- Often they use a double consonant
- Female names end with i or a most likely
- They’re only one or two syllables long
- They have a hard consonant sound in the middle
- They often use some kind of honorific afterward to identify a krewe or college or some other form of prestige
- Asura that don’t conform to these rules were ridiculed as children
My Asura are Pyxxi & Pyxxa. I quite enjoy them.
Which would lead to situation that we´d have to be able to switch between our 2 chosen attunements pretty much at will to avoid instant death resulting from no defense wahtsoever when switching to offense or the 2 untraited attunements.
The thing about this whole idea is that it would reduce elementalist to swapping between defense and offense, without middleground. Sure there´s few different flavors of defense and offense, but pretty much the same still.
Bringing diversity by dumping down the mechanics is just not going to work in my humble opinion.
There are ways to make it work. I feel like the best thing they could do to make the elementalist more balanced would be to improve the trait system and weapon skills. Right now, any build with 30 fire or 30 air is doing something really wrong. It’s a shame that two of our five trait lines can’t ever be utilized due to the resulting build being too kitten. I was just trying to think of a way to allow someone to compete with a fire/air build, a fire/water build, a fire/earth build, an air/water build, or an air/earth build.
Maybe I’m too optimistic. Warriors just spam hundred blades or hammer knockdowns. Thieves just abuse glass cannon burst or conditions. Necros just do conditions or minions…Maybe all we can expect is a bunker or a glass cannon from an ele.
In which case, make the glass cannon ele more cannon, less glass. Our burst skills right now are really sad in comparison to other classes.
If we increase the potetial of attunements, we would need to basicly limit attunement swaps to very long cooldown for obvious balance reasons.
Now then, with long cooldowns, what would happen when one switches to offense? Well he stays in offense untill game says it´s ok to move back. And as people love to state, ele without defense is dead in seconds.
Other way to work around balance would be to make anything not traited utterly inefficient. Problem with that is that it would still mean that people had to do bunker(air or water) first, then switch to offense and hope that nobody notices until he can switch back. Basicly it would limit eles to switching between 2 different attunements, offense and defense (main emphasis on defense as in most casesgoing offense withou way of keeping oneself alive is swift death sentence), as other 2 wold be rather useless without traits.
Simple solution; triple attunement cooldown, but make the master or grandmaster minor trait for that attunement -66% attunement recharge for that attunement. This would effectively allow us to have two attunements that could be swapped to and from about as frequently as other classes get weapon swaps, with an added bonus of the other two, non-traited, ineffective elements for niche situations.
You get enough trait points to max two elements. You don’t have to pick the two offensive elements (fire/earth) or the two defensive elements (air/water). You can mix to not be glass cannon or bunker.
I’m not saying make them all uber without traiting. I mean allow traits to let us have this kind of control over our build. Let traited attunements do what the attunement does best, and do it better than people who don’t trait into it.
Sure, my idea isn’t perfect. But at least I’m trying to come up with a way to introduce more viable builds….Elementalist should be one of the more versatile classes in the game.
(edited by Simplicity.7208)
You know that would make you do near zero dps the moment u swapped out of fire? And with long attunment cd…
Anyway i personally like the playstyle of ele as it is. Just needs some adjusments.
Because bleed builds can’t do damage. Necromancers clearly don’t ever kill anything.
Beside the point, fire/earth would be your method of doing any dps. The purpose of water/air isn’t dps, it’s control through immobilizes, knockdowns, blowouts, etc. or for water it would be heals/condition removal for survivability.
Fighting a glass cannon? Air attunement to keep it from bursting on you, fire attunement once you’ve created an opportunity to put it down.
Fighting a tank? Earth attunement to wear it down while water attunement keeps you healthy.
Capping a point? Air attunement to keep the other team away.
Holding a point? Water attunement to hold out until reinforcements arrive.
There is more to this than simple burst damage.
(edited by Simplicity.7208)
Know what I wish was a viable build? One where you could use a different element for each situation. Maybe fire for burst, earth for DoT, water for healing, air for control…you know, kind of how ArenaNet likes to imagine the class now. That would be cool.
The only builds I ever see are bunker builds which just sit and tank usually in earth/water attunement & scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger builds which never stay in one attunement for more than 5 seconds.
There is no adjusting your attunement to meet the situation, it’s either roll through all your attunements very quickly or sit in the tankiest attunement. That’s a shame.
I think this is because the difference in power/utility between your skill #1 & your skill #5 is too great. This encourages us to use all the high cooldown skills and attunement swap to use more high cooldown skills. If they powered up our #1 & #2 skills, but powered down our #4~5 skills, I feel like there would be less pressure to constantly roll through attunements.
However, in order to correct the problem, an elementalist needs to have the ability to fight successfully using only one element. Thieves don’t have to switch from dagger/dagger to win in a fight if range permits. Warriors don’t have to drop that greatsword if their opponent tries to get in their face. Why should an elementalist be required to swap through all elements in order to compete when other classes don’t have to weapon swap in every fight?
Added bonus; they could further specialize the attunements. Make earth way heavier on bleeds but have essentially no control, burst, or healing. Make fire way heavier on the burst, but have essentially no DoT, healing, control. Have air have tons of control & essentially no damage or healing. And have water have tons of healing but no damage or control.
(edited by Simplicity.7208)
Just call Charr “domesticated bovines.” It never gets old. Their response is either “what?” or “I’m not domesticated.” To which you can quote the pet/work animal for humans portion of the definition of domesticated or simplify it for their simple minds and just say “cow.”
(edited by Simplicity.7208)
The only thing a necro really has is condition damage. Unlike burst builds which are difficult (albeit not impossible) to counter, condition damage is very easy to counter with a simple condition removal skill which every class has. The only reason we’re able to get any kills at all with conditions is because they’re so easy to counter, most classes don’t waste a utility slot on trying to counter it. This puts us in this weird “so nooby it’s pro” place.
The other thing a necro has over other classes is the ability to put bunker guards in their place. Minion master necromancers are the best answer to a bunker builds. Outside that situation, we’re pretty much stuck with just spreading the bleeding/poison love.
Things necromancers don’t have that other classes do; a possible burst build, stability, escape skills, alternative build choices, and a plethora of useful utility skills. We really only have a few utility skills that are useful, and they’re usually all or nothing skills. Like minions. You either go excessive with minions or not at all.
Earth shield skill #4 in WvW. Pull people off keep walls. That will be all.
30/10/0/10/20. Sit in fire attunement. Don’t lead the charge, just hang back and use all your fire AoEs with a few utility AoEs. Occasionally swap to water for team healing. It’s idiot-proof and superb for assaulting points, just don’t expect to win any fights where they run straight at you. You will die immediately when targeted. Good thing is if you hang back, people tend to just focus on the closer enemies while your AoE fields deal 8k+ per second. As long as you have a handy-dandy meatshield, you can literally faceroll to victory.
Like the above said though, unless you’re willing to endure undue hardship and attain a much higher skillcap for a much lower payoff, ele is not a good class for you.
(edited by Simplicity.7208)
Staff destroys zergs. d/d destroys roamers. There’s no room for your focus. Go sit in a corner <3
Scepter has much higher bursts and much more range, however you trade survivability and working skills to achieve this (working skills refers to the numerous dragon’s tooth & phoenix bugs). Dagger survivability comes from the extra two auras.
The mobility is nice. The damage, bugs, and downed skills are not. A glass cannon ele will hit significantly less and take a far greater amount of skill than a glass cannon thief or HB warrior. At least we can run a moderately acceptable bunker build, if you don’t consider engineers and guardians do it better….
I will say this; elementalists were built for world v world & PvE, just not sPvP. With a staff they have the range and AoE to deal massive damage to NPC monsters & WvW zergs that don’t try to dodge out of effect circles, whether that be attacking a keep or defending it. Furthermore, with d/d you get enough mobility to escape any and all sticky situations against any number of people. Third, you get conjured weapons. While not super useful, the ice bow does have uses in giving d/d eles range, the greatsword gives staff eles some extra damage, and the earth shield gives glass cannon builds some extra survivability. Furthermore, the earth shield can literally pull people off keep walls for your teammates to obliterate. Lastly, perhaps the most significant, you get TONS of immobilizes, knockdowns, and swiftness. Anything that tries to flee from you better be packing tons of stunbreakers, constant swiftness, and its own version of ride the lightning.
That arrow thing is likely a glitch, this means it will be fixed at some point to make the mesmer illusion more complete. My solution is to apply a stack of bleeding to the mesmer before they create their illusion. That way, when we have two downed mesmers, I just look for the one that’s bleeding. It’s a similar process to fighting an alive mesmer, look for the one with sigils, boons, or conditions….That’s the real one. It’s really idiot-proof, the only problem comes with extended cripples as an elementalist doesn’t have the luxury of switching to a ranged weapon to deal with 20+ second cripples.
Also, I agree. ArenaNet has already said they’re working on ele downed skills (and dagger mainhand skills), but until then, how about letting us die immediately upon getting downed? The time wasted on our kitten is actually counterproductive because we never accomplish anything…I’d rather be working on that respawn timer than trying to rally.
Dear ArenaNet,
This skill needs to either have its invulnerability removed or its initiative cost increased. It’s ridiculous to have two elementalists both use their elite skill and both be killed by one thief just because he can spam shadow assault on the ruins while the sharks kill us and he’s immune to all our damage. It essentially makes thieves unstoppable while underwater which is particularly troublesome for Raid on the Capricorn.
Here’s how it typically works, if a thief is on the ruins, you have two options; the first is to try to occupy the ruins at the same time so they can’t capture it and turn the NPC sharks against you. If you try to do this, the thief just spams shadow assault and makes himself immune to damage so neither you nor the sharks can kill or even damage him. This lasts long enough for the neutral sharks or his shadow assault damage to down you. At which point it’s easy to force you off the point or kill you. So he can capture the point. In this situation, you lose the point.
The second option is trying to stay out of the range of shadow assault which equals staying off the capture point. The thief is still immune to damage due to his shadow assault so he can’t be killed by the neutral sharks or pushed off by your control skills. Eventually, he captures the point and all the sharks turn on you. Now it’s a really one sided fight where you end up dying just like in the first option. You still lose the point.
Both these situations are if the point is neutral. Even if the point belongs to you, however, a thief can still force you off and take the point. Due to the damage of shadow assault coupled with its range and invulnerability, the sharks are unable to assist you in combat and over the course of his spamming of this skill, you can either decide to stand on the point and be downed or flee from the point to live and have the thief take it from you, at which point the sharks cease to be an ally and you’re back to fighting over a neutral point which we have already established a thief will win.
The only way to capture, hold, or attack the ruins is if you’re a thief because without this 20 second invulnerability skill, you’ll be killed by residual damage. It doesn’t seem right or fair to make thieves so overpowered and unstoppable in this regard. Please allow some way to counter this so other classes have a chance at capturing the ruins.