Before I get started, I should note that I’m making this thread in this subforum because this is where most balance discussions outside of class subforums take place, not because it is particularly relevant to sPvP – in fact, I’d say the control point objectives of sPvP serve to limit the effectiveness of ranged combat. In other words, I’m hoping this doesn’t get moved, because I’d like to reach an audience beyond the Elementalist section.
Now, I’m a guy who absolutely cannot stand being restricted to melee range – or rather, I like being effective at all ranges, which ranged combat allows. I’m very much a fan of versatility, and it’s a rather happy coincidence that the class with the theme I was most interested in – the Elementalist – had a design philosophy that was just that.
Thing is, eles aren’t very good when it comes to ranged combat. There’s the staff, which simply isn’t designed for use without team support, and the scepter, the damage of which is kinda awkwardly designed; I’ll go into detail about the latter.
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The scepter’s Fire attunement seems to be focused on slow-moving, heavy-hitting attacks, aside from the autoattack, which is focused on condition damage via burning, making the scepter’s Fire attunement terrible for sustained damage, as even condition builds should utilize Earth as much as possible (an issue for another thread).
(1) Dragon’s Tooth is the most commonly attacked skill due to its long delay, and rightly so – in any practical scenario, the only CC we have that can keep an enemy still long enough for it to hit is the 3 second immobilize of Signet of Earth, which still allows a foe plenty of time to remove the condition and evade our attack.
Not to mention that that combo can’t really compare to Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave seeing as they’re instant, can have their cooldowns reduced in the Arcana line as opposed to Signet of Earth in Earth Magic, which doesn’t synergize with the burst builds that actually worry about getting Dragon’s Tooth to hit, Signet of Earth is only better if DT crits, and using a weapon-based CC before DT will still force the enemy to dodge.
I’d recommend reducing the delay of Dragon’s Tooth to 2 seconds, so that our weapon-based CCs can actually get it to hit. I’d also really like to see the Elemental Surge trait in Arcana improved to apply a 2 second immobilize.
(2) Regarding Phoenix, first I’d like to point out that if encountered with an angle that a player could not traverse via walking, it will behave erratically and/or fail. This is a problem mainly when fighting enemies on elevated platforms.
Now, Phoenix is a very powerful skill offensively and quite good defensively, as well. The problem with it is that it travels extremely slowly – the same speed as I do in combat, actually – which makes it pretty terrible at range.
I’d say a significant increase in movement speed is warranted.
(3) Shatterstone is quite useless in its current form, seeing as the Water autoattack does more damage.
Increasing the AoE radius and damage and reducing the amount of time you’re locked out of other skills after using it would be good, I’d say. Alternatively, increasing the AoE radius and recharge time, decreasing the delay and skill lockout period, and adding a Chill component to it would be an effective improvement.
(4) This is a very minor issue, but it’d be nice if Water Trident healed you when casting it, and only healed allies when it hit the ground. It just seems weird that I never have reason to use a skill with a damage component on enemies.
(5) (Keep in mind that I said that condition builds have their own problems, so I’m not referring to them here.) The scepter is severely lacking in damage in the Earth attunement, and this problem is exacerbated by the weakness of the scepter’s autoattacks.
Frankly, Air and Fire are the only attunements that are effective at dealing damage for the scepter, and beyond Air, the scepter has no proper sustained damage, and attunement cooldowns essentially force downtime during which enemies take next to no damage (Ice Shards does deal decent damage, but the switch to the Water attunement is an important defensive mechanism that one can’t afford to risk on filler damage). A low Attunement Recharge Rate really hurts the scepter because of this.
I’m not really sure how to solve this problem. Perhaps increasing the degree to which scepter autoattacks scale with Power (namely Flamestrike and Stone Shards), and replacing Dust Devil with a more damage-oriented skill would help.
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WOW that was long.
Anyway, anyone got any other ideas? Anyone care?