a) Group stability is often present from Stand Your Ground
b) The utility of tornado can more reliably be fulfilled by Updraft+Earthquake.
c) This skill makes you lose serious offensive momentum.
If Tornado put out some real aoe hurt like dagger storm and maybe snared/blinded on its swirling strikes, it would become a far more useful elite. It’s just not worth it to trade all your damage and control for an aoe knockback punching bag.
I would seriously reevaluate the knockback design. An aoe knockback, let alone any knockbacks, is highly undesirable in PvE where mobs are meant to be balled up anyways. You’ll seriously be kitten your groupmates by using an elite that spreads mobs away from aoe/cleave/dark fields. It would be better if it acted as an aoe pull periodically.
Well, there are other abilities you can select. I use the elemental for PvE. Not really toyed much with the fiery greatsword. And at least us humans have some use for the avatars.
Overall though, the Ele ultimates are not “great” but they are “OK”, and not all of them need to have a good use in all cases.
It steam engines when it comes steam engine time.
- Charles Fort
Any elemental but the earth elemental dies in 2-3 hits in a dungeon, especially fractals. Elementals die even faster in wvw. And, to be honest, they do no damage whatsoever to begin with.
Water elemental sometimes is useful, if you manage to make it heal your party. However i dont understand, why do guardians have an elite that fully heals the whole group on demand while we have to stick to a useless elemental that dies in 2 hits, and never heals when you need it.
Elementalists is one of the unlucky classes with trash elites that need rework save FGS which I think is so awesome.
Yeah, tornado needs to nullify projectiles at least. THe slow movement when transformed is very counter intuitive since you’re purpose is to knockback people AWAY from you. You can never chase them, and any smart player will simply move away from you and fire at you with ranged weapon, duh? So once this first knockback luckily hits, that target simply swaps to range and drain your HP and you can’t do anything about it since you have no access to heal or weapon skills or any utility while transformed.
“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes
later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
Are you joking? Greatsword features tons of damage that deals tons of damage while dealing tons of damage!
Find something with fat hp, knockback it to the wall, then beat the hell out of it with your fiery whirl. Warrior’s choice of the week!
+1 to it either:
- pulling enemies inwards (not like ‘into the void’… which shoots them out the other side… because that almost as annoying as knocking them away)
- blocking projectiles
(or both)
Any elemental but the earth elemental dies in 2-3 hits in a dungeon, especially fractals. Elementals die even faster in wvw. And, to be honest, they do no damage whatsoever to begin with.
i really like my elementals (mostly air and water) in dungeons…
earth if the enemies are bursty
water if they’re a little less bursty
air for ranged (im not sure how close it goes to an enemy; but it can hit them at 1200 range- meaning you can often summon it out of harms way and let it just snipe w/e)
fire for low threat bosses (like… fyona i think it is? the spider woman in TA)
also i think fiery greatsword should cycle skills (and appearance) with attunements…
IMO just give us another active skill while in Tornado
Tornado’s pull things in right?
So let us do that – call it Vortex or something. All enemies within a certain range without stability are pulled to the Tornado’s (our) location. This would actually encourage use of this elite as teams could coordinate spikes off of it. Make it usable only once per Elite usage. Let there be a trait to give it slightly farther range. Even if other Tornado stats/actives have to be toned down to bring it more in line after this addition, it would add to our teamfight potential. This could also be used to bait Group and Individual Stabilities. Yes I know we already have a ton of this with standard weapons, but while in Tornado, we can’t use any of those sweet, sweet AoEs or CCs.
Would make this Elite much more viable in high level play.
Are you joking? Greatsword features tons of damage that deals tons of damage while dealing tons of damage!
Find something with fat hp, knockback it to the wall, then beat the hell out of it with your fiery whirl. Warrior’s choice of the week!
5K every 5sec with 2k to 4k per swing. Add immobilize from utility and attunement swaps to water and its pretty darn op.
Fuzzionx[SF]
Guest member of [LOVE]
JQ official Prime Minister
Tornado needs some lovin. The fact that it was only used some time ago to abuse the stability bug it offered clearly states that there is something wrong with the actual design or purpose of the skill in terms of practicality and usability as an Elite. Too much risk (no access to utilities and heal while still being vulnerable to damage when transformed) for very little reward (damage wise it’s decent yes, but you are knocking back enemies AWAY from you). You just become a giant slow moving helpless target for a veeeeryy long period of time.
“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes
later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
They should buff the damage, movespeed or knockdown interval of Tornado and then decrease the duration by a mile though if they fear that if would become too OP. As it stands now, it’s worse than most crappy racial elites, IMO.
“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes
later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
As a DD ele in WvW I use earth elemental for soloing supply camps. The rest of the time I use fiery greatsword which is awesome both for damage and mobility. Sometimes I use Reaper of Grenth for 1vs1.
Tornado is total garbage unless you are hanging around at a cliff.
Give us projectile destruction/reflect, a 4th attack laying down a field linked to the element and a 5th attack creating a great AOE blast and getting us out of tornado. Ok all of this might be slightly OP but it could really improve this elite.
Target foe and all nearby foes are pulled up in the air for 1 second and pulled towards you, when they fall down on the ground they suffer from criple/confusion/bleeding/weakness and vulnerability for 3 seconds.( foes take 122 lighting dmg while in the tornado and 122 physical dmg when they hit the ground).
Should have good movespeed while in tornado mode, it wouldn’t make it good but…it’d be a start.
Nah, I’d rather destroy projectiles while I’m a freakin tornado. Not because it makes sense since a lot of things don’t make sense in the game’s mechanics anyway (making ghosts bleed, anyone?) but because it’s too big of a weakness for an Elite being locked out of ALL your skills including healing and utility while transformed. Imagine Mesmers being locked out of all their skills while channeling TimeWarp for ten seconds but still vulnerable to damage. Being hit without access to healing while transformed is just suicide.
“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes
later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
For elites as a whole
Tornado should suck in, not out. Cantrip.
Fiery Greatsword needs a small defensive buff for the ele. Maybe add toughness/vitality to the attribute bonuses as well?
Allow special abilities of elementals listed in the glyph description to be used on demand like minion skills. (May be too strong for pvp, but seems reasonable for pve)
-Fire’s aoe fields
-Water’s aoe heal
-earth’s aoe protection
-Air’s stun
and/or possibly increase the survivability of air/fire elemental slightly.
Or allow a utility to be used in that elite slot as mentioned above.
My solution would be to take away the transform aspect of tornado. Make it a ground target skill, that after use changes to a “targeting” skill, when you use it again the tornado travels to the second point.
Tornado was useful only once for me:
I had discovered a mesmer portal in SM on the walls. Quickly I equipped it and turned tornado on the portal. Half the zerg was blown back down.
It’s the only time it was usefull (it had been “fun” other times however), and the only real utility I have found for it. However, it doesn’t reward you at all, since it does literally no damage.
I only found it useful once. In wvw there was a group of people trying to sneak up on one of the narrow cliffs near our overlook. I had a thief stealth me so they wouldnt notice me at first and all focus on me, I dropped down into the middle of them, hit tornado, blew them all off the cliff killing them all. Wish I had recorded it. The one and only time tornado has been useful.
