Air spiker - overrated?

Hey, I spent the entire game as a fire elementalist, and i heard everyone say, by the time you finish the game, if you plan on doing PvP, switch to air...i have the superior air rune, all the elite skills, air mastery up to 16....and i still feel that i did so much better damage as a fire elem...the 'on fire' condition was absolutely devastating to enemies, and there are certainly times that AoE spells would have worked...i feel that overall fire is a lot more powerful than air in both PvP and PvE, and i sure regret throwing out all of my droknars fire armor

Fire does seem to deal better damage if you take into account burning (immolate is a nice nuke), but it's flawed in that if you have more than one fire elementalist, the burning damage isn't increased, since the same conditions cannot be applied on top of each other.

Air eles benefit from numbers, their damage is ALL direct, no dots, and penetrates armor. So if you're the only nuker on a team, fire is great, but if you're doing coordinated spiking with other nukers, lightening's the way to go.

Agreed

Also many fire spells are AoE, which means your opponents can just walk out of the range, where as most lighting attacks direct hit.

My air ele can bring a monk (without damage reducing protections) down to 1/3 health myself, with Lighting Charge, Chain Lighting and Lighting Strike one right after the other. If coordinated with another air ele a monk is down before they even realize they're under attack.

There's also the issue of casting times. Fire Magic is generally quite alot easier to interrupt due to lack of instant casting spells - for example Meteor Shower - totally devastating if you manage to cast it - but with 5 seconds of floating there in the air for a Mesmer to Spike you, a Ranger to shoot you, hell even a Warrior to prod you - makes it limited. I believe there's a Mesmer Mantra that can prevent interrupts though, so that might work out.

I believe both elements have their merits, and Fire gets better the higher up pvp you go - so in Altar maps where everyone HAS to go for a static objective, you can just pelt the area with all the AoE you've got.

air spike builds are overdone and over rated :/ fire is a good counter to spirit spam and to move people off the altar. Havent seen a mass meteor shower build in awhile :b

Air spike builds can still be effective but you really need a clever and well experienced team to pull it off.

The problem with air spiking is that protective spirit pretty much screws the spike. Even with good energy management (i'm talking using glyph of energy, attunements don't combat exhaustion and are almost guaranteed to be removed), you won't be able to damage someone under prot. spirit consistently enough to brute your way through healing. Add in the fact that multiple rangers are prominent in most teams nowadays and that lessens an elementalist's usefulness even further.

Enchantment removal is a must in theory but with the long recast timer on rend/shatter it's not very effective. Even under nature's renewal, a monk will be able to keep protective spirit up due to it's extremely short recast timer.

As i said above though, you can still be effective with an air spike build, it just requires precise timing and communication, which most teams do not have. A few examples of some clever air spiking: multiple lightning surges going on multiple targets and then spiking the primary target (forces the monks to guess which target will be spiked, this is just a guess and go though), and building up energy while using little 5 energy spells on one target and then quickly switching over and spiking another target while he is caught off-guard.

Quote:

Yeah, Fire is VERY underated. Let's say you have Warriors wailing on your monk. Sure, they could walk away, but would they? If they do, then that means you just saved your monk some energy from the stopping of the wailing . Also, there are times where they are bunched up a lot, like Alter matches. Spreading the damage out just a bit isn't a bad thing. The single target damage spells are quite nice, also.

Quote:

In my experience as being a elementalist I would have to say that Water Damage is the most balanced out in PvP and PvE

Water Spike FTW on Relic Runs FYI
:P
but seriously..
spikers suck get over it

the only downside to fire is the long casting time, and that's the biggest downside you can get. a good mesmer will be able to constantly interupt your spells, ruining your damage output to (almost) 0.

Okay look
to counter a spike group (btw every RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing group has this now because it works so well against smite spike or even a ranger group)
is using a spirit spammer
Qz / Natures Renewal / Frozen / EoE / Fertile Seasn / Trow Dirt / *Spirit Here* / Rez Sig

Just put up Fertile against the spike groups and they are done

If you attack spike groups before they can get their attunements up they're done

If you attack spike groups before they can get into a straight line they're done

Fire will not work, unless you're up against a team that is using Healing Ball (FireStorm, Meteor, Meteor Shower will own them)

Fire is only good for Altar maps such as Dark Chambers HoH or Broken Tower

You wouldnt make it to those maps anyway because you would be destroyed at Burial Mounds, Underworld, Scarred Earth