[Neraphym]

Sorry, but as I saw this, I both laughed and cried. Anet despises Elementalists with a passion. Not only do they nerf our skills to death, they torture us, too!

Thursday April 5, 2007

Elementalist

* Armor of Mist: decreased casting time to 1 second.
* Conjure Lightning/Frost/Flame: increased damage to 10..25.
* Glyph of Lesser Energy: now reduces the cost of your next 2 spells by 10..18, based on the Energy Storage attribute.
* Mind Blast: increased damage to 15..75.



Tuesday April 10, 2007

Elementalist

* Mind Blast: reduced damage to 15..60.



Friday April 13, 2007

Elementalist

* Conjure Flame: decreased damage to 7..22, increased recharge time to 45 seconds.
* Conjure Frost: decreased damage to 7..22, increased recharge time to 45 seconds.
* Conjure Lightning: decreased damage to 7..22, increased recharge time to 45 seconds.

Is that mean or what? They disguise the nerf as a buff for a few days, then they take it all away!

[Ratty]

Wow, yeah.

Anet is mean

[Goto]

I know Ele skills do tend to get quite a few nerfs, but that might be because they're such a powerful class.

Also I'd much rather they buff the skills up then nerf them, rather than just the latter. Also taking it "all" away is a bit inaccurate, Armor of Mist and Glyph of Lesser Energy kept their buffs, Lesser Energy in particular seems pretty awesome now.

[Neraphym]

It's old primary use was to get 2 heal parties for 5 enegry. It was a pretty good energy saver for non-elementalists. Now it's been nerfed so only eles can take full advantage of it. Overall, they've improved it from the old 1 spell for 10 less energy version. As for armor of mist... erm, they helped it a little.

[Goto]

So what you're saying is that they nerfed Elementalists by causing an extremely potent energy management skill to only be used effectively by Elementalists?

Anyway, I wouldn't disregard this as far as non-elementalists go. 10 less energy for the next 2 spells is still extremely useful for classes that burn energy quickly, like Monk. Heal Parties can be fired off at 5 energy each, and cheaper spells are completely free. Seems like it would have been a bit too potent beforehand, whereas now it's good for ele secondaries, and even better than before in most cases for primaries. Just about every elementalist I've come across has at least a decent amount invested in Energy Storage, so it's the same or better than before for them.

And I used Conjure Flame a bit before the last nerf (nerf probably isn't the right word, counter-buff maybe?) and it did seem a bit too powerful at 10...25. For 10 energy you had 60 seconds of wand attacks almost comparable in power to a steady stream of flares, which is much more draining on energy. 7...22 isn't that different to 10...25, and since the duration is longer than the recharge that still isn't much of a nerf. Only matters if your enchants are removed, which was going to leave you without it in any case.

I don't think they hate Elementalists, the recent changes are much less damaging than other classes have had to put up with. You could make more of a case for them hating Necromancers currently, although I hear they're heavily considering reducing energy cost of a bunch more necro spells like they did for most of the Minion skills. Also if you scroll back all the way to the last time Elementalists were balanced, you'll notice we came out waaay ahead of the game that time, was mostly increased damage and decreased energy.

[Neraphym]

So what you're saying is that they nerfed Elementalists by causing an extremely potent energy management skill to only be used effectively by Elementalists?

No, I'm saying they nerfed GoLE for that reason, and Elementalists for the Conjure and Mind Blast skill buff-nerfs.

[Goto]

Well what was Mind Blast before the buff? I didn't use it before then, but it's hardly a nerf if they just moved it back to around the range it was before. Obviously they decided they'd made it too powerful, considering it's energy management as well as spammable damage.