I was thinking about how all professions have three different types of elites, and they usually have some sort of trait that buffs their elites. Having played no classes high enough to actually get elites except on my 80 Necro and 40 Engineer I don’t have first hand experience with the elites of other professions elites aside from 10-20 minutes in the mists.
The first thing that comes to mind for me is my Engineer. Its elites are Elixer X, Supply Crate, and Mortar. The first trait they have to buff their elites is probably their Alchemy trait line, 10 point major trait II – Elixers recharge 20% faster. This affects their elite, Elixer X’s recharge. Next in the same trait line is VIII – Increase elixer duration by 20%, and then XI – All elixers give 20s of might. All these work on their Elixer X which as an engineer I find pretty flippin awesome.
Those are all specific to one though, but they also have on their Inventions trait line, 20 point major trait IX – The supply crate has more supplies, Elixer X lasts longer, and the Mortar has increased range.
This all made me wonder why we have TWO transform abilities. Lich Form is pretty darn good (if a bit squishy IMO). Plague Form is good as well, but only because of the perma-blind and increased health and toughness. It’s basically a panic button to hit and hopefully live a bit longer. Summon Flesh Golem is a pretty powerful elite too for any build, even more so for a MM build. Most people are actually pigeon holed into using Ol’ Fleshy because there really aren’t any other elites worth taking. But Plague form makes me wonder why it even exists. It has pretty limited uses although I used it as my go to elite for the longest time for tanking situations, and to run away.
Why not do away with Plague form and give us an Elite Well? We don’t have a trait that gives us a bonus to ALL of our elites, but this way we would at least have an elite other than Flesh Golem that benefits from traits – and they are traits that many people already use, unlike the minion traits.
It could be an extremely large radius Well, 2x normal radius or so and have multiple effects. I’d love to say make it convert boons on foes to conditions, and conditions on allies to boons but that one elite would completely negate two of our utilities.
I’m not sure what the effects could be – I’m not a theorycrafter, and I won’t attempt to try – but all I know is I REALLY think we need a Well elite. Lich Form is our spectral-ish elite (would be awesome if it benefited from spectral traits and I think needs to be considered spectral), Flesh Golem is our minion elite. Why shouldn’t we have a different elite that goes in line with our other skills?