Showing Posts For Brynmor.4831:
Oh, I could also note that because to DPS I have to switch between attunements and therefore have many damage sources I can’t discern what stats I’m supposed to prioritize. I don’t know if I should going for Crit Damage, Power, Precision, Condition Damage or a balance of both. Fire is pretty bursty so Crit Damage might scale well but you also burn things and then bleed things in Earth so Condition Damage would seem good as well.
I have a guildy who is a warrior who was telling me the other night; “When I use a sword I know I need lots of Condition Damage while Precision and Crit Damage isn’t really needed, but I need those stats for great sword.” He knows what stats he needs for what weapons and what to gear for. I see gear with Power, Condition Damage and Vitality and I know that is Necromancer gear. Elementalists, at least ones who aren’t built for healing, don’t have such clear distinctions.
I think if the attunements were more situational and self-contained we could have that clarity as well. For example, if Fire was mostly condition damage instead of burst with some condition on the side (somewhat of a bad example since Burn wouldn’t be enough for a condition build as it only stacks duration and not intensity), or if Air damage wasn’t bad and actually had burst you could gear for what you wanted to do. As it stands you do a little bit of everything which means you can’t specialize with your stats (which may explain part our DPS problems as well).
I’ve been noticing that if I am CC’d while a spell animation is going on the spell does no damage. More specifically I am talking about Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix. Both of these spells have a travel time; Dragon Tooth hangs in the air and Phoenix flies to the target.
So as an example, I cast Dragon’s Tooth on a mob in Cursed Shore, I finish the cast and start casting Phoenix on him, meanwhile the Tooth is hovering above the mob, the mob then knocks me back interrupting my Phoenix cast, meanwhile the Tooth falls on the mob but does no damage. That’s pretty much the scenario.
It’s as if the game treats the spell animation/travel time as part of the cast bar, even though I already finished casting the spell and in fact started casting another. If I get CC’d when the Tooth actually falls or the Phoenix hits the target they do no damage.
My two cents as someone who has played a lot of MMOs, most at a very high level of play; the biggest problem I perceive with my Elementalist is that most of our spells require us to be too close to our targets combined with a distinct lack of defensive capability. That is, we’re too squishy and yet we’re required to be so close to things to be effective.
There are other systematic problems as well; another main one being that you can’t do consistent DPS without switching attunments constantly to burn CDs on spells. Maybe that’s intended but my impression of the class was that the attunments were supposed to be situational, not necessarily cyclical. Meaning I should want to switch out of fire because I want/need to do X, not because the CDs on my fire spells are too long to keep up good DPS from fire alone. Switching attunments then doesn’t feel like switching gears but more like grasping at straws.
I mean, using Tornado in PvP is really just a good way to get yourself killed. It is very large and noticable that offers no protection.
I’ve found Tornado to be pretty useless to be honest. I was super excited to get it and try it out but it was very underwhelming. The damage it does is so small and the intervals between the attacks are too long. So, aside from being somewhat functionally useless, the other problem I have with it is that while yes, you are CC immune while using it some form of damage protection is needed.
Ostensibly the skill is best suited for AoEing groups of mobs but doing so is a good way to get yourself killed. Even using the blind and knockback passives (the latter of which doesn’t mesh well with groups anyway) doesn’t do enough to save you. And again, in PvP it is also a huge ‘kill this thing’ sign to paint on yourself. The only redeeming factor of the spell is the underwater version and that’s just because underwater combat is such a pain.
I think Tornado needs to either give you protection while active or full damage immunity, some buff to it’s damage output or both.
It seems to be a pretty systematic problem with our class that too many of our abilities are too close range in concert with us being too squishy. Underwater combat, which is already a pain, is no exception.