Showing Posts For Myndranius.2139:
What personal story quest are you up to? Because the only ones I’ve had trouble with are the ones that strip me off all my weapon skills and give me a stupid sword or whatever. The Glyph of Storms utility isn’t really a must, but it certainly makes it possible for an Ele to pull a ridiculous amount of mobs and kill them all with ease. If it’s just 2 or 3 then I don’t even bother, because the CCs any ele has on their weapon skills is usually enough.
Here is the build I’m currently running at level 70.
My gear is focused more on Power/Toughness/Healing Power (though my toughness is below what I ideally want, due to itemization) and I switch attunements constantly. The high Healing Power, along with my passive heals and the healing weapon skills means that I almost never use the no.6 Heal skill. I’ve gone entire dungeon runs without using it, because of the high sustain my build has. So if you really are having a lot of issues, use my build and if you prefer fire over air traits, then feel free to change that too. Because I literally don’t have any survivability issues, when I have all my skills available.
My build at the moment (currently level 72), though I’ve changed it around several times over the past 20 levels to find something that is survivable without sacrificing too much damage output:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVsMz9MzMRxLMMoxLMG0fVGoVVVm
I find this build, so far, contains a good amount of survivability (lots of important toughness), the 5 points in water plus the 10-point arcane trait give water a good amount of regeneration just for switching to it. I took Elemental Shielding (earth 10-point), because if I’ve switched to water to heal in a dire situation, hitting Frost Aura is a no-brainer, and 3 seconds of protection isn’t a bad bonus. Finally, Final Shielding gives me that extra second of protection when I’m in a situation with more than one two/three-shotting enemies on top of me(otherwise, instant death would follow).
(I also ran http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVsMz9MzMmxLMMoxLMfaf0aozVV for a little while around level 50-55, which was a little more offensive, but was a little too squishy and not quite enough control.)
As for gear, it fluctuates as I go and tends to be heavily determined by whatever drops I get (I hate karma armour because it can’t be salvaged, which means any gems/runes you stick on them are lost forever, and spending karma on items that will last you 5-10 levels just is wasteful), but it’s mostly a mix between toughness/vitality/power/condition damage in a roughly equal split.
Finally, for those of you talking about staff: your damage output drops considerably (which means more mobs survive your initial barrage long enough to hit you), and while you tend to have better chances of survival (by trading damage for area control), this comes at the cost of making the harder fights last much longer. Also, because you’re so heavily AoE based, you occasionally tend to pull more mobs off of friendly NPCs than you can handle. Maybe you enjoy the slower pace and constant kiting/control style the staff brings in to play, but I don’t – not for PvE – especially since the extra time spent on each fight outweighs the time spent on corpse runs anyways. Scepter/Dagger is just more fun for my personal playstyle, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be viable here.
(edited by Myndranius.2139)
I appreciate that everyone has “the answer”, but that’s really not the point here.
I’m sure you’re good at the game, and you can just wave your hand at my own issues and point out all the flaws. But you weren’t there, and you’ll have to take me at my word (as I yours) that I really know what I’m doing overall. I’m not super all-star MMO champion of the 2010 e-lympics, but I’m not an amateur and I have a reasonable list of qualifications to justify feeling the need to comment.
The elementalist (whether it’s the only class or not, I don’t know, as it’s the only class I’ve played beyond level 10) has serious survivability issues in many of its story quests. Whether this is a problem with the elementalist or the quest difficult I’ll leave to the developers to determine, but the issue is there. The fact that this difficulty rarely exists in the open world (during dynamic events, or just random mobs, for example), is reasonable evidence of a problem somewhere.
Furthermore, if your solution is, “you need Glyph of Storms”, then my response is twofold: one, I’ve tried that – I wouldn’t be voicing my opinion if I hadn’t exhausted all the options – and two, if the elementalist requires the use of a singular skill to get through its content, then the class has serious problems. I agree that there is (and should be) obvious bad choices for utility skill sets, but there shouldn’t be one absolutely necessary-in-all-situations skill, either.
I’m not saying the quests are impossible (the fact that I’ve made it past them is evidence enough of that), but I’m saying that the strategies required to get past them often result in gamey, uninteresting gameplay experiences. And overall, there have been far too many corpse runs than someone of my skill level (I’d estimate that I fall within the 60th-80th percentiles on the noob-hardcore scale) should experience, especially because these deaths aren’t an issue of questionable skill level, instead having more to do with common mobs (again, not bosses) that hit extremely hard and manage to cling to you long after your avoidance skills are on cooldown and your endurance bar is empty.
Ultimately, the issue is there and nearly every elementalist I encounter voices some degree of agreement. There are of course, several who claim they have never had difficulty issues at any point, but this strikes me more as deluded one-upmanship than evidence that I and others are actually among a minority of incompetent players.
(edited by Myndranius.2139)
I really don’t know what the issue is, and I don’t know if it is the same for other classes, but I know what you’re talking about.
The problem gets worse as the story quest levels increase.
To give a clear example. There is one quest you encounter around level 60-ish (which I did at around level 70, with jack-of-all-trades gear, which balances vitality, toughness and power/condition damage). It involves a dream/future sequence in which you follow the queen of the Pale Tree (I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers). Throughout the quest, groups of 2-3 ghostly swords spawn on top of you. You can’t survive more than 2 or 3 hits from them, AND they move faster than you do, so kiting is essentially impossible. Now, in my own opinion, I’ve gotten reasonably skilled using mobility as a defense. Coupled with my regular heal, the 2 heals you have in water attunement (scepter/dagger), earth attunement’s stun, earth/air blinds, and arcane shield, you are STILL likely to take enough hits to down you, and as an elementalist in downed state, you’re as good as dead. Not to mention that your damage output is near zero while you’re focused on using all these defensive skills which are necessary just to stay alive.
I’ve found that each of these fights (again, these are “trash mobs”, not bosses) is basically neck and neck, which in theory is great excitement, but essentially, I feel I have to use “gamey” tactics just to survive. Taking advantage of mob AI failing to navigate terrain efficiently, or relying on using an earth elemental and then waiting 2 minutes after each fight before moving forward, etc.
I remember another particularly frustrating mission in which you’re attempting to protect an underground Skritt village from a Destroyer Queen (after joining Durmand Priory) by setting off a bomb. However, the dozen or so Destroyers that spawn kill off the friendly NPCs and then swarm you – each one capable of killing you in 2-3 shots by itself. It took me about 30 minutes, and I had to methodically take advantage of strange mechanics which caused mobs to pull one at a time (again, gamey gameplay). I probably died 4 or 5 times, and it just shouldn’t happen considering my gear and the fact that I’m 3-10 levels ahead of the quest level (which still does confer benefits despite being down-levelled – you retain percentages of extra stats and gear, plus traits).
Overall, these quests don’t result in fun gameplay, and having to corpse run 2-3 times each story mission is just frustrating.
Can’t believe nobody else has posted this one, it’s one of my biggest annoyances.
The air attunement is considered an attack. It has its own range indicator (little red bar at the bottom when target is out of range), and switching to air attunment will auto-attack anything in range. This is EXTREMELY annoying when I switch to air for a speed buff for the express purpose of travelling from area to area, and it ends up auto-attacking some neutral mob, pulling me into combat and thus actually slowing me down to combat speed.
Note: I’m not referring to the 15-point air trait bonus which adds a lightning attack when switching to air attunement. What I am referring to is simply a bug with switching to air attunement.