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.

by the time it's stripped, it would have healed about a hundred hp (just a guess-timate, guessing the target is being hit 5 - 6 times before it's stripped), with 5 energy cost and super fast cast time.

plus, it forces a player to "waste" one of the ench strip skills for a 10-second enchantment.

Melandru's Resilience - combo with Draw Conditions for energy management on a Monk.

Cleave - If someone else is using Deep Wound, you'd want to run this instead of Eviscerate.

Here is a list I threw together in a few minutes, some of them may be placed incorrectly, but most of them should be in the right place.

You just healed for around a 100? that is basically one orison of healing once divine favour is calculated and that does not even take an elite. And stripping is hardly every wasted. Strip enchant gives the caster life, inspired will let them then cast healing hands on thier own team, drain with increase thier energy and so on.

I am not saying it is a horrible spell, just a horrible elite.

healing hands is awesome...on a warrior

melandrus resilience is a great skill, i run it on most my rangers

Some skills are elite because, if they weren't, thier interactions with other elites would be overpowering.

I agree with most of your choices but my goal was to only list a skill if I could think of NO pvp situation in which it could be used. A lot of those skills have conceivable uses in builds.

if I see a person goes down fast I cast healing hand (almost instant), then orison, then whatever else needed. not being a protection monk, healing hands provide a very fast and cheap protection like skill. no, it's not going to save the person by itself, but think of it like a damage reduction protection skill for emergency.

if it gets stolen/inspired, big deal. any skill can get stolen/inspired, not just healing hands.

In most of those skills, I agree with you on, a few I don't, but those have been covered by the other posters.
But the one skill I disagree with you on, is cleave. You say that it does the same thing, but doesn't cause a deep wound? well I agree with you on the deep wound, but by just doing the simple calculations, you can easily see how Cleave outstrips Eviscerate.

Just a reminder, this damage is based on 12 attribute points into axe mastery, and while hitting a target with 60 armor. No armor penetration, and no weapon damage added in.

For every cleave, you need 4 strikes of adrenaline.
For every Eviscerate, you need 7 strikes of adrenaline.

22 damage:1 cleave,4 adrenaline----34 damage:1 eviscerate,7 adrenaline
44 damage:2 cleaves,8 adrenaline------68 damage:2 eviscerate,14 adrenaline
66 damage:3 cleaves,12 adrenaline-102 damage:3 eviscerate, 21 adrenaline
88 damage:4 cleaves,16 adrenaline
110 damage:5 cleaves,20 adrenaline

As you can see, in the time it took eviscerate to hit 3 times, cleave has already hit 5 times. and has done more damage. while it's only 8 more damage as shown abov, that's only showing 5 cleaves, think about how quit that charges, yo will be doing alot more DPS(damage per second) with cleave than you will be doing with eviscerate. Throw in a deep wound skill, and you are all set. you will be more effective with cleave than eviscerate. Just because i'm bored, im going to go ahead nd fill it in a bit more to show what happens.

--------Cleave-----------------------------Eviscerate---------
132 damage 24 adrenaline-------------136 damage 28 adrenaline
154 damage 28 adrenaline-------------170 damage 35 adrenaline
176 damage 32 adrenaline-------------204 damage 42 adrenaline
198 damage 36 adrenaline-------------238 damage 49 adrenaline
220 damage 40 adrenaline-------------272 damage 56 adrenaline
242 damage 44 adrenaline-------------306 damage 63 adrenaline
264 damage 48 adrenaline-------------340 damage 70 adrenaline
286 damage 52 adrenaline-------------374 damage 77 adrenaline
308 damage 56 adrenaline-------------408 damage 84 adrenaline
330 damage 60 adrenaline-------------442 damage 91 adrenaline
352 damage 64 adrenaline-------------476 damage 98 adrenaline
374 damage 68 adrenaline----->>>>>>510 damage 105 adrenaline
396 damage 72 adrenaline-------------544 damage 112 adrenaline
418 damage 76 adrenaline-------------578 damage 119 adrenaline
440 damage 80 adrenaline-------------612 damage 126 adrenaline
462 damage 84 adrenaline-------------646 damage 133 adrenaline
484 damage 88 adrenaline-------------680 damage 140 adrenaline
506 damage 92 adrenaline-------------714 damage 147 adrenaline
528 damage 96 adrenaline-------------748 damage 154 adrenaline
550 damage 100 adrenaline<<<<<<<---782 damage 161 adrenaline

Notice the points where you use 100 strikes of adrenaline. while on cleave you did 550 damage, with eviscerate it takes 105 to do 510 so technically, at 100 strikes of adrenaline, Eviscerate only did 476 damage. Do you see the difference? it gets more prominant the more times you hit. So obviously it's based around strategy. if your warrior is using sprint, or cripple of some sort, you can stay on your opponent alot longer, being able to do alot of damage. in that circumstance, i reccomend cleave. while if you on't have a cripple, or a slow hex, or a speed boost, i reccomend doing the most damage as fast as possible. in that case, i reccomend eviscerate. Have fun Deciding on what to use! It's all based around opportunity.


P.S. I have WAY too much free time on my hands.

Except for the fact that you will hjave to carry cleave and dismember. I can carry cleave and execution strike or penetrating. THen the damage scale gets tipped right back in Eviscerates favour.

Plus because of the no adren gain from each adren skill used (-1 then +1) each cleave takes effectively 5 hits to charge, and each evicerate takes 8. Also cleave will slow down charge up of other adren skills slightly more too. So evicerate almost straight up beats cleave for the +damage alone.

Healing Hands: It's cheap and can be cast on yourself, and those're probably the only reasons it's elite. Of course, it also doesn't heal as much and is more conditional than Healing Seed, so I don't think they did anything to change it to fit with its elite status when it went elite. I mean, look at shielding hands; Is it really so much worse than Healing Hands that it shouldn't be elite as well in comparison? Long recharge, minimal effect, but works on ALL damage. Can be cast on anyone, including yourself.

Shield of Deflection: Up to 25% more block rating than Guardian, so about 50% more effective. Up to 11 seconds duration, so x2 longer. Working up from Guardian, multiply it by 2 for the added duration, another 50% for the boosted effectiveness, and toss on the Elite status along with +25 armor. It's balanced with Guardian well. Don't think I see people using Guardian often though.

Unyielding Aura: Cheap, fast-casting perma-rez. Well, for me. ~90% of the time, it seems to bug when I cancel it and leave the person alive. On a totally different tangent, is anyone aware that this and Vengeance on a person in The Crag when a person dies means the enemy gets no points? In my experience anyway.

Word of Healing: Bleh. Well, it heals 1 more than orison without the condition being met. The strange implementation of the bonus healing is annoying and dissapointing. It heals more, and CAN conditionally heal a whole lot more than orison for the same price. Balanced through limiting the use of it to other allies and the Elite tag. With the Elite tag, you'd think they'd make their method of checking to see if your heal meets the condition a little, I don't know, more sensical?

Glyph of Renewal: Um, pass. Not useable often enough, and not many spells that you'd want to use this on aren't elite. I have NEVER managed to fit this skill in to a build efficiently, and I've tried it with just about everything else.

Mind Burn: They tagged on double burning duration as its bonus effect. It's not cheap, it's conditional, and it causes exhaustion though. Considering that many other fire spells do comparable damage, and do NOT cause exhaustion, I'd rather grab Immolate and forget about it. What gets me is that this is the ONLY fire elite. Where're our other options?

Mind Shock: Lightning damage and a knockdown, nothing amazing about that in the lightning line. The damage is comparable to Lightning Orb and Chain Lightning, neither of which cause knockdown. On the other hand, Lightning Orb recycles faster and doesn't cause exhaustion, and Chain Lightning hits multiple targets, and neither are conditional. Aside from that, it's not spectacular enough to give up the energy management you're going to need if you're running air.

Mind Freeze: Totally clueless as to what went through their heads with this one. It's conditional, the slow duration is the standard slow for ice spells, which isn't even as good as Frozen Burst's length, it causes exhaustion, and the damage isn't all that impressive. The only thing it has going for it is its 10 cost, but for how bad it is, I'd still have to think hard if it cost 5.

Honorable Mentions:
Thunderclap: Like Spinal Shivers, it takes everything you've got to maintain it. Unlike Spinal Shivers, it's elite, and you can't also use energy management. What really irks me about this skill is the knockdown timer wall I seem to hit; With knockdowns, you can chain them, but if you chain them too fast, it doesn't look like it takes effect. A hammer warrior friend of mine mentioned it when I maintained Dark Fury for him- He was getting knockdowns so rapidly (Think he was also using warrior-based adrenal boosts) that he could use them one right after the other, and if he used them too fast, there'd be no effect.
I've experienced similar with Thunderclap. Hitting an already knocked down foe doesn't provide any additional effect, but still drains your energy =\

Keystone Signet : Mantra of Inscriptions for a 40-50% reduction in your signet recharges. Keystone Signet lets you spike them immediately after. Unfortunately, because it's elite, I'm not sure what exactly you're supposed to be spiking. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is the lack of options in signets. With only 8 skill slots, if you bring both, you have 6 remaining. Toss in Rez signet and you have 5. Signet of Weariness, Leech Signet, and Signet of Humility are the only useable mesmer ones (Midnight also being Elite). If you want to remain pure in signets for the full effect of the skills, your only choice is probably Monk, for Bane Signet and Purge Signet. (Signet of Judgement being elite) Or, to go mo/me so you can make use of Signet of Devotion spam.

Aura of the Lich: Doesn't work as described. It halves damage, but not direct healing. It'd take 200 damage to hurt a person under AotL 100, and only 100 healing to heal that damage. It's like a Life Barrier for yourself, and necromancers DO have skills capable of healing themselves, if there's no monk around.

Escape: It's expertise linked, a run buff, and has the effects of tactics stances, which often only last 11 seconds at most, whereas this one hits 17 at its peak. It DOES have an obscene recharge time though. I'd rather have Whirling Defence and Oath Shot.
Practiced Stance: Might as well just call this, Choking Gas Extender. You can use Tiger's Fury immediately after applying choking gas to get the full effect of it. Is it worth it? Probably not.
Melandru's Resilience: Counteracts most of the effects of degenerative conditions AND yields bonus energy gain. Using Draw Conditions pretty much negates the bonus energy you get from Melandru's Resilience though, and that makes it a tad too conditional to be useful often.
Punishing Shot: Damage while you interrupt I'd imagine. Distracting Shot does negligable damage, although its additional effect of adding 20 seconds recharge timer is definitely worth the skill slot, energy, and minimal damage. However, to say there aren't times where it's recharging and the opponent is using a skill that you want to interrupt is rediculous.
Ferocious Strike(ha!): Beastmaster skill; The adrenaline is almost assuredly not worth it, but the energy gain is. 10 energy with enough beast mastery, and it costs 2-3 with enough expertise. 7-8 extra energy every 8 seconds is about the equivalent of 3 more energy regeneration, and you get some extra damage out of the bargain.


Cleave: Not really the warrior type, so I don't know; I'd guess it's because it's useable more frequently.

Defy Pain: Strength-linked temporary health and armor bonus, and with an attack speed buff, using a sword or axe, you should be able to keep it up almost the entire fight, making you a slightly better tank.

Flourish: Don't have it, still procrastinating my ranger/warrior [only ranger skills, just unlocking with warrior side], but I'd guess you could chain use energy-based weapon attacks instead of adrenaline, or perhaps you could stick it on a ranger to recharge bow attacks faster? o.o With expertise, most of them aren't too expensive anyway.

Warriors Endurance: I'm not sure exactly, but I'd imagine it's intended to be used with a lot of energy based skills chained together. Unfortunately, since it's strength-linked, nobody but a warrior can use it really, and since it's elite, there's not much you'd want to use with it. On a Protector paladin, recasting Aegis for the party using a Zealous sword hilt for energy management was already easy. I very rarely got to cast Shield of Regeneration, as it was either unneeded, or I didn't have the energy. Unfortunately, I wouldn't have it if I had Warrior's Endurance, and I'm not sure what I'd use with it then, since I need to stick with single second cast skills with 10 second downtimes or more if I want a reasonable damage output.

[Not that I am not disappointed by some of these skills especially]

Exactly. Energy Drain, Offering of Blood, Melandru's Resilience. Good monk energy options.

And Cleave, Flourish, Warrior's Endurance all work too.

it comes back to the adren cost. 4 vs 7. for similar damage, or even slightly lower depends on skill sets, I still will take the 4 adren cost skill over the 7 one.

more frequent hits = less of a change of the target getting healed before I kill him.
or, if the glass is half empty, more frequent hits = more chances of outputing that damage before I die.

Are you sure it doesn't halve healing? It doubled the effectiveness of regen and degeneration, so it pairs lovingly with Life Siphon, making it actually helpful - after all - 3 siphons running may only be -9 pips out there but it's the equivalent to +18 pips for the necro. Unfortunately, it also thus doubles the effectiveness of poison and such, but necros are well equipped to deal with conditions anyway. With the NR environment it is not worth using however.

Its also nice to use with life stealing blood magic skills because that remains unchanged.

Aura of the Lich appears to be bugged (healing does not appear to be halved), but I still probably wouldn't take it outside of arenas. Practiced Stance is solid, but there are often better elites. Melandru's Resilience/Draw Conditions is a combo I've seen in place of Martyr. If for some reason you decided to run a beastmaster, Ferocious Strike is a very solid elite. Cleave is good (esp. if you've already got a teammate doing Deep Wounds, and keep the Strength bonus in mind), and I've seen some energy-based-attack builds that can use Flourish or Warrior's Endurance.

On the other hand, Dwarven Battle Stance, Plague Signet, and Skull Crack...

None of the elite skills are that fantastic; they just adds a bit of spice or extra power to your build.

Cleave is the only one I can agree on: that spell needs to be fixed.

Skull Crack is a great skill if you know how to use it. Wait till a monk is casting a healing seed which has a long cast time then use it. Now you can interupt the monk easily for a while. Dwarven Battle Stance also has it uses.

Why do you need to bring a deep wound when someone else is?

Also consider on Aura of the Lich that since it halves your max HP, it makes a lot of those questionable "Sacrifice X% max HP to deal Y damage" skills worth more, as the sacrifice gets cut. Or combine AotL with Demonic Flesh to give yourself the half damage with pretty close to full normal HP.