At lower levels, condition damage tears through mobs with ease. By level 40 or so it starts dropping off as mobs get more HP, meaning that you’ll generally have to get a mix of Power and Condition Damage, or Condition Damage + Precision.
I personally would stick with condition damage if I were going D/D, but I’m not so sure about staff. Staff has less ways to inflict burn and bleed reliably.
My elementalist uses summoned weapons quite often, and I believe that a lot of elementalists just don’t know how to use them.
Consider that most elementalist summoned weapons have a fairly low cooldown. Therefore, you don’t really need to hang onto them constantly. Using them effectively is mostly about knowing when and how to drop them in order to give you more skills for your combos.
Summoned weapons are also excellent for setting up combo fields. Flame axe gives you a jump finisher and a fire field you otherwise would need daggers for. It also inflicts burns more efficiently than your fore attunement skills. Lightning hammer can create a crowd-controlling lightning field and offers a jump and a blast finisher as well as a launch (though you’re better off changing to daggers earth for your blast). Ice bow gives a ranged harrassment option to a D/D ele who otherwise would need to be in melee all the time, with the additional threat of a prolonged stun from Ice Bow 5, which WILL force a dodge on a smart opponent in PVP.
Earth Shield is kind of useless and I haven’t unlocked greatsword yet, but most of the time when I summon these, I set up a combo field or use the crowd control abilities, then immediately drop the weapon and go back to my usual rotations.
Conjured weapons are not useless. I believe they’re currently just very undervalued. They’re pretty darn good for setting up combo fields and for performing certain combos that you otherwise couldn’t. I use lightning hammer and gasp flame axe a fair amount on a double dagger build, and occasionally the ice bow.
For all the people here who complain about Elementalists being ‘severe keyboard workouts’…how many of you have played high level fighting games before? Serious question. because the level of execution that comes with playing an Ele is NOTHING compared to even the simpler 2D fighters out there.
The amount of scrubbery I’ve seen around these forums concerning how ‘difficult’ the elementalist is really is pretty disheartening. Is this really the standard that can be expected from western MMO players? I mean sheesh, playing my Grenadier in Dragon Saga Online is harder than doing Elementalist combos.
You have successfully compared an apple, to an orange, and told those who think one apple shouldn’t be more difficult to achieve the same end results as other apples from the same tree, to get better because your oranges you have personal experience with are so much harder.
Well sir, I have a bag of lemons that would love to tell you how much harder they are than your oranges, and that you should stop crying about oranges when there are watermelons out there that are even harder.
Go praise your oranges elsewhere, please. We all prefer apples.
Nope. I’m comparing fruit to fruit. There are people here who are outright saying ‘Elementalists are a huge keyboard workout! I can’t believe anyone could play the class without hyperventillating after a few combos’ or some such rubbish, but the fact is, if you compare the elementalists’s skill pianoing to the level of execution in other genres, or even other games within the same genre…it’s really nothing to make such a big deal about. Somehow, fighting game players can cope with having to memorise every one of their moves, special moves and situational combos. My Warrior in Tera had more skills on cooldown than my elementalist has, and no convenience of them all being neatly grouped up into clickable packets like our attunement system.
Elementalists are not ‘hard’ by any stretch, so blaming the skill cieling on their weakness is not the way to go. Sure, other classes are easier, but considering how simplistic execution in this game is, that’s nothing to be proud of.
For all the people here who complain about Elementalists being ‘severe keyboard workouts’…how many of you have played high level fighting games before? Serious question. because the level of execution that comes with playing an Ele is NOTHING compared to even the simpler 2D fighters out there.
The amount of scrubbery I’ve seen around these forums concerning how ‘difficult’ the elementalist is really is pretty disheartening. Is this really the standard that can be expected from western MMO players? I mean sheesh, playing my Grenadier in Dragon Saga Online is harder than doing Elementalist combos.
Flame Shaman please.
Yes, I know the Flame Legion are bad guys, but come on. Surely some Charr must have left them and kept the olde flame magic alive as an art form?
I feel like condition damage is better for elementalists, since burns are generally easier to inflict than high stacks of bleed. (maybe not so for scepter/dagger builds, but DD’s I find most of my damage comes from fire attunement burns)
I don’t like it. I’ve come to swap to water so I can heal when I lose HP, while rotating between fire and earth for damage. Being able to only choose 2 elements means I’d have to stick in fire or earth while keeping Water free for healing, which just isn’t as fun and would limit the way I play the class.
A few more low-lv examples to start out.
S/D combo = Conjure Frost Bow, Deep Freeze, drop Frost Bow, Fire Attune, Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Fire Grab
Situation = PVE/PVP, mainly used to secure damage against a single target from a distance.
Explanation = Deep Freeze holds an enemy still long enough for Dragon’s Tooth to land, inflicting a long duration burn and allowing additional damage from a Fire Grab followup. This combo outputs a lot of damage, but you are defenseless while channeling Deep Freeze, and the bolt itself can be dodged, avoided, or interrupted.
Underpowered or not, there’s no denying that Elementalists have a lot of neat tricks that they can pull, and due to the nature of the class, not all of these combos are known to new players. I’d like to start a general knowledge/information thread for Elementalist technology so that new players can have something to work with when rolling this complex class.
Arenanet have stated that they’d prefer the metagame to stabilise before they go making any drastic changes to class balance. Therefore as players, it’s our duty to establish a metagame, and in order to do this we need to start documenting information about our class, and how said class interacts with other classes.
Please post your favorite Elementalist combos and tactics using the following template:
(weapon)Combo/Tactic/Setup = briefly outline your tactic, combo or setup here. Explain which skills are used.
Situation = When would you use this? What does it work on and why does it work?
Explanation = explain in more detail if necessary. Further notes go here.
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EXAMPLE
D/D Combo = Arcane shield, Churning Earth, Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire, Earthquake, Updraft.
Situation = PVE/PVP anytime against ranged or melee opponents, particularly useful as an opener for jumping into a large group of enemies.
Explanation = Use Arcane Shield before casting Churning Earth. This lessens your chance of getting interrupted. Before the cast time of Churning Earth has finished, use Lighting Flash to adjust your positioning, securing the attack against mobile opponents. Follow immediately by Cleansing Fire to stack burn and bleed. By this point, the opponent will probably attempt to clear their conditions, so use Earthquake to interrupt them, followed by a quick change to Lightning attunement and and updraft to keep them down before they get back up again. This ensures that your opponent will take a lot of condition damage without being able to reliably remove it until the combo ends. Enemies with ranged interrerupts or dodging skills can escape this combo, but at worst it will force them to blow their escapes, giving the caster an advantage in momentum.
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more experienced Ele’s are definately encouraged to contribute. If anything this should serve as an easy resource for new players and people who don’t yet understand the class.
Yeah, Charr anti-theism mainly stems from them being an extremily proud race. Their attempt at harnassing the power of worship ended badly for them. They needed a scapegoat for their failure, which ended up being the Flame Legion and their titan gods. Then they just got organized and killed everyone.
I chose to mainly go with charm for my Charr. Ignus Ashmaster comes from a family who’ve been loyal members of the Flame Legion for generations and have only recently divided. He still personally believes in the Flame Legion’s original ideals, but allies with the Ash legion in order to survive and avoid being branded as a traitor. He has a strong interest in human religion and believes Charr in general to be closed-minded and shortsighted. Because he’s used to hiding his beliefs and Flame Legion sympathy, he’s gotten very good at lying and flattering to get his way. So charm mixed with a little nobility to represent his pride.
First of all, I’d like to say that having a non-silent protagonist is a nice change of pace from the usual RPG conventions. It does, however, come with some problems for those of us who care about role-playing elements and who like to build characters with their own outlooks and lore. The majority of players could care less about this sort of thing, but I still feel it’s worth discussion.
As a Charr, when I go through the personal story I feel like I’m being driven along a set of rails as to how my character develops. No matter what choices I make, my Charr is always exactly like every other Charr. The racial archetype is driven a little too thickly into the dialogue, making me feel like my character’s personality and beliefs are set in stone.
It would have been nice to have a bit more varation to story influenced by choices. Let certain races become more influenced by other races beliefs or customs as the story progresses. I’d have liked it if my Charr had been able to gain some respect for the Flame Legion’s original intentions due to having a Flame Shaman father, and gone on to respect human ideals as a result.
I also don’t feel like charm/nobility/brutality has any reall effect on the dialogue. I have two charr, one being charming and the other noble, and I haven’t noticed a change of flavor.
I understand that the story is set in stone, but perhaps in future content we could be given some quests that allow our characters to develop beyond their racial boundaries a little. Similar to the racial sympathy quests that occur around lv 40 or so. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the protagonists were silent, but as it is, it’s a bit invasive for the roleplayers.
I find racial interactions fascinating, and enjoy exploring ‘what if’ scenarios involving racial sympathy and character building that heads in contrary directions. I’m sure there must be others who feel the same way.
Sadly you can’t use it on SPvP but yeah, it’s fun. It doesn’t scale with traits, like most racials, and like any weapon kit it doesn’t get bonuses from your on-hand weapons.
This is something that bugs me from a role-playing perspective. Due to not having a silent protagonist, our characters are formulated. I wanted to play an atypical Charr who had an interest in human religion and a sympathy for the Flame Legion’s original goals. Unfortunately, no matter what direction I take the storyline, I’ll have to ignore it because it doesn’t give me much freedom in my character’s personality.
I was hoping that having a Flame Legion Shaman for a father would have influenced my character’s outlook, but it doesn’t. Even the voice lines in the Charr racial skill ‘Battle Cry’ are out of character for my Charr, who wouldn’t say ’Charr need no Gods!" and honestly mean it unless he was in the company of other Charr and wished to hide his true beliefs.
It’s a small niggle, but one that’s been bugging me. For a roleplayer it’s just a tiny bit annoying to be pidgeonholed. I’d have liked there to be a bit more control over your character’s development and mannerisms.
I’d also have loved to join the Flame Legion given the option.