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  1. #761
    Quote Originally Posted by jaakkeli View Post
    Err, yes. It's awful. You trade all your abilities for launching enemies and dealing unimpressive damage for 15 seconds. This is awesome for precisely those situations when launching tons of trash mobs around you is awesome which is, like, umm, well I'm sure there's some situation where it's awesome. At other times it's just better to stick to your regular toolset and use an elite that doesn't require you to throw it away.



    Again, you trade away all your skills to use this. The only really strong point of the ele is in the large variety of utility/heal/support skills that you can use on demand and you throw that away when you use any of the elites besides elementals.

    Not to mention ele survival is designed around using the protection and healing as needed and throwing that away to use a melee weapon that doesn't actually do that much more damage than regular skills is just not awesome at all.
    1.) whirlwind is useless sure, just like rampager for a warrior, these are just fun skills and if you want a situation it can be used then the magg even would be perfect, (if your group must kite them) you could have fun throwing enemies around while waiting to die, simple.
    2.) The great sword can be entirely ranged actually, and ele survival is dependent on build and player skill, I rarely ever have the protection buff running both d/d and s/d rarely ever go down. Utility skills should be save for those mess up moments and to help the group, if you're in one.
    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion View Post
    Plz show me your spreadsheets.
    5. You think critting for 5k is awesome, I normal hit for 7.4k with autoattacks.
    Some people are too pro.

  2. #762
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    1) Whirlwind is good on the lover (immediately comes to mind), the part in CM where you need to blow up the gate (5 bombs, gotta keep bandits from disarming them), is very useful against most bosses due to how fast it rips through their Defiance, especially if you are using the "Pick Up Debris" move, and in sPvP it's amazing at throwing people off of points, so many times i've capped a point out from under a bunker guardian by using that skill.

    2) See what Dempsey said.
    Quote Originally Posted by draykorinee View Post
    Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

  3. #763
    Well, my idea of what a d/d does to survive is from in PvP. I've never actually tried d/d in a dungeon myself so my only idea there is watching others... and I've never seen a d/d elementalist who wasn't constantly downed.

    But whatever. The best reason to play a d/d in PvE would be the might buffing combos which you obviously can't do while using a conjured weapon. You could try to fit it in between combos, but meh, you guys are still ignoring the fact that it just doesn't do that much damage. The skills on it suck (no fields, lousy whirl finisher, no utility, no defense etc), you have to drop your normal toolset to use it and it still doesn't even match the damage increase that using one of thouse lousy elementals for full uptime will do.

  4. #764
    Quote Originally Posted by Lane View Post
    So, is there any benefit to a Charr elementalist? (Other than being completely badass. :P) And though it's probably not the right thread for it, anyone know if Radiation Field works as well (or better) with other classes than it does the elementalist?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lane View Post
    Well, after several posts of people saying how much they like Radiation Field on their Asura elementalist I'm a little confused. O_o So, as an Asura is there another slot skill besides that which would actually be more effective?

    Edit: Or do other races have skills that benefit elementalist as much as Radiation Field?
    The reason why people don't realize the strength of RF (and PI) is that they don't use them themselves due to an aversion of racial skills since they are "weaker" than equivalent profession skills.
    The problem with this is that you have to look at alternatives and If you look at the racial skills you notice that there isn't really an "elementalist" racial skill. A great discussion that is going on about elites is another similar point.

    Sadly no other races have racial skills that help out In a similar way, here's a little list:

    There are good parts about several racial skills. The issue is that most racials sort of tie in with the "feel" of the class, here's a list of (non-elite)racial skills:
    Asura:
    Pain Inverter
    Radiation Field
    Technobanble

    Charr:
    Battle Roar
    Hidden Pistol
    Shrapnel Mine

    Human:
    Prayer to Dwayna
    Prayer to Kormir
    Prayer to Lyssa

    Norn:
    Call Owl
    Call Wurm

    Sylvari:
    Healing Seed
    Grasping Vines
    Seed Turret

    A quick summary:
    Asura is great for adding condition damage since it uses two of the rarest conditions in game, Confusion and Poison.
    Charr is a melee power helper, you get might and fury, an evade out of range + a skill to damage from range to get back up.
    Human the anti condition race, if you're a mesmer or a thief you can gain quite a bit of utility from these racials since these classes suck at removing conditions.
    Norn only having 2 utilities vastly cripples these racials, the Owl works great for short term burst but the long CD is annoying, the wurm simply sucks (see Sylvari).
    Sylvari all their racials can be destroyed meaning that they are by far the weakest you can get since AoE kills them really fast.

    So, as you can tell for a Condition class (that has good condition up time without utilities) Asura shines. Of course if you (like rangers) need utilities you fall short quite fast.

    Now let's look at the alternatives for PI and RF that the (condition) elementalist can bring regardless of race.
    Glyph of Elemental Power
    Glyph of Storms
    Signet of Air
    Signet of Earth
    Signet of Fire
    Signet of Water
    (I didn't list Weapon Spells since they are very lackluster condition wise, and make you give up quite a bit of burning/bleed/power)

    Glyph of Elemental power is OK if you're playing a support elementalist who wants to help keep the party alive by providing weakness/cripple. Burning and Chill don't really help since you'll probably have plenty of burning when attuned to fire and when you're in water you'll probably be trying to heal up meaning you probably won't hit the boss.
    Glyph of Storms is great for AoE fights and should be put it in when necessary for PI since it's a single target spell.
    The Signets are all pretty god damn awful. If you activate them you lose their strongest effect being the passive. Air, Earth and Water don't really do anything if you compare them to their CD. The only good signet is fire but this suffers from the same issue as glyph of elemental power in that you'll probably have plenty of burning already.
    Last edited by Meledelion; 2013-01-28 at 07:37 AM.

  5. #765
    The Lightbringer Durzlla's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jaakkeli View Post
    Well, my idea of what a d/d does to survive is from in PvP. I've never actually tried d/d in a dungeon myself so my only idea there is watching others... and I've never seen a d/d elementalist who wasn't constantly downed.

    But whatever. The best reason to play a d/d in PvE would be the might buffing combos which you obviously can't do while using a conjured weapon. You could try to fit it in between combos, but meh, you guys are still ignoring the fact that it just doesn't do that much damage. The skills on it suck (no fields, lousy whirl finisher, no utility, no defense etc), you have to drop your normal toolset to use it and it still doesn't even match the damage increase that using one of thouse lousy elementals for full uptime will do.
    Um... the 2 skill is a lava front (or what ever the staff 2 skill is) on steroids...and if you're in PvP the utility comes from making an area not a very smart place for them to stand, combine the 5 (same as the glyph of storms skill while in fire attunement) with the 2 and you got an area that'll keep them at bay, well the smart players anyway the dumb ones will stand in it and die horribly. It does a significant amount of damage, maybe not as much as your d/d burst can do, but it does A LOT and the fact you can give it to another person as well makes it a really good skill.

    And i use both of them in PvP, i just don't see how glyph of elements can even compare to either of those in a PvP environment, i mean the only 2 that'd be useful would be the ice elemental and the fire elemental because the earth does nothing but stay alive a long time and the air one just gives swiftness now (no more KB or daze ever since it was nerfed BWE1)
    Quote Originally Posted by draykorinee View Post
    Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

  6. #766
    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion View Post
    A quick summary:
    Asura is great for adding condition damage since it uses two of the rarest conditions in game, Confusion and Poison.
    Charr is a melee power helper, you get might and fury, an evade out of range + a skill to damage from range to get back up.
    Human the anti condition race, if you're a mesmer or a thief you can gain quite a bit of utility from these racials since these classes suck at removing conditions.
    Norn only having 2 utilities vastly cripples these racials, the Owl works great for short term burst but the long CD is annoying, the wurm simply sucks (see Sylvari).
    Sylvari all their racials can be destroyed meaning that they are by far the weakest you can get since AoE kills them really fast.
    Thanks for the write-up. Makes me want to start a separate thread to discuss racials though. :P

    Well, Charr's Shrapnel Mine adds bleeding, but I suppose that's not something an elementalist can't already do in other forms. Radiation Field causing poison does make me think it's going to be redundant/useless as a thief and I was planning on an Asuran thief. -_-

  7. #767
    even if you're using a condition build, one stack of confusion isn't all that much to make pain inverter worth it imo.
    it's okay if you're meant to take hits due to retaliation. otherwise it's just average.

  8. #768
    Quote Originally Posted by Durzlla View Post
    Um... the 2 skill is a lava front (or what ever the staff 2 skill is) on steroids...
    It's not. Staff 2 is a fire field, Fiery Greatsword 2 is not a field at all.

    What makes elementalist great in groups is all the fire fields and blast finishers in one character, especially if you're playing d/d. You throw both of them away if you use Fiery Greatsword, though admittedly not for a really long time. Still, it really doesn't make sense to stop buffing your group with might just to use a skill that does a bit more damage than your regular attacks - your group down mobs faster if you just take the elite that doesn't interfere with your might buffs.

    Fiery Greatsword isn't even good at all for solo PvE. It's fun to mess around with but even crappy racials like Hounds of Balthazar will be much more helpful for soloing some event boss or other tougher than average mob.

    and if you're in PvP
    We were comparing profession elites to racial elites which you can't even use in PvP so PvP is completely irrelevant.

    And i use both of them in PvP, i just don't see how glyph of elements can even compare to either of those in a PvP environment,
    It doesn't matter, the point was elementalist elites are not good enough to outshine racial elites. We can't compare the elites in PvP because you can't even use racial elites in PvP.

    (In case you're confused why I mentioned only PvPing with d/d, it was to point out that I don't actually have experience playing d/d myself in the actual subject, that is PvE...)

  9. #769
    well combo fields are usually staff forte while finishers are anywhere between dagger and utility skills.
    can't remember that much combo fields as d/d, there's ring of fire and... that's it.

  10. #770
    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion View Post
    Human the anti condition race, if you're a mesmer or a thief you can gain quite a bit of utility from these racials since these classes suck at removing conditions.
    ......wat.
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  11. #771
    You need to sacrifice a whole lot of utility to drop conditions as a mesmer. You have the mantra, arcane thievery and null field. All of those are on a long cd and very unreliable in comparison to other classes.
    45sec cd on both null field and arcane thievery is very crippling. The mantra sucks due to it's cast time (if you need to remove conditions a lot they'll be able to tick for 4more seconds than you actually would want). Also null field is annoying since you sort of want to hold on to it for when your team needs it.
    Ranger, nec, guard, ele, war and engineer all have better ways of dealing with conditions

    @lane dw about Asura thief or whatever racial thief.
    Thieves are very utility dependent so you probably won't have room for racials.

    @sacrypheyes yes PI isn't great, but if you look at alternatives there isn't one thing that outshines it.
    You can argue that glyph of storms is handy since it adds both blind and bleed but it has a long cd a cast time and can be "walked out of".

    What skill would you bring as an alternative?
    Last edited by Meledelion; 2013-01-29 at 07:48 AM.

  12. #772
    as a DPS oriented build, i'd probably take Arcane Wave if it's not already included in your build, even a condition build.
    sort of a no-brainer imo as it's probably one of the best utility skills in the ele's arsenal.

    otherwise if you're already running AW and RF, i'd be the type to take a defensive skill such as Mist Form or Armor of Earth in case you can make use of stability boon (say to cast Churning Earth with no risk of interruption).

    i never used signets outside of some tanky build with 30 in earth traits, as for glyphs, the only one I ever consider is the lesser elemental, all others are pretty much useless imo.

  13. #773
    It's already included...
    Arcane Wave, Pain Inverter, Radiation Field is the set up, I find that armor of earth and mist form have way too long CD's to bring with you in any PvE environment(75 and 90 sec).

    Churning Earth usually needs to be cancelled due to big hits being inbound and not due to some interrupt effect.

  14. #774
    considering they're more like oh-shit buttons, you're not meant to need them every 30s. and while their cd is quite long, it should still be available at least once for most fights. not to mention they're both stun breakers, which can have its use when you happen to miss your dodge or didn't have enough stamina for dodging a KD/stun followed by some "hey see my shiny one-shot skill here?" shit.

  15. #775
    Just dodge properly and you don't need oh shit buttons... (also there isn't a single boss in game that requires stunbreakers)

  16. #776
    i can't dodge everything everytime, especially when it comes to escape from massive minions spawns (fractals in mind, don't remind seeing that much minions elsewhere) which hurt quite a bit even with protection boon up.

    also never mentionned bosses were the ones pushing me to use stunbreakers.
    in this precise case, i'd rather use arcane blast than keeping PI, lower CD, higher damage imo, and projectile finisher to boot.

  17. #777
    If you're playing vs massive numbers of minions you'll be popping in glyph of storms...

  18. #778
    The Lightbringer Durzlla's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion View Post
    If you're playing vs massive numbers of minions you'll be popping in glyph of storms...
    I personally ALWAYS use glyph of storms due to the usefulness of the chill and blind storms (water and earth respectively) and then if damage is required (as in above situation) lightning is amazing for +5 mobs(each strike can hit 5 mobs) and fire is amazing for 1-5 (zone does damage to up to 5, can't miss while they're in zone), which makes it really nice for like everything!!

    Then again I don't use asura racials so idk how useful non radiation field is (runes of ratasum ftw), but they don't seem -that- great.
    Quote Originally Posted by draykorinee View Post
    Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

  19. #779
    I'd still argue for Lightning Hammer. The trick is to realize that even if you just use it for a skill or two and then drop it very quickly (like a Static Field+leap finisher combo), it's still more utility and flexibility (and finishers) than you'll get with any other single utility skill. And it's amazing for blind-tanking single mobs with 1-skill spam. Plus you get two of them, so I don't mind the long cooldown.

    Ice Bow could be another option.

  20. #780
    Problem is that you're giving up your natural "flow" of finishers. And that you'd simply interrupt a really nice cycle.
    In general you only want to be in 2attunements for conditions, Fire and Earth luckily those have great synergy since you can get off tons of blast finishers in fire/earth.

    Ring of fire>phoenix>dragon's tooth +swap > earthquake>churning earth and now Ring of Fire is over.
    Now you "need" to be in earth to stack up some bleed anyway.

    So you'd only be able to get dazing strike as a combo from lightning hammer, which is
    a) for you alone (in comparison to group wide might) and
    b) not useful against 80% of the bosses

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