Useless Elites

Elites should really be something special that has a great affect upon how a character works. Many of them do this but there are quite a few that just do not seem to be on the same level. Maybe I am way off on some of these and there are builds that can take advantage of them but here is a list of elites I can not think of a use for, at least in PvP.


Monk:
Healing Hands(Even in NR stopped I would still rarely run this)
Shield of Deflection(Aegis and/or wards are just better)

Honorable Mentions:
Unyielding Aura(has its uses in 4v4 arena)
Word of Healing(many love it but I hate it...with 3 monks in most groups you almost never see the bonus)


Elementalist:
Glyph of Renewal(the poor man's oath shot)
Mind Burn
Mind Shock
Mind Freese(The mind spells do not do enough damage and thier effects are not up to par and they cause exhaustion.)

Honorable Mentions:
Thunderclap(It has a great affect if you do not mind wasting your entire energy bar to interupt someone for a couple seconds.)

Mesmer:
Keystone signet(when you can already run mantra of signets or inscriptions there is little to no use for this skill)

Necromancer:
Aura of the Lich(this is a liability as all the degen that is common in PvP will kill you even faster)

Ranger:
Escape(besides trying to run to outposts I see no need to waste your elite spot with this skill)
Practiced Stance
Melandru's Resilience
Punishing Shot(why not just use distracting shot)
Ferocious Strike(ha!)

Honorable Mention:
Crippling Shot(has it uses in some cases)

Warrior:
Cleave(Does almost exactly the same amount of damage per adrenaline as Eviscerate but does not cause a deep wound)
Defy Pain(Another skill only useful for running to outposts)
Flourish(most attacks recharge so fast I can not see this being useful)
Warriors Endurance


Ok if you know good way to utlitze these skills come forth! Or suggestions on how to improve them. I have every elite in the game unlocked and would love to incorporate all of them into a build at some point or another.

healing hands is very useful. you notice the super fast cast time?

3 monks in most groups? haa

Flourish is very useful to maintain your dps and stamina, and defy pain is good in a pinch. There are better elites to take along, but those two aren't as bad. Melandru's resilience may not look too promising for a ranger primary, but it's invaluable as a counter to hex and condition stacking if you're a Mo/R, W/R, or whatnot.

Also, Aura of the lich is great in PvE and certain PvP team builds. It gets utterly trashed in the current NR-dominant metagame though.

You have to realize that some elites that have regular skills that do the same either have do more damage, have lower energy cost, faster recharge and/or longer duration.

Example: Crippling shot. It has both a longer duration and faster recharge then pin down. If your marksmanship is up high enough you can just keep spamming it.

Almost every skill has it's uses. However I will admit there are some truly useless ones, like healing hands. All it does is reduce damage because it doesn't heal enough to negate it.

Well, my main character is a ranger so I can give you uses for a few of those...
Escape is good for running to outposts, for one, but that's not a reason to use it very often. It's good in the Tombs for flag running too.
Practiced Stance I have found to combo well with the Choking Gas preperation, allowing you to keep Choking Gas up all of the time.
Melandru's Resilience is very situational, which is why I don't use it on my character ever... however, if you run a Monk/Ranger, it goes very very well with Draw Conditions. Heck, it goes well in PvP in general. Monk's get targetted with hexes/conditions/degen all the time, so Melandru's Resilience works like a charm. When some warrior hits your monk with a sever artery and you experience only one pip of degen and extra energy regen, then you'll see the wonder that is MR
Punishing Shot regens a lot quicker than Distracting Shot, making it semi-spammable, and adds damage. It's good for interrupter/damage hybrids. If you wanted to save yourself a skill slot and combine Power Shot and, say, Savage Shot, Punishing Shot is the way to go.
I don't know much about Ferocious Strike, I don't run with a pet.

I laugh every time I see Healing Hands in PvP(excluding 4v4 Arena) because I know the battle will be that much easier. You do realize how easy it is to just change targets or god forbid bring a couple strip enchantments. I fear healing seed much more the healing hands.

Yeah, Mind Burn, not such a good elite. You can cast two Immolates in less time it takes to recharge, and not cause exhaustion. Use your elite spell slot for something better. I prefer Ether Renewal, but I've seen many people flame that skill too.

Ferocious Strike is probably the best energy management spell outside the Me's inspiration line. However, it's very conditional, the condition being whether or not your pet is alive.

Healing Hands:

This skill is very underpowered in PvP outside of random or 4v4.

Healing hands was pretty helpful when I was soloing in the desert, but it really isn't good in groups.

That would be useful except for the virtual requiremnt of a martry monk at higher levels of pvp competition.

As for escape thanks for pointing it out how it caan be useful for relics but I still do not think it is worth bringing an elite just for the relic runs. For that I uswe Ward Against Foes to make sure there runner can never turn in a relic.

As for punishing shot I will try it out.

I agree with the Ranger/Warrior llists for the most part, except...Cleave? There is a BIG difference between 4 adrenaline and 7! My testing shows Cleave is far more spammable than Evis.

The only use for healing hands is on a Warrior/Monk farming (Griffon build). Unless you are a warrior/monk with a sheild, shielding hands will do basically the exact same thing as healing hands. I've tried using healing hands in normal PvE play in groups and found that other skills like vigorous spirit helps alot more than healing hands. Alot of people who have seen healing hands at work in the griffon build think that it's an awesome spell, but that is only the case when for some reason you are getting hit 15 times a second for low damage (for a non warrior, low damage is almost impossible unless you are fighting weak monsters that should be easily killed anyways).

every enchantments fall into the useless catagory then

At 16 axe mastery:

Cleave does 26/4 = 6.5 damage per adrenaline.

Eviscerate does 42/7 = 6.0 damage per adrenaline and causes a deep wound for 21 seconds.

There is almost no damage difference between the two skills and Evicerate also causes a deep wound(drops thier helath by 20% and reduces thier healing)

You didn't really think about this before posting huh?

Actually almost every Elite is useful in a build. And you're only mentioning useless in PVP, and you didn't think about PVE at all.

I think that Melandru's is great as an elite - the energy regen alone makes it a super spell. Melandru's Monks are happy monks When operating in areas with many condition and hex users (bog scales, summit arcanists and so on) you are nearly certain to have 3+ on you, which is 3 pips of energy and 6 pips of regeneration... work for me. In PvP it may not be a great choice, but the Melandru's monk does have it's uses. Ferocious Strike as has been mentioned is brilliant - if your pet is alive.

Haven't really had good experiences with any of the others.

No exactly. Some provide enough affect fast enough and recharge fast enough that they are still useful. Healing hands has a pretty small effect and a longish cool down.

Hence the topic of this thread is for PvP. I am pretty sure I specifically mentioned that.

Not all the skills are base for PvP. I use escape to kill off Glint. Activate it, run up and throw all my traps down. Rinse and repeat.

You just gotta think outside the box sometimes. =)

4 adrenaline vs 7 adrenaline, that's a big difference.

you can _almost_ do twice cleave in the time you can do one eviscerate.

I've gotta say some of the high adrenaline skills are a pain to use.