09 Sep 2005 at 18:58 - 71
When questioning if a skill should be balanced out or not, the first thing you should do is comparing them with other skills in the game.
Lets start with ether renewal. Because its an elite, I shal compare it with a few other elites.
Ether prodigy: the main effect is that it gives you +4 energy regen for 10-25 seconds. 4 extra energy regenration will give you 40 extra energy in a time of 30 seconds. The disadvantages are that if you cast it, you will lose all enchantments, it causes exhaustion, and when you are unable to keep it up or it get removed, you will receive 2 damage for every point of energy you have left.
A confusing skill at first, because of the many disadvantages, it looks useless at first glance. For it to be effective you have to get experience in using this skill, use it again to soon and your energy suply will exhaust too soon, use it too late and you will get an unneeded damage penalty.
in 30 seconds, it gains you 40 energy, wich is less than ether renewal (in the best case, from about 30 to 100 energy, 15 to get enchantments ready(unless you have any one ells give you enchantments) 10 needed to activate ER, and 5 for the first skill).
However, dont exclude the advantage that ether prodigy has over ether renewal. You wont be forced to take enchantments with you (again, unless you get them from some one ells), saving a few slots on both enchantments and a spammable skill. And you wont have a large period where you dont gain any energy at all. Also, because energy renewal will get you back to full energy in whatever case, the 4 basic energy regen an ele has will go to a waste and will probably be replaced by a +15/-1 rod/artifact, So you could say they both gain about 80 energy in 30 seconds.
ER still has the advantage though, since EP will give exhaustion, you can't use a lot of other exhaustion causing spells without draining your energy for a longer period of time, and when EP will take health some times, ER will give health. EP is still recomended for spike air elementalist instead of ER though.
Elemental attunement: You can think of this skill as having twice as much energy , along with twice as much energy regen. However, if a spell fails for whatever reason, or the spell isn't an elemental spell, you wont get any energy back. From what I know, it can be stacked with other attunement spells, getting 80% of the cost back. It also leaves you without any kind of energy bonus for 15 seconds, every minute. 6 seconds every minute with the "enchanments last 20% longer" staff upgrade. A big advantage is that it doesn't use a atribute, thus making it fully usable for any ele second class. when you combine it with glyph of lesser energy, you will probably actually gain 2/3 energy for 15 energy ele skills (not tested). Again, this skill wont require you to spam enchantments and low costing skills.
I should probably explain glyph of energy now but I'm to lazy. Any ways Energy renewal only works when you maintain enchantments on you and spam a low(5/10 energy, depending on how much enchantments you are planning on keeping on you) -costing skill for 10 seconds. That would probably be a waste if you where not planning to do so to start with (low-costing healing spell, flare, water trident, echo, ect). Elementalist primary's are known for casting spells without fearing to run out of energy, so elite energy enchantments that make sure you wont run out of energy was to be expected. I think instead of nerfing ER they should take at least one disadvantage of EP or lengten the time.
Balthazar Aura:
This spell is unique in a lot of ways. but in short, the damage it causes is higher than most elemental AoE spells. Even meteor shower only does more damage when there is no elemental defence. Shortly, because it ignores armor against elemental damage, it is the most damaging AoE spell in the game. Because the AoE is around a player, it wont be as easy to simply step away from it as the other AoE spells, since the player will simply move with you. It has faster casting speed and less recasting time than the other comparable AoE spells (meteor shower, fire storm, eruption, mealstrom, searing heat), doesn't cause exhaustion, last 10 seconds and hits 10 times (instead of 5 seconds like eruption and searing heat and hit 3 times in meteor shower), does around the same amount of damage per hit (22 at lvl12) as most AoE spells, but ignores armor (beginning to understand while it is called overpowered a little?). Because its an enchantment, it can be removed by either a spell or killing the one who has the enchantment, and the aura's can't be stacked. Comparing those few disadvantages with all the advantages it has over the other AoE spells, I repeat that it can be called the most damaging AoE spell of the game... at the moment anyways...
When Chain Lightning was nerfed, Anet explained that they wanted fire to be good against groups, and air to be good against single opponents.
Monks smiting spells are probably used to let the enemy take damage because THEY are attacking. Zealots fire and Balthazars aura are meant to keep mellee fighters scared of getting to close to certain enemies, to keep them from rushing to monk, not for being a replacement of fire magic for AoE spells. That is probably why Anet will balance those smiting spells out, to get them for countering attacks and keep them from being a replacement of fire magic, if not by making BA weaker, by making Fire stronger.
