" hexes, not to mention sucks your energy faster than anything else in the game.

Then comes Obsidian flame. Guess how much it deals at level 16... 118. It also totally ignores armor... hmm... before armor this is over double the damage of flare. After armor it could be 3+ (in theory going up to and above 6) times the damage of a flare.
Yes it has a longer cooldown, and cast time, but you'll be using tons less energy. If you used it with echo you'll get to cast it twice as fast.

Elementalists also don't need to deal damage/kill to be sucessful. that's like saying you have to be "X real life job" to be sucessful. We have tons of choices in life, they all do different things, and they can all provide great benefits.
It's very possible, if not likely, that an Earth elementalist with heavy armor buffs and a bit of attack skills (earth +energy storage) (lets say obsidian flame and stone daggers) would out do a fire elementalist, simply because he won't die in a few hits, because he has 164 armor instead of 60 armor, and resultingly take 8 damage from a skill such as flare, instead of 48. I'd love to see any fire elementalist kill this guy.

I'm not really the kind of person who gets into discussions of what's effective and what isn't, but I thought I would mention that Obsidian Flame caused exhaustion last time I checked... not exactly the kind of skill you want to spam

Yeah with my run in with what happened in the WoW forums as to what was effective and what isn't totally turned me off from the WoW forums...

That is one thing that I'm hoping won't happen to this forum, but sadly its inevitable as you see whats happening at this moment. I understand when people are trying to be informative, but when someone just shuts someone down because they stated their opinion is just fighting fire with fire... Just doesn't look good overall. In a sense its like flaming someone for not getting their facts straight... Its still "flaming" regardless of how informative it tries to be.... I just believe it could be informative in a much friendlier tone....

Well not everybody has the same beliefs ..

I never got into Elementalist much, But I can say that ALL the AoE Fire spells that there are never affected me much in PvP. Me, A warrior, Will not just stand in a Firestorm or something. A lot of the time my target is running, So I'm never in it longer than a few seconds. I might get hit twice or so. The only type of opponent I generally don't have to chase are Warriors. Taking this into conclusion, AoE's from Elementalists all together never really affected me as a Warrior. Most of the time i've seen them used they only initially hit 2 people. Is that worth the energy you put into casting it? Wouldn't you rather just cast Lightning strike or something?

I played one for PvP premade in the crag ( the pryomancer one) and I spammed all the ones I could against a warrior and it was pretty effective to how quickly his health dropped especially when he was on fire... lol but maybe that was because he wasn't as skilled. Anyhow I realized firestorm was best when there are people that are really trying to get something or a tank fighting tanks and what not where people have to stay stationary...

While fire is clearly superior at Area of Effect, I prefer taking a team down opponent by opponent. For that, I think that air is the best. You can't see it just by looking at it, until you consider the armour penetration. 25% armour penetration is nothing to ignore!

God I wish Tengus carried Backfire.

My own impression is that, generally, Fire is amazing for PvE since the monsters are too dumb to scatter vs the AoEs whereas in PvP it is debatable if making the players scatter is worth 25en whereas attacks like Maelstrom and some of the nice armor penetration lightning attacks or a condition inducing attack like Eruption can be better for PvP.

I wouldn't use Fire in PvP personally except maybe in a W/E, but that is personal preference and not the One True Way(tm).

I've only read the couple sentences of the very 1st post, and didn't read the rest so..

but anyway, Fire type spells are really good for beginners of this game, when I 1st played, all I wanted is to nuke nuke and nuke, well nuke is good consider you being lvl 20 doing missions with full party, and tanks are taking all the hits (missions like riverside, and the one after) sure you wont take as much damage, or hardly at all if u let the tank do all the tanking, but I'm sure you noticed by now that most of fire type skills takes 2 seconds or longer to cast, and as you progress through higher level, enemies have WAY higher armor, thus fire isn't that effective at all. Hopefully by the time you finish your 12th mission, you realized something fire is lacking, and if you are smart enough you should use all those refoundable skills points at your full advantage, change skills according to the mission, talk over the strats before start, ect ect. my main point is, fire is nice and all doing the most damage, but don't take other type of spells lightly, earth have some nice protective spells such as wards against melee, fore, magic. lighting have 25% armor pentration, those are really useful when enemy are high lvled, because you'll outdamage fire, water have some nice slowdowns and couple knockdowns. and also, if you are pvping... fire really isn't a good choice, imo it should be mixed with either another type or your 2ndary.

I think that you're right about Fire outputting alot of damage--even the most of all the schools. But I'd point out that if you're single-target nuking, then you're gonna want to go with Air Magic. The aggregate damage with that, added to the armor penetration, makes it a very powerful school for dropping ONE enemy rather quickly.

Tek, I must say I enjoyed this debate very much. If the pros and cons of PvE builds and skills don't interest you, there's no need for you to post in a thread discussing them. I have noticed in the forum that whether the primary interest is PvE or PvP, players want to know what others think will work best and hear other people's opinions.

I found this debate very interesting because it discusses in detail the uses for each of the various elements. Ensign's overview of the basic purposes of the different elements is very good and helps those of us who are far from conversant with the minutia of skills gain a better understanding of how they might be employed based on our preferred playing style; or what skills we might want to choose for a particular mission depending on what foes we were up against.

As with others, I find fire very satisfying for PvE play and developed a successful strategy for my Fire Elementalist/Necro. But I want also to explore the other elements and this thread certainly has me thinking about those possibilities.

What?

Fire spells take too long to cast and consume too much energy

So...why did you feel the need to rez this thread?

I love playing with numbers. But i dont look at the max damage and i never stop looking at the general effects!

BTW this thread is like 2 months old aint it?

so far I use fire magic with two secondary monk skills and have had a great success with it. Its also a good set up for farming cause I do some areas over and over for materials needed for my armor crafting, which I do on my own to get all the drops.

For those of us who love to PvE and don't have a guild big enough to rely on, we are basically forced to use Fire magic most of the time. Why? Because that's what all the PUG's out there want. All you see in the mission areas/outposts is "GLF nukers!!11!!". And when you join a group as an elementalist the first thing they say to you is, "do u nuke?!??!!". Nothing else is valued. I tried running an E/Mo with Earth magic and protectio prayers... I thought I was a leper it was so hard to find groups. The majority of PvE players are just too unimaginative to see beyond the basic class sterotypes.