Skill changes?

Meh... thought you said it avoided the nerfbat... I'm tired.

Actually you would need to look at the time from the first spell impact of when to start the timer. It doesnt change a whole lot, but also use say archane echo with lightning orb instead of being forced to change skills. Being able to chain orbs would be akin to a ranger being able to chain damage via preperation+enchantments+attack skills+spirits+bowstring ect. The difference is that the ranger damage still fits under protective spirit, while the elementalist does not and yet all the "bonus" damage the ranger inflicts does not also get applied to AL resistance. That needs to get adjusted to where either the ranger adds all the damage together (see strength of honor) versus dealing in seperate pieces (see the conjure series). I have also noticed that the seperate pieces can ignore things like iron mist. There is also the question of the difference in refresh timers between ranger skills and others, but that is a different discussion really as there really isnt an "aftercast" involved with attack skills.

As far as your rhetorical question is concerned, there is gale, but it does reduce dps, but can be used to create limited knockdown lock, even though it is counterable.

True, but rangers can work around that via aoe arrow attack options like kindle, which needs to be stopped. There are also fewer methods that stop ranged attacks specifically. There is no ward against projectiles, for instance. The first and last time i tried to use swirling aura, i had the luck to get a ranger with kindle not liking the way i looked and every attack the ranger fired landed .

You would still need to take it in the context of the trap implication. Yeah one firestorm wouldnt do much, but what about 7-10 in the same location? Yeah the areas of effect are not that big (traps feel bigger when the timer runs out and self trigger), but the effect would be similar in application. The idea is kinda silly as that many spell animations in that kind of density could lag people out like spirit spam did, but something does need to be done about the persisting spells of that nature that dont bypass armor, have a meaningful side effect, have massive cast times, have massive recast times, and other drawbacks from use when the target can just walk out of the aoe.

The problem with zealots fire, is that you are doing something else and getting the bonus effect of damage from each cast. Considering the duration of zealot's fire combined with the uptime versus downtime, it should be more flare like scaled . In other words, single target affected (no aoe) and probably half the damage it does currently as it is a triggered effect similar to the conjure line, but not dependant on the target to actually do anything. I am still rather shocked that smiting also got the damage shields and balthazar's aura instead of an elementalist. Those kinds of things is something i would have expected from the fire elementalist line as it is almost completely devoid of enchantments/hexes.
That sounds more like a targeted mesmer buff to me under the fast casting attribute.
Ether renewal is retardedly overpowered when used with the monk lines of spells. It is fine in any other format. I think that is more of a reflection on the power monks weild personally.

and there were no buffs to enchantment removal... let the healing balls begin

Ensign did look at the amount of time it took from Lightning Orb impact to Lightning Strike hit. 2 seconds: Lightning orb hit -> Lightning orb aftercast (.75 sec) -> Lightning Strike activation (not instant, rounded to .25 sec) -> lightning strike cast time (1 sec) -> lightning strike hit. Two seconds.

Rangers don't get owned by prot spirit, but they have their own counter from shielding hands (which absolutely castrates the separate small damage packets, but minimally affects big elementalist hits). A "fix" to that isn't the answer.

A straightforward fix is making elementalist spells/spellcasting buffable, like how warriors/rangers are (and I'm not counting crap like MoR or TC, though those certainly help). Personally I'd like to see some more creative options, though, in making elementalist damage dealing not hinge on only straight direct damage spellcasting.

I see no problems with having some Energy Storage linked casting speed buff (well, as long as you have a corresponding nerf to stupid crap like Ether Renewal. And no, this imaginary casting speed buff shouldn't be elite.).

What, you advocate some nerf as to how Monks use their spells rather than rebalancing one elite?

The only problem with that, is there is dead time for one job, while there is none in the "rounded" time frame.

The problem is that is the only method that does large damage and small packets. Even so, the overall loss is more like hitting a target with life bond against caster AL targets, opposed to a 160ish spell or damage effect getting chopped down to the 40pt range and being unavailable for longer periods of time than the next bow attack. The same could be said for the heavy hitting, large arenalin cost skills. Rangers have the luxury of relativly low cost, quick use/reuse, and flexible attack range.

I dont see any mechanics currently that would support something like that, unless you are suggesting that elementalists start getting stances or shouts. The glyphs are fairly unique, but they are far too limited, uptime consuming, and non-stackable. The best you could hope for would be cross elemental synergy ala lightning touch, but that particular skill is horribly underpowered. I would expect something like that to be parallel to healing touch in strength, if not greater considering how conditional it is, the energy cost, and the recharge time.
It doesnt fit the theme, while ether prodigy, renewal, and restoration do. This is the same premis as to why chain lightning was toned back.
The thing is, monks using ether renewal has jack and squat to do with ether renewal being what it is. It is elementalists taking advantage of the lack of down time, low cost, and combined with a wide selection of enchantments that inflate the skill beyond what it would do with any other job combination. Monk skills have no direct parallel or opposition for use time, effect, reuse time, and cost. This is why they are able to be abused by the elementalist and is the reason for the problem. This is why cross class balancing has to occur as well as balancing within the same class between different skill lines.

Everyone knows fire was (and still is) underpowered in PvP, BUT it's the best ele attribute in PvE, and now it becomes even more powerfull.

It's just stupid that Anet only cares about PvP, and doesn't even think about PvE at all.

And of course all ele's will be switching to Fire when more PvE content comes out with not-fire-immune monsters...

The new energy cost for meteor doesnt matter much, the more limiting factors it has is the cast time and recast times. I never had to worry about exhasution as a fire elementalist, due to how slow cycling their spells were, compared to say air for instance.

Also, 1 knockdown delivered after 3s cast time, with fireball damage is not that super for disrution or damage.

They did up the efficency though and gave slightly more damage per second with the fireball change. This really isnt something to complain about.

Hell a ?/e using malestorm powered with glyph of energy has more disruption power than meteor and it is ready just as often.

Well I used the time from when the first spell finishes casting to the time when the second spell finishes casting - the actual cast time of the first spell was discounted completely. I didn't consider the flight time of a Lightning Orb though that could be taken into account - I guess I'm too used to doing that particular spike with Chain Lightning to think about it.


You could do that but it makes the spike a whole lot weaker because of the longer casting time of Lightning Orb - 280 damage over 2.75 seconds or 101 Spike DPS. If you can even consider something that lasts almost 3 seconds a spike - a Monk has to be asleep for him not to respond to the second Orb.


Well, no, not really, because while Warrior and Ranger hits come in either simultaneously (from damage buffs) or in very quick succession (less than a second after the previous hit), the Elementalist chains have extremely obvious gaps in the damage. A Quick Shot guy lands 5 arrows in 2 seconds. The Eviscerate -> Executioner's spike doesn't even take a full second. Orb followed by Orb takes 2.75 seconds, which gives you plenty of reaction time. I treat two seconds as a general maximum for a real damage spike, after that you're going back and forth with the Monks.


All the damage stacks get reduced by Shielding Hands, though. Different offense, different solutions. I really don't see a problem.


Sure, recharges are a different discussion that I wasn't looking at, but we could and the Elementalist will get smoked. I was looking solely at short-term damage spikes (under two seconds), and in that realm Elementalists really don't distinguish themselves even if intuitively they would.


Which is one of only two Air spells that I've used in the last two months. The other is Windborne Speed which has some fun utility on Relic maps.


Sure, Rangers are the hardest of the 3 attack classes to hate out - sure there's stuff like Aegis and Guardian and Shielding Hands and all that gets used, but there's your Protection Monk. Not a lot you can do beyond that. Stuff like Shields Up gets heavily nullified by Kindle or Greater Conflag or elemental bowstrings. Then you have stuff like Incendiary Arrows which interrupts even if it's blocked or evaded, or Ignite Arrows which doesn't care about anything, really. Your damage options are just great.


What about 7-10 copies of an actually good skill in the same location?


Well the option right now is just 'relegate that skill to PvE', but I can't say I exactly like that option when the mechanic in question is a pretty big part of the Fire line.


Well, hey, we could sit here and talk about what we think the skill *should* do, but it doesn't do what we think it should do, it does what it says it does in game. What it does happens to be downright retarded. Now the people who balance this here game here decided, for whatever reason, that the skill wasn't a problem, so I guess they're fine with Smiting being the best element. So at least for the time being Zealot's Fire needs to be a key argument in any Elementalist debate because that skill alone beats out just about everything that an Elementalist can dish out with its own skills.


Could be, but they probably wouldn't put it anywhere because it steps on the Fast Casting attribute too much. To have the same kind of effect as Tiger's Fury you'd need a stance that gave the equivilent of around 9-10 levels of Fast Casting, and even then things wouldn't catch up because of that pesky aftercast. With aftercasts you'd need something like a level 20 FC equivilent to make Air Spike hit as hard as a Ranger. Yeah, right, don't see that coming.



You added a bunch of extra words there. Ether Renewal is retardedly overpowered. The only thing you need to make it overpowered is a second enchantment so that you get back 10 energy per cast. With another enchantment on your character and spells with a one second cast time, you're getting back ~60 energy per cast of Ether Renewal. Add another enchantment (say, running Conjure + Attunement + Ether Renewal), and you're getting back ~90 energy per cast. Every 30 seconds. Hi, I'm retarded.

Perhaps the point is that Ether Renewal sucks with Elementalist skills, because Elementalist skills are overcosted, underpowered, slow, and on long cooldowns that give them no synergy with Ether Renewal. That I can agree with. Ether Renewal is going to be overpowered in any build that can run multiple enchantment and some fast casting spells. It's really that simple. That the Elementalist can't take advantage of this in any meaningful way is just yet another knock on the class.

Peace,
-CxE

Im not advocating that pure air gank is still effective strategy for the meta game. Im simply saying that air dmg is still good enough to be usable. for the sakes of example, in the last month of sB playing Tombs (before spirit spamming became FotM) we were using 2-3 air eles among other ways of dealing dmg. Even though most of the better teams at the time caught up with the strategy to counter air spikes our build was still very effective. Dummy targets + switching targets + aoe dmg (smite) opens opportunities for a successful spikes. As far as one-trick-ponny builds go, hey are all easy to counter whether you run eles, wars, or rangers.




Well lets take a look at LS dealing 85 dmg as in one of your examples. Energy cost of LS under AA will be 3 energy. If you Echo LS you will be able to do 170 dmg on a target with 60AL about every 5 seconds and it will only cost 6 energy, +5 energy from Echo. Considering that you are working with about 73-80 energy pool means that you have unlimited energy pool to simply spam this one spell. Now if you compare an air ele with 85 dmg LS to a warrior, air ele is gonna look insanely good. For one a prot monk can always tell who is going to be a target when playing against a warrior team. However, thats not the case with with ranged attacks, so monks can only response to dmg rather than preventing it a head of a time.

From my experience, people already bring counters to spike dmg including the ones you have mentioned.


In my opinion Chain wasnt all THAT GREAT before the nerf. While its a good "first spike" spell you simply couldnt keep up spamming it unlike Orb, thus making Orb more appealing for Echoing it in the long run.

I believe its the AoE ele spells should be tweaked to make them usable in high end PvP rather than single target spells that can add up a decent spike already.

I dunno, typically by the time the orb hits the aftercast has already sorted its self. I suppose the monks on the other team could predict who the orb in flight will strike.

There is a problem with arguing damage up front and reversing it into damage over time. In every instance in a rpg, typically damage up front takes a back seat to damage over time, while in virtually every other game the reverse is true because of how it nullifies potential damage over time. You outlined this problem earlier with scaling comments earlier.

Compare uptime versus downtime, then judge it against the overal effect against attacks that dont have less of a pause between hits. A better comparison would be to judge a spell hit like orb, that happens to get thrown out by rof, while a rapid chain of hits via physical means getting soaked into mark of protection. Even that comparison isnt all that great.

Which is essentially why elementalists are forced to do all their damage up front or not at all basically. It is partially also my angle against monks who are not forced to do all of their healing up front, or protection up front, so to speak, they only have to prevent that last of damage. They are limited by skill options and aftercast; even warriors have to wait for their big damage dealers. This is why i cant understand how people stated that rangers suck(ed) for so long prior to the previous NR change (not the current one).

Strange choice for windborn, i would have guessed armor of mist before that one. Better duration and defense, not as sustainable, but having to stop as often to use. Must have been a NR consideration.

I guess im the only one that sees a problem with that, oh well.

Overkill, but you get the idea. The way that particular skill, like others, is scaled very poorly.

I didnt expect apathy from you, as change can happen. I am just holding out the small hope that there is not some kind of religous angle involved with the design concepts here. Ive seen arguments elsewhere that would suggest that monks(clerics, priests whatever) should be all powerful, but they werent in other formats. You might have seen some of them before the ,"my character weilds the power of god" kind of thing trying to justify it. Fortunatly in this game one character cant do everything at the same time that is available to the character, but there are plenty of setups that do more than others with the same skill slots. Usually these are more of the multi-purpose style skills opposed to simple synergies.

Wouldnt that be like saying a skill under expertise that mimics expertise stepping on the toes of expertise? The class posessing the skill in this instance wouldnt gain much benefit from it, but could lend it to other classes. It would only really benefit necros and elementalists and perhaps the occasional restore life spell, but beyond that it would be rather marginal.

Or you could just take the bat back out again and give rangers something to really be upset about. That wouldnt be the best solution though considering the quantities monks are able to heal and prevent.


Hmm, i know you are just presenting an argument here, but unless you are running the "stupid" spells out of the elementalist line to power renewal through casts you arent getting those kinds of numbers. There are plenty of 2-5s casts and many of them cant be cast in a chain by themselves 5-60s recast time and some of them drop the top end of the pool down with exhaustion reducing the efficiency. At best you might break even depending on which lineup you are choosing to use for those 10-12 seconds renewal is active. That would be like trying to rate the attunements as retarded because they create some efficency out of rather ineffecient spells for around 60s depending on skill level. Only spell that really stands out to be a non-monk skill and spammable would be wastrels worry, but that ranks up there with flare. No, its the monk skills that break that particular one, most notably in conjunction with zealots fire, which you name off as the elementalist's element. Not only does it serve to feed the energy, but with every cast it helps to deal damage while some other effect is occuring.
Bypassing the frustration aspect of this section, but i believe there is a reason why diversion spam is more effective against the monk lines and while interuption is more effective against necros and eles. Yeah i know it can be worked around, but the target selection for the style of disruption is what is important.

Right, you soften up a bunch of targets using attacks with a lot of splash damage (smiting and conditions being some of the better ones), then fire off 'partial spikes' at those weakened targets, effectively one-hit killing them with a couple of orbs. I still like that strategy (albeit with Axe Warriors instead of Air Elementalists, no prot on a gank), and Elementalists are still decent in that strategy (it's a one hit kill, not a two hit kill), but what I'm not happy with is their uselessness outside of situations where you'd want to use more than one skill on a single target.


Numbers are a bit off here. Air Attunement will save you one energy on 5 energy skills, three on 10, five on 15, and 7 on 25. So LS will cost you, 4 per shot. Strike has a five second recharge and one second cast meaning the strike/strike combo goes off once every six seconds while the Echo is in effect, for 170 (proposed) damage every 6 seconds. That gives us a 170/6 or 28.3- DPS under Echo/Strike. For comparison, plain Sword hits are 25.6 DPS at 16 attribute, Axe hit are 26.6 DPS, Hammer 29.3, and Shortbow shots 20.5. These numbers are actually convenient, as 2 Lightning Strikes every 6 seconds is 8 energy per 6 seconds or exactly 4 pips of energy usage.

Would spending all of your base energy be worth dealing damage on par with the Tiger's Fury + Shortbow combo (30.7 DPS)? I wouldn't think so.


Which makes the first second or so of ranged damage more dangerous under target switching, but equally (less?) dangerous under enchantment removal. But I agree, ranged damage is fundamentally more dangerous than melee damage. Of course this is compensated by the sustainability of melee damage, in addition to it spiking harder than I'd even dare propose Elementalist damage spiking. Hence the need to get creative with secondary effects or diffuse damage or efficiency or, hell, anything to make me want to use these skills over Ranger or Warrior stuff.


The prepared teams already do, sure. Which is why I ask why the standard for elementalist spikes apparently operates around giving a fair chance to these naked targets that you never actually see anywhere. From where I'm sitting, a naked target should be simply blown away by a well coordinated set of Chains or Orbs, and players who have set up the minimum defenses, be they Wards or Spirits or Stances or whatever, should still be concerned about getting dropped if they slack off and fail to respond to the initial volley.


I didn't think it was really that great either, merely that it was a solid skill that, because of people being unprepared for it, made it the right tool to spike people out with. Now that it's gone we're left with stuff like Lightning Strike and Orb that, while certainly *playable*, I consider more as filler skills than anything that I truly want to play.


Agreed, and I think that buffing up AoE skills to make them PvP playable is fundamentally 'safe' - players can spread out to mitigate the damage heavily, and the AoE gives enough of an extra effect that the damage can be kept at 'fair' levels. Water is similarly in a good place because of all the secondary effects that come with it. Air is the one that I focus on, not just because it was a popular spike strategy for a while, but because it's the hardest one to figure out how to make fit in competitive PvP. Maybe it'll always be the one-hit kill line and nothing more - I guess there are worse fates given that there are ways to work one-hits on softened targets into several builds. If that's the case, though, it needs skills that are serious threats of one-hit killing targets, not the watered down, balanced away from one-hit-kill nukes that we have to work with now.


It's a bit over .5 seconds flight time at maximum range. Average that somewhere between point blank and max and you ~.25-~.35 seconds of average flight time, which do put the damage spike numbers up but it's still something comparable to what we've been discussing already. I don't want to discount flight time entirely, because it *does* make for a more effective spike at times, but it doesn't push Air over the top when compared with, say, Quick Shot spikers.


To an extent, sure. But you can figure that out just by looking at who they're facing when they start casting. There are other things to look at as well though to give you an idea, but generally teams aren't super spread out for the first couple volleys so they're just going to hit whoever they hit.


Sure, damage up front is always going to be preferable to damage over time so it gets kinda sketchy when you start trying to convert one into another. Still, for the purposes of very short timeframes I think you can make a comparison - not in terms of long term DPS, as that doesn't apply to spikes, but in terms of 'how much damage can I cram into 1-2 seconds.' That's the length / reaction time that you usually have to deal with so anything you can cram into that can be considered a 'spike'.


So they need to be designed one way or another. The either need to distinguish themselves better up front or over time so they don't fall into the ugly two-hit trap they're in now. They either need more damage or more efficiency - the latter is going to step on the toes of other classes too much, so, from here, it looks like harder spikes at a higher cost would make more sense for the line.


Windborne Speed is target ally, not target self. The guy carrying the relic doesn't carry Windborne himself - an Elementalist on the team tosses it on him as he runs by. It's a great tactical spell - you can effectively toss Sprint on any of the other seven members of your team as needed, cheaply and at the cost of a single skill slot. In fairness the skill requires excellent teamwork and outstanding field awareness, and isn't a must-run by any means, but it's a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for.


No, I see a problem alright, I just kinda rambled there. *laughs*. That a lot of supposed Ranger-counters are simply ineffective (Shields Up being dodged by elemental weapons in particular) is an issue and one that I hope they address. On the other hand, though, a good deal of Ranger hate was hex based, and that got hedged out by Nature's Renewal. While I still see NR being used by Ranger-heavy teams, hexes that shut down Rangers might have an opportunity to make a comeback now. So yeah, the lack of options for dealing with Ranger teams is an issue, but not one that I can really get worked up about because there are counters available.


It wasn't anger as much as frustration at this round of nerfings missing a couple balance problems that I consider to be *blindingly obvious*. Zealot's Fire at level 12 deals 37 AoE damage on top of whatever the spell effect normally is, at practically no energy or time cost. It's such a good effect that people are looking not to add it to their normal spells, no, they're using a skill that oftentimes does absolutely nothing, just to get the bonus effect.

Just imagine if Divine Boon worked the way Zealot's Fire did:

Prophet's Broken-Ass Boon:
Enchantment Spell. 10 Energy, 1 Second Cast, 30 Second Recharge
For 60 seconds, whenever you use a skill on an ally, that ally is healed for 25-61 points. Linked to Divine Favor.

Think every Monk in the world would use that skill? I do too. And I think Zealot's Fire is *even better*.

*ahem*


I don't think it's a religious angle at all. I think the reasons why Elementalists are built the way they are is readily apparent - look at the general populace of Guild Wars. A majority of players stand in Firestorm, go into battles unprotected, and can't make a high damage Warrior or Ranger to save their lives. As far as the vast majority of Guild Wars players are concerned, *Elementalists are high damage characters*. They dish out one hit kills and bring down Meteor Showers while Warriors flail at each other with Healing Breeze and Gladiator's Defense, and Rangers pluck away with their Storm Bow and normal attacks.

The problem as I see it was a failure to account for growth. Warriors and Rangers are being increasingly optimized with skill combinations and attack buffs to make them into ever-evolving killing machines. Elementalists have changed very little since January - max your elemental attribute and cast the best spells *in sequence*. So while the Elementalist might be balanced against the now-ancient Warriors and Rangers of the late 2004 alpha test, they are just downright awful against their modern brethern, with little to no room to get better.


Well that was my problem with a fast casting skill under Fast Casting - it isn't going to work too well on a Mesmer secondary since they can't exactly pump Fast Casting. Having a skill under an attribute that does exactly the same thing as that attribute - well, hey, I guess they have those in the abstract (weapon skills that add damage), but I'm not about to rally around them as a good idea.

I can see them approaching the problem from other standpoints, though, either other mechanics (cutting down on aftercasts) or just putting slight twists on skills (spells cast faster, but take more energy / longer to recharge). Things like that keep the primary attribute 'unique' while still letting the practical effects through to be shared.


Not going to happen - it's too systematic a problem that can't be nerfed with a single skill change. What I'd hope for is a series of buffs to bring most Elementalist skills up to the power level of Fireball, then an expansion that introduces metamagical concepts that'll let you make an Elementalist fly.


I'm not even, really. 30/60/90 might require a bit of a stretch, but 25/50/75 for 15/40/65 net is not only perfectly reasonable but was fairly common until Nature's Renewal was fixed.

With Conjure Lightning and Air Attunement up, Ether Renewal -> Orb -> Strike -> Chain -> Orb -> Strike pays for all of those spells cast, and nets you another 30 energy in the process, on top of whatever regen you normally had. Repeating that process is going to net you upwards of six pips of regen. That's not even under maximized usage - just look at what the Protective Bond and Smiting builds do with Ether Renewal to see just how sickening that skill can be. It's ridiculous under casual usage, and just gets better from there.


Right, when the correct rating is that these skills are trash because they only help you cast Elementalist skills. The power of Ether Renewal is that it gives you retarded amounts of energy to use on good spells.


You don't need to have a single fast cast spell with no recharge to use with Ether Renewal. You just need a set of 1-2 second cast time spells with reasonable recharges. The Smiting Monk might just mash on Draw Conditions, but an Ether Renewal based Protection Monk uses Ether Renewal into RoF into Aura of Restoration into Protective Spirit into another RoF into Mend Ailment into Armor of Earth into you get the point. As long as skills with fast cast times are good (and they will continue to be), then Ether Renewal will continue to have its place.


Yeah, that build is dumb. But it isn't that build alone that makes Ether Renewal overpowered. It just takes an already brokenly-abusive energy engine and pushes it up to plaid.

Peace,
-CxE

I'm pretty used to the wizard vs rogue debate in terms of dps but eles vs warriors isn't really that different. I've always felt the elementalist role damagewise was to be a bit below the maximum melee potential, but on par with archery with much better burst damage. Melee has to put themselves into a much more dangerous enviroment as opposed to eles/rangers so they deserve the best potential dps to a single target.

The major elementalist advantage however (over rangers in particular).. should come from their Area Effect spells. If eles were given a much stronger AoE game in GW I think they'd have better uses. Right now I don't think the Ele AoEs are remotely close to being the threat they should be, damagewise. The Ele PBAoEs are pretty good but the target based AoEs/Rains are downright terrible other than the ones with good side-effects. The damage is pathetic, the cast time/recast times are pathetic, they're just bad. Right now as a warrior sometimes I just stand in rains because I really don't give a shit, they do nothing and I'd rather just kill the guy than run out and do something else. That should NEVER be the case, if you stand in a firestorm for more than 3 reps you should be feeling the effects because it should be doing way more than a single target nuke.

A few ways I think to fix ele AoEs are to make them do pitiful to moderate damage to the selected target, but anyone around the target gets hit HARD. That makes sure the hard hitting aoes can't just be used as a single target spike and thus can be given unique energy cost/cast time/recast numbers and whatnot. Increase the AoE radius (especially on rains) some maybe to ward size range perhaps? Damage on rains needs to be buffed, right now they just don't invoke any fear at all. I feel that rains should be strong enough to create like.. a ghetto blockade that says you shouldn't run through that without getting raped (sorta like those ether wards in ring of fire I guess.)

Eles should beable to sorta control the movement of the battlefield and they definately should have the power to demolish anyone who wants to pile up their whole team within the radius of 1 ward. It is sad that right now I'm more worried about balthazaar's aura/zealots than I am ele aoes.

Even if they start giving elementalists stronger up front spells, you know they are going to be countered by a 25ish cost and a 5 second cast (or more) time with a 30-60 second refresh and even then it would probably barely mirror the overall effect of a word of healing, which would probably just get abused even further by skills like prot spirit. Elementalists shouldnt be one shot wonders either. This is part of the problem with all the elementalists lines. Sure a couple of them are good, but the elementalists is forced to wait a long time before they can use them again and are typically rather vulnerable while they do compared to every other class in the game. The aftercasts never bothered me as much as the overly long cast time and refresh times.

Here is the box, here is ensign outside the box. Doh, my bad. The duration for that spell is still on the short side for my taste, but it can be easily run by a non-elementalist primary, just like the 4 air attribute points used for gale to always work.

Sure you could hit him with things like blurred vision and spirit shackles, but there is not a whole lot more than that in the hex department and even then those arent that hard to keep down. Actually only spirit shackles would be close enough to ranger specific.

I am starting to see a pattern here. The pattern is that elementalist skills are bad, but ether renewal shines with good (read monk) skills. I believe this is what i stated earlier. With your first example, you can do that with a minimal 10% enchantment wrapping upgrade. If you are running any other element line, it would require the use of flare, stone daggers, or ice spear in order to gain similar efficency. Even with the surplus energy you are looking at a lightning strike followed by an orb shortly there after and whatever the other non-res skill in the bar happens to be followed by alternating orb and strike. Like attunements, that kind of gain is not what id call overpowered considering the options left available after the renewal cycle.

Looking at the other lines for the "good spells" you're left with a buff bot necro doing something to the effect of renewal->order of pain->dark fury->dark pact->order of pain. Which works with a 20% enchantment upgrade and the healing aspect from renewal is just as useful as the energy regen and probably more valuable due to the life sacrifies involved. Yeah there would be almost no time to do anything else due to the duration of the spells involved in the chain making the other 3 skill slots fairly pointless in the build and only there for emergencies. *oops on the vampire bit*

For a mesmer it would be something like renewal->diversion->shame->arcane conodrum followed by using whatever surplus was available to power the next diversion. This still uses over half the bar and only allowing for buffs in the remaining slots to power renewal with (ignoring teamate support of course) and like the necro is built to a very specific purpose.

Then there is the overly abusive monk builds that make the aforementioned look silly in comparison. The parity between those styles is not even close for the same kind of balance conversation. The necro version would still have health issues if aura of restoration wasnt used and possible energy issues via disruption, while the mesmer example i feel mesmer primaries would do better by being able to react rather than try to spam due to fast casting. Also, stating that the total energy regain possible is out of line by making the ~6 pip comparison doesnt really wash either as prodigy, while having side effects, does a regen of 4, the damage is removed by an orison or aura of restoration (chain casting implied), it lasts longer (26-30 seconds 12-16 skill + wrapping), and refreshes every 5 seconds opposed to 30 seconds for renewal. So, if you dont have to spam it the exaustion will do nothing and the only large hurt from it will come if you didnt have to cast/arent in danger anyway. The two do parallel each other, so if one is out of balance both of them are. Yeah it doesnt fit with a healing ball team, but whatever again monk skills throwing the balance idea out. When the only real unqie part of the elementalist line lies within manipulating the energy bar for beneficial gain, that happens to compliment the large energy pool, is the point you might as well begin scrapping the class entirely as it would be just a high energy pool clone of one of the others leading to longer streaches of downtime.

** double oops forgot one thing
There are plenty of skills that help a warrior that dont make alot of sense to run on a warrior primary. It is really only rangers that have the freedom to pick and choose how and what to do, due to expertise efficiency and a large number of self augmentations already within the class. Preperation, stances, spirits, and attack skills, the only thing that is missing are enchantments.

Your argument may make some sense in a PvE environment, but in PvP all classes are in an equal amount of danger more or less at the start, with warriors given higher inate armor to compensate for the fact they must close with the enemy before being able to dole out damage. However once the battle starts, all of the squishier targets are in more danger than your hardened ones. This isn't some silly computer ai you are dealing with, content on pounding away at the first target that comes into range. Human opponents will specifically concentrate their firepower on whatever target of oppurtunity arises whose removal will cause the great harm to your team. In other words that mesmer/elementalist/monk/necro of yours is going to be hit first and hit hard.

This is one of the reasons why conditions are around, allowing you to disable the more armored targets, of course this being easily removed most of the time.

So no, Elementalists should not be below warrior damage. Elementalist in this game, from taking a look at their skill set tries to be consistent top rated damage at the cost of being grossly inefficient. But as Ensign pointed out they simply aren't.

AoE spells are used more for disruption rather than straight out damage in this game (Meteor Showers and Maelstrom being the best of the bunch) and for area denial/punishment.

Ok I was too vague with what I said, I assumed too much. Warrior's have to put themselves in a much more dangerous enviroment in guild wars I basically meant --> you have to charge your opponents, you have to be in their wards, you have to be inside their pbaoe ranges in order to beable to attack, you have to beable to chase your opponent down. Guild wars takes care of this by having a large amount of skills that affect melee only as opposed to ranged damage. Warrior's have the highest potential but are kept in check by all the danger they have to put themselves into (in this case, the many melee only counters that exist). If a warrior is snared, he can't do any damage. If AoEs weren't so terrible in this game, someone standing inside their own firestorm or eruption or something should make warriors pay for doing so as well which is the main argument for me saying "putting yourself in danger in order to beable to do damage". Right now the only skill that seems to really beable to do that is balthazaar's aura but that's because it ignores armor (which means the damage is threatening enough) and can move around with the target. An ele isn't gonna care about BA on someone, he can just run off for a bit then blow his energy as soon as he's safe, losing not much potential dps, warrior on the other hand... every second he isn't doing shit counts (lack of adrenaline gain makes this worse.)

I don't know why I'm saying all this crap, all I'm saying is ranged damage is safer and less prone to being countered which it is.

People who espouse all of the warrior counters there are, seem to forget all of the wonderful anti caster abilities out there. Coupled with the fact that many Elementalist spells, especially the air and fire line all have 2+ second cast times making them painfully easy to interrupt, add that to grossly inefficient energy costs and elementalist are relatively the easiest class to counter while offering little other than second rate dps when compared to a dps build ranger or warrior.

Lets put it this way, if a warrior gets blinded or has a hex placed on him, say Soothing Images, or attacks a target with sympathetic visage on, etc. He loses a few swings, and/or adren, after which the condition or hex is removed or he switches his target. He can go back to dealing damage and building up adren (if he lost any).

However if an elementalist throws an lightning orb at a target that happens to be protected in some way (prot spirit, whatever) he just blew 15 energy for nothing. Worse yet if he gets interrupted, or fired through a hex that a mesmer dropped on him w/ fast casting, he just lost 15 energy and now suffers the effects of whatever the hex has on him. That is not even counting energy denial in this game, which may not seem to impact as heavily on the elementalist because of his larger energy pool, but once you start factoring the ridcoulous costs (and the near worthlessness of Attunements vs anti casters) of elementalists spells, they are in as much trouble as any other caster. While an elementalist can sit around building up energy, energy regens relatively slowly and enchantments and skills that increase regen or energy pale to the rate at which a warrior can build and rebuild up his adrenaline especially if has buffs that enable him speed that process up (Dark Fury, FGJ, Attack speed buffs, etc.)

The point im trying to make is, a warrior can be targeted with conditions that are easily removed or with hexes that have to remain on him to be effective, after which he can go back to doing his dps. While an elementalist can be completely shutdown preventing him from doing anything but fire his silly wand or staff.

Also to add - every second any damage dealing build isn't doing anything is a second wasted, so your point about elementalist being able to manuever around to avoid that BA doesn't count for much.

I said earlier that AoEs that do not hit a single target hard can be given unique energy cost/cast time/recast numbers, which means they should be much more efficient and cast much faster meaning much harder to interrupt. Anti-caster abilities are usable against 4 professions in the game, anti-melee is basically used against W primaries and R/Ws only for the most part. Lets not forget that there's methods to making your spells uninterruptable outside of a knockdown too. But yes eles need a buff to their damage dealing methods. I never said they were fine as is right now, I'm just saying they need a buff to their AoE/Rain lines instead of being single target nukers.


No not necessarily... a warrior has no drawbacks to attacking, he should be attacking at ALL times there's no reason not to (unless you are killing yourself by attacking because of like a hex). An ele on the other hand, is limited by his energy pool, this means he can run around, unload his damage in bursts, run around some more rebuilding his energy pool, unload his energy again in another burst, etc. This would be much easier to see if ele cast times weren't so terrible.

didnt take the time to fully read this entire thread,


but for those who say enchanters will rule us all, this isnt true.
there are many ways to counter enchanting heavy teams.

what wer are going to see are people actually taking advantage of the maps themselfs and using the terrain wisely to fit their teams needs.

what i like best about this patch is the use of wells can now be effectivly used in pvp.

well of suffering = -6 health pips for 30 seconds at high death magic.
thats 360 massive aoe dmg over time.

and at the same time, the use of well of power and well of blood to help your healing balls without the need of massive enchants.

a good team will allways be able to get their wells down.

if its not blackout + energy denail on opposing teams necro, its him being first target, and when he is rezed, kill em again.

Problem being is that all of the skills that make spell casting uninterruptable is the single fact that you are tacking on more energy and adding more casting time to elementalists dismal dps, casting time and gross mana cost. If you are going to use glyph of concentration for example, you are tacking on another 5 energy and 1 second to your cast time, plus the skill itself can be interrupted or distracted and then you are back to square one.

And the problem with buffing Elementalists by giving them "better" aoe spells is the mere fact that fire is supposed to be the main AoE line leaving the Air Line, which is purposely dedicated to single target nukng, behind. Unless you are to collaspe the skill lines into one or alter the purpose of the air line altogether.

Also the problem with giving Elementalist more aoes for damage is the mere-fact that human opponents simply aren't just going to stand in your aoe taking damage, which will restrict said spells to altar maps. Aoe spells are far more suited to a pve environment where the mob merely stands in one place taking full brunt of the aoe, in pvp you will need the elementalist to have powerful single target spells if they are to remain competetive damage wise.

The problem has already been said that the said "bursts" that elementalists can put out is already pitiful compared to what a ranger can spike for, much less a warrior, and neither nearly has a much downtime as the elementalist.

Yeah, they'll probably keep on giving the Elementalist more and more crap until the mindset about the class changes. No one gets excited by a 3 second cast time except the kiddies. Competitive players look at those and reject anything that doesn't have a potentially game-breaking effect. It's just an ugly cycle.


That's the biggest problem, definitely - a serious lack of depth. You only have 2, maybe 3 offensive skills worth playing per line, and the vast majority of those have recharges of 15 seconds or more - giving you lots of dead time to fill.

I'm not even talking about utility lines like Water which don't have a lot of offensive skills to begin with. Look at Fire Magic, for instance. You have a line with fourteen attack skills, yet you rarely if ever see a Fire Elementalist in PvP. Why? Well just look at what you have. You have 3 PBAoE attacks, two of which have you running around like a Warrior but not dealing nearly as much damage, and one that's really just a bad Symbol of Wrath and only works if you're standing in place tanking a bunch of melee guys anyway. Then you have the pseudo-PBAoE in Phoenix that's fine in PvE when you're trying to solo but in PvP is just a long casting joke. You have a couple of over time storms, neither of which deals useful amounts of damage, and while Firestorm is at least relatively cheap Searing Heat is a horrendous joke. Then you have Rodgort's Invocation, the Fireball with the seven billion second cast time. You have Flare, which is really just an energy intensive, slow, low damage version of a Ranger with normal bow attacks.

Of everything in that line, the only skills that you really *want* to use are Meteor Shower, because of just how scary that skill can be, and Fireball, because after all the buffs it's just efficient. Meteor is still acceptable, though the 'buff' really doesn't matter as the issue with that skill is the recharge. Immolate is still playable single target damage but it just isn't anything special - especially when you look at the new Fireball. So four playable skills in the entire line, plus a Conjure to fill in the blanks. Is that the foundation of a solid PvP build? I don't think so.


The aftercasts bother me because of what they do to the few fast skills that the Elementalist has. Just look at something like Strike or Orb without an aftercast - they're just great spells. But you tack on that .75 seconds to every single spell and it just slows everything down, while Warriors and Rangers blaze on ahead. Sure, the retarded cast and recharge times are are a bigger problem, but even if they make a skill that doesn't have those problems it slams into aftercast and gets neutered.


Warriors and Rangers share a lot of hex hate. I consider this a good thing, as flexible hate is better hate. Still, having something that viciously wrecks Ranger strategies, like Ward Against Melee does to Warriors, would be a nice failsafe.


My argument might be getting lost in the details. Here it is in simplest terms:

Ether Renewal is so good that you don't even really have to try to make it one of the best energy management skills in the game. If you actually do try and combine it with good, fast skills (like what the Monk has available), it is elevated to a brand new level of insanity that isn't even comparable to anything else in the game.


This isn't an argument specific to Ether Renewal. Energy management is better when it is combined with good skills. Most Elementalist skills are terrible, and good energy management skills won't help with that at all - combine good energy management with good spells, such as what the Monk has, and the whole just hums.


Ether Prodigy is realistically a 3.5 pip spell, as it does cost 5 to cast. On energy alone that makes it nothing special when compared with Offering of Blood (~3.2 pips @ 16) or Glyph of Energy (~3 pips). Of course then they started piling drawbacks onto it - the damage was never really an issue, but the Exhaustion pretty much kills it as an energy engine for Elementalists. An El/Mo with high Energy Storage is going to pretty much ignore the Exhaustion as a drawback, since he'd only cast it every 30 seconds or so, but for an Elementalist it pretty seriously hedges out any other Exhaustion skills.

So on some level it's yet another Elementalist energy management skill that's only really good when not used with Elementalist skills. How awful. It's really funny, too, because Exhaustion was added to the skill because it was a popular El/Mo Protector energy management option. It was a change that didn't nerf what it was supposed to nerf, but did destroy the skill for legitimate uses. Good job.

But I think the standard is clear - good, elite energy management skills do a bit better than 3 pips of regen. Ether Renewal does twice that without trying, and on something like an El/Mo Smiter or Protector it'll give in the neighborhood of 20 pips of regen, or more than you could even dream of spending. You have to balance skills around their grossest abuse, and, well, we know what Ether Renewal can do. Have fun.


Well given that one of the two is the most broken energy engine in the game, and the other is a piece of shit that no one runs, I think that this comparison is a *little* bit of a stretch. Take the 'per enchantment' clause off of Ether Renewal, and perhaps extend the duration to compensate. Then take Exhaustion off of Ether Prodigy so that the skill is at least on level with Offering of Blood / Glyph of Energy, and we can talk.

Oh, and for the record, I *would* run Flare in a build with Ether Renewal and 2 other enchantments. 50 energy every 30 seconds, plus free spam-casts of Flare, is an entirely acceptable use of two skill slots from where I'm sitting. Sure, spamming Flare sucks at 5 energy per cast, but when it has an energy cost of -10?

Peace,
-CxE

I don't think you're quite getting it... you're too fogged up by the fact that eles aren't good now, too cynical.

It's already understood ele dps is sub-par, if they're buffed a bit, it should be up to par so get that outa the way. Ok, yeah the problem with eles is their long cast times, easy to interrupt, yet you're worried about interrupting a 1 second non-spell (glyph)? What's next? At the rate you're going, you're gonna say there's gonna be a warrior out there to wild blow your anti-interrupt stances every time.

Ok, please get this whole PVE thing out of your head, no one gives a shit about PVE, I never was referring to PVE at all in my posts. PVE in this game is a joke and the people who actually play this game for the PVE are just casual players who use it to kill time since it has no monthly fee.

You can make AoEs strong enough to have an impact, I guess you really didn't even bother reading my first post, or were just too cynical about elementalists as a whole to comprehend it fully. If there were AoEs that have ward size radii, you think you're gonna be hitting a single target the majority of the time? Not saying there needs to be ward size rains because that'd be insane, but the target based direct damage AOEs like rodgorts invocation can be made to be weak to the target, but devastating to those around it. You can balance it to be moderate damage to a ward size range, to major damage to a much smaller radius.

Rains need to be more efficient and need to do more damage, but they should basically say "You better move or you'll pay". Right now only shower and maelstrom do that because of their side-effects, but they should say that because of their DAMAGE. The side effects should be a mere bonus. Looking at the damage/efficiency of most of the target based rains... eruption, searing heat, etc.. can't help but laugh at them. It's like these skills were balanced with PVE in mind when no one should really give 2 shits about it, this is not a PVE game. If they become stronger, the rains WILL find uses.



Just because their damage isn't as good doesn't mean what I said was wrong, they can still do that, while a warrior would be running away and thus not building any adrenaline at all and missing out on a solid chunk of potential damage due to not meleeing + no adren whereas an ele loses barely any. So the ele current spike potential isn't that good, but I said earlier their single target damage should be on par with rangers with their advantage coming from AoEs. Think for a second with the future elementalist in mind and not the current ok?

I disagree that the damage over time spells are useless in PvP; besides altar maps, there's lots of ways you can force people to stay in the area of effect for long durations. The problem is that even if you stand in the thing for the entire duration, the damage STILL sucks. Even when I was a newbie playing PvE I wasn't stupid enough to take something like Searing Heat. Speaking of which, the end effect on that is hilarious. If for some reason you're still there at the end you get an amazing 3 seconds of burning which basically amounts to it having another second of duration. If the thing did burning the entire time it was on the field of play I still wouldn't take it. These spells should HURT if you're unable or unwilling to leave the area. Meteor Shower is the only one that does.


And speaking of Elementalists not having any damage buffs, it's a sad irony that there are three Conjure spells that so nicely could have done that, and instead they're weapon skills sitting there insulting the Elementalist primary who can't use them for anything meaningful while the Warriors and Rangers who can get yet more damage.

The point about the glyph of concentration was the fact that elementalist spells already cost enough energy and take long enough to cast, now you want to tack on another 5 energy and another 1 second to casting? And a 1 second cast time is certainly interruptable. The final point being is the fact that you have to bring an extra skill just to make many of the elementalist skills usuable in is silly.

Your suggestion about DD AoEs is a fine idea, but would be tricky to balance, but if it were to be implemeted corrected it would be a nice addition to the fire line of elementalist spells. What about the air line?

Elementalists damage-wise should be top rated dps, exceeding any class or at the very least on par with the best, with their primary drawbacks being high energy costs (low endurance) , low defense and a lack of flexibility. At the moment all of the drawbacks are there but none of the dps.

Glyphs tack on 1.75 seconds, not 1 second. Makes most of them pretty useless, really. I have been and still am of the opinion that they need to be .25 second cast skills with .75 second aftercasts. At least then they aren't huge time hogs.

Peace,
-CxE

Heh, you basically outlined a build that i run occasionaly in random arenas just to see if i can make it work. The only thing missing out of it is the situational phoenix use for the anti-spammer combination shower casts. Phoenix lands as the first meteor lands from shower, which is a sad commentary of how long it takes for the first meteor to hit and cause the spell to do anything. It is beatable and not godly by any streach of the imagination even if you try to make it more durable with renewal(rangers own it in a very non-humorous way). It does shine if i ever manage to hit more than one target at the same time though as i have been able to break 2 monk cycle teams with it, but requires good timing and conditional positioning/coordination with the other damage dealers in the event that no interuptor/disruptor is available. I would not say it is reliable in this endevor though and you can argue that the other team's play ability was not up to spec or made a mistake, but that kind of thing varies.

More to the point though, the fireball change is nice, but it made it more efficient than immolate, making immolate fall more into the overpriced flare catagory. Of that spell line, running something like ether renewal actually can detract from the build as it gives you fewer spells to use while in uptime and still get locked into waiting for a full skill reset. Air for damage, for me anyway, has always been that the entire line has shorter refresh times requiring fewer different copies of spells to actually do something appriciable with.


Perhaps if the aftercast was more scalable towards the actual cast time it would make more sense. A .75 aftercast is not terrible when looking at a 5s cast time (assuming effect was worth the 5s), but against a 2 second or less cast time it does put a cramp on things. It is an uptime versus downtime argument. Yeah, an idea like that would just break the monk line and possibly tilt more power towards mesmer interupts and fast casting, but it has some sense in it for many necro or elementalist spells.

I would say neccacary considering how many options to stop rangers are bypassed by other ranger skills making bringing those skills pointless. There arent a whole lot of other hexes that actually hurt rangers. The 2 "of failure" spells are ok at best and then the -attack speed curses help too, but it doesnt take much to remove 1 hex from 1 guy, especially when the aoe version of -attack speed will never catch more than 1 ranger, while it has a better chance of catching more than one warrior, just like blurred vision. Then again, people do stand in meteor showers occasionally, so i dunno, maybe rangers will take to holding hands since they dont have the company of thousands of spirits anymore.

The point i have been trying to make is that situation is not as easily duplicated in the other lines and does not create the same effect that it does when combined with the monk skills. Like my necro example, for instance, merely duplicates what a monk can do with sustained enchantments and not be forced to spend all of his uptime casting. My mesmer one was garbage and probably could be done better, but i couldnt think of anything that would really do anything appriciable together with renewal in those skill lines. Elementalist lines merely create a 10-12s burst damage effect, while not draining out half the energy pool. This kind of argument would be like stating the corpse exploitation spells are out of line due to how soul reaping works to power them. Yeah putrid chains are effective, but i wouldnt say more effective overal than a sucessful smite build helping create the corpses in the first place.

I dont see how you are comming to that conclusion as prodigy lasts three times as long as renewal and the "blood is power/ritual" series. During that time frame the exaustion sorts its self out. Against offering or glyph you fall to the similar problems as energy tap/drain or mantra of recall, where you are not getting a passive benefit and taking time out to initialize the gain (mantra excluded of course). This goes back to uptime versus downtime arguments, but the glyph would still rank better than offering of blood as it requires no skill to get the benefit, even though the benefit only occurs at that level with 15/25e cost spells. Like say for instance a mo/e that uses it to power balthazar's aura, which in effect changes balthazar's to a 3s cast time 10e spell. It would be a unique idea if the glyphs actually modified instead of boosted spells though, as a kind of meta enchantment similar to mesmer spell copies.

Divine spirit, ftw i guess. If you were running elementalist skills you would just take elemental attunement instead of renewal or prodigy. (Let the necro do the + pips...)If you wanted to run necro line of skills, you would be better off running a mesmer primary instead of an elementalist. Then all monk skills would only be good with a monk primary, ignoring tactics involving resurection skills of course. What needs to happen is a cap on the total number of enchantments able to be active on the same character at the same time, which also helps with current enchantment removal options. Renewal could stand a third control on skill say effect is triggered by 1-3 enchantments on the 0-15 scale, to help prevent some of the abuse, due to the 5/19 at 13 skill cutoff currently.

Would be about as dangerous as a sword w/mo tanking paladin. There is nothing in the fire line that hits fast enough, hard enough, and regularly enough that justifies it. If you were using that to power something else like lingering curse or chillblains, then maybe, but it would be rather situational. Oops cant use curse with renewal, but meh you get the idea. For reference ill use your words to emphasise why.
Symbol of wrath is actually more effective than inferno, flame burst, or lava font, in terms of cost vs damage even ignoring the holy damage angle. Oddly though, i did find phoenix to be more useful in pvp, due to mob behavior in close proximity and the actual aoe of the fireball it shoots (ie only gets things in front instead of everything around you like the pbaoe element hits).