well overdue but, here’s my suggestions on balancing ele, to make more underutilized skills more useful
let’s start with focus weapon skills: fire needs an overhaul. both skills are complete garbage, both redundant with other weapon skills, and also extremely weak.
- scepter skills: fire 1 takes far too long to cast. Other ranged skills from other classes have been severely improved, like ranger’s longbow, or necro’s scepter. It’s about time this terrible skill got improved too.
-dragon’s tooth: would be much better if this were ground targeted, or had its AoE radius increased. it’s far too easy to avoid in pvp, and not by lack of any skill on the user’s part, but by the automatic targeting.
elite skills: ele still has the worst elites of all classes, so bad are they that frequently racial elites are taken instead, if possible. That or the fiery greatsword is a glorified movement speed boost.
tips to improve the elites:
- the glyph of elementals could use stronger elementals, more damage or more survivability.
- tornado needs to be on par with other elite transformations. It needs more damage reduction, like plague. currently this is almost a useless elite, just begging to be killed.
- fiery greatsword: conjure weapons usually have a very powerful skill that can be utilized, then switched back to the normal attunements. The power of good conjured weapons are not so much they give another weapon set, but can be treated like a powerful cooldown single use skill. For example frostbow can solely be used for #4 skill, then deequipped to the normal attunements. Or lightning hammer, be used for its stun and blowout, then scrapped.
why is this important? simply because elementalists rely on all attunements to both survive and deal damage.
Fiery GS gives no skill that is on par with desiring a conjured weapon like a hammer or bow. All of its weapon skills are mediocre, and on a short cooldown. This elite is almost as useless as the others. At least though, you get a free temporary legendary….
-arcane power: a very great skill, but also can be quickly sabotaged by erroneous positioning. Currently Arcane power charges get used with any direct damage, even the tiny damage tick on a fire field. This definitely needs to be addressed. Also consider changing the fact that each charge also gets used on a different target.
- glyph of renewal: takes far too long to cast and needs a longer range. this skill is almost always nullified by the time it finishes casting.
- signet of restoration: far too long cooldown, too little healing per cast. This signet pales in comparison to other healing signets, like the warrior’s and thief’s. It is true that the ele can heal in water, but this difference is far too great. With less armor, hp, than that of others, and less escapes than the thief, it’s not fair the ele’s heal is far inferior.
- conjure weapon cast times should be reduced, possibly even instantaneous. Compared to an engineer, it’s already inferior in the fact they can only be equipped once per summon, and have charges.
- ele water skills: there’s currently very few high damage weapon skills in water for ele. Water #5 is probably the hardest hitting but requires a wall or immobilize. Fire’s damage is pathetic, despite this attunement supposed to be higher dps. Air can only damage with #1, and the 3 bolts of lightning can be very buggy and miss objects at point blank range.
- armor of earth: i would like to see this on shorter cooldown, to match other skills like Endure Pain.
- mist form: also would like to see its cooldown reduced, to match other skills.
- arcane shield: again, same reason.