Two ele/mes builds...near final. Suggestions?

[flatlineXmemory]

The two builds are below, one being a pyro and one being hydro. I've really only ran into two debates...that being of replacing fireball with flare due to lower cost and more spam...but I dont wanna be a close range spammer. And..arcane echo...hear a few of thoses. *note* I havent played in any of the betas...making builds purely off reading boards and others suggestions etc. Thanks guy, any advise will be appreciated! Let me know what you think.. :D

(Fire) Ele/Mes

Energy Storage: 10
Fire: 12
Inspiration: 8

Flame Burst
Fire Storm
Rodgorts Invocation
Fireball (or Flare)
Fire Attunement

Aura of Restoration
Energy Drain *elite*
Inspired Enchantment

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Water) Ele/Mes

Energy Storage: 10
Water: 12
Inspiration: 8

Water Trident *elite*
Ice Spikes
Maelstorm
Ice Prison
Water Attunement
Aura of Restoration
Energy Tap
Inspired Enchantment

[Herthbul]

PvP or PvE?

[flatlineXmemory]

PvE, sorry.

[Herthbul]

First Build
Don't bother with Flame Burst. It's a PBAoE and that means it has an aftercast of 1.75 seconds instead of the standard .75. Plus it means you have to be pretty close to the foe and at higher missions they're going to hurt you more than you're going to hurt them.

General Rule: Don't use spam spells (Flare, Ice Spear and Stone Daggers) unless you're running Ether Renewal. Otherwise they're worthless since an equivalent Conjure + elemental wand does more damage.

May want to run Elemental Attunement instead of Energy Drain. Serves you better in the long run.

Inspired Enchantment is a bad choice for PvE considering that you won't find many enchantments. Personally I'd just take a Mesmer secondary for Arcane Echo for PvE and drop Inspiration since you really won't have to worry about energy if you run Fire Attunement + Elemental Attunement.

Speaking of which you may want to consider the following spells. Immolate, Incendiary Bonds, Conjure Flame and Arcane Echo (especially for Fireball).

Second Build
Ice Prison why? The monsters won't run out of your Maelstrom AoE.

Energy Tap and Inspired Enchantment are pretty bad choices. Inspired Enchantment for the same reasons as the Pyro, and Energy Tap because 1) Power Drain is 10x better for energy renewal, 2) you won't need energy renewal since Water spells other than Water Trident tend to have pretty large recharge times and combined with Water Attunement you should be fine for energy and 3) with a cast time of 3 seconds for a measly 11 energy is crap.

Consider running Conjure Frost, Arcane Echo (for Water Tri or Maelstrom), Shard Storm and Blurred Vision.

[flatlineXmemory]

Ouch....you murdered my builds :eek: hmmm..

[um104]

dang... i liked energy tap too. but yes, u bring up the point that 3 seconds for 11 energy isnt good, as apposed to a usual 1:4 chance of getting 25 energy, or a usual 3:4 chance of loosing 5 energy and a 25 second recharge. not that its a bad skill, just u need to be watching for when the guy makes his spells, which i dont think he wants to be an interupting mesmer. btw, when u succesfully use that skill, does it recharge automatically? or does it still have the 25 second rule. =P
Inspired Enchantment shouldnt be there, because like he said, you wont find many enchanted monsters. now, in PvP, it'd be awesome, but for now, no.
they've got good general idea's. you just need to take things from experience. things look better on paper than they do on... blood? iono. just learn from experience. you could try out the build, but eventually, your gunna end up going for something completelly different. =P
Air Elementalist Extrordinare
--um104
PS: ima post my build for correction l8er this week

[Mkillerh]

General Rule: Don't use spam spells (Flare, Ice Spear and Stone Daggers) unless you're running Ether Renewal. Otherwise they're worthless since an equivalent Conjure + elemental wand does more damage.


Im afraid that i have to completely dissagree with that, most people cant find a great wand that would have enought damage to reach 42 f. dmg a second, because with my flare that high, conjure flame only adds 13 dmg. Now, some 15 or even 20 dmg wand still doesnt rack up to flare. Also, Conjure flame is an enchantment, easaly rippable by most PvE (i have an urge to call is PvM (Player vs monster(s)) for some reason)

As for his ice prison skill, that is accually quite helpful in some areas. Since i dont focus in PvP at all, i would know that sort of thing. Monsters move after they take dmg, wanting to kill you, unless you have quite a lot of tanks covering you. It slows down monsters who are chasing you, which can be a life or death sittuation.

[PKMG StaR]

For your first build- flare is indeed worthless in PvE. From my experience in the BWE, you will end up dropping this spell quickly. I remember casting firestorm even on single targets would be more effective than spamming flare.

I suggest you choose what kind of pyromancer you wish to be. If you want to be upfront to use spells such as flame burst then you definantly want to add earth armors. If you want to sit in the back and cast distant AOE spells like firestorm, then just drop all your close-distance spells =/. Also in PvE your not gonna be using energy-drain type spells that you would be in PvP so just drop energy drain for an elite of your choice.

For your hydro build I think this is more of a PvP build than a PvE build. Enemies wont move unless they are charging at their target, so get rid of prison. If you added prison in case a monster rushes you, than trident would deal with it. Personally I think water is better reserved for PvP. Fire deals higher dmg, or earth is very nice with armors and more PvE oriented AOE spells.

[Trancinghof]

Hmm, Im not really a PvE expert. But Water is really great in PvP. PvE tho, I think fire is better. An energy draining E is always good.

Last advice, dont try and make a fast casting E, even tho you have points in energy storage, and got 7x energy, you're energy is gone in 10 seconds :surprise:

[Zxanadu]

If you place Aura and Elemental Attunement in your skill set, you shouldn't have much problem w/ energy. And as far as an Elem/Mes you might want to look at using domination skills like Chaos storm and Arcane Thievery. Most mobs in PvE only have one to three skills (with what I've come across so far)
Just as a warning. Maelstrom is a skill you can't get till after Lions Arch, so you might want to consider looking at the skills you can get from Ascalon and Yak's Bend for a pre-skill build till you are able to acquire all of the skills you want. And if you don't want to rush through and take your time, it will take a number of hours to acquire some of the skills.
Just as a reference, you may get to lvl 20 in 20 hrs, but you still probably won't have some of the skills for you builds. The reason I'm saying this is, because you stated that you have never played and are unfamiliar w/ how mobs and skills actually work.

See you online.

[flatlineXmemory]

Thanks guys, your right though... I'll probably just wait now that will be playing tonight ^^ see you guys in game. Thanks for the info!

[Mkillerh]

Hmm, even with my low amount of energy, flare wasn't really a problem at all IMO, it was great in taking down anything especially casters, without the huge penalty like 10 sec recharge. Even if you have a skill that does 400 dmg (no possible way, at least i hope not) flare does 420 dmg in 10 seconds, with 10 flares. 10x5 = 50 energy cost, with attunement (well, for my build) minus that down to 35 energy. Now for a skill that does 420 dmg and is spammable, great for killing monks and healers in PvE, i am pretty content. To me, it seems that my energy replenishes quick enough (Ether renewal would go great with this skill, you only lose 5 energy, at least, with my points with energy storage) Thats just my opinion though, we all have different playing styles :)

[Herthbul]

At lvl 12 Fire Magic Flare does 40 damage whereas Conjure Flame adds 13. With an 11-22 (max damage on a wand) you come out pretty close to Flare. The difference? Energy usage. Flare uses a whole lot more for relatively the same result.

[PKMG StaR]

I think when you start to play PvE you will find yourself using flare less and less as you go along and wont need a single target spell like conjure fire or flare.

Remember that spells have a casting delay, so you will get roughly ~5 flares in 10 seconds. With ~40 dmg flare, your dealing 200 dmg single target in 10 seconds, one cast of firestorm deals more than 200 dmg to multiple targets in 10 seconds.

[Mkillerh]

Hmm, i see, i just though that when you mentioned conjure flame, you ment like a flame sword, so i went "What??" I get it now, thanks

[Pyro Gl]

First Build
Don't bother with Flame Burst. It's a PBAoE and that means it has an aftercast of 1.75 seconds instead of the standard .75. Plus it means you have to be pretty close to the foe and at higher missions they're going to hurt you more than you're going to hurt them.

i'm unfamiliar with the aftercast, could someone plz explain?

[Herthbul]

Casting periods usually go like this. You activate the spell -> casting animation (aka casting time) -> effect of spell is delivered -> aftercast. The aftercast period for more spells is .75 seconds but on the Ele PBAoE's they're 1.75 seconds so it's like a hidden cost of choosing a PBAoE.

[Lady Lenari]

I can't help you much on the finer points of fire magic - I'm a newbie, and picked fire because I felt it was the easiest to master and wanted to get a better idea of the ele character before trying a hydro/geo type character. But when I took mesmer as a secondary prof I decided to focus on Domination abilities instead of Inspiration. While I thought Inspiration skills were pretty powerful, I felt that some of the spells needed a lot of attribute levels before they could become moderately potent, whereas with Domination you get some spells that do a lot of damage even with low domination points (although I suppose it doesn't matter; you still put about 10 levels into it). Backfire, for instance is one of my favourite spells - as a pyro I'm an all out nuker which is good for hard damage on physical enemies, and I use my domination abilities to take out other mages, especially mesmers. This way I'm effective against both magical and physical opponents; unfortunately, this means I don't neccessarily have a lot going for me defensively, so I try to hide behind warriors. On the other hand, elementalists never had a lot of defence to begin with, so I'd suggest investing in your Domination skills. Of course, I could be wrong about Inspiration - I've never tried it out.

[GoQHaN]

my el/me build for pve..
meteor shower
meteor
phoneix
glyph of renewall
glyph of lesser energy
arcane echo
magnetic aura
-Rez signet, inferno , Fire attunement..

meteor shower isnt affective as it was..you can get another skill..rodgort`s invocation..

arcane echo , meteor , glpyh of renewall , echoed meteor , echoed meteor..
it gives 300+ aoe dmg..

[Symbolic Self]

First Build
Don't bother with Flame Burst. It's a PBAoE and that means it has an aftercast of 1.75 seconds instead of the standard .75. Plus it means you have to be pretty close to the foe and at higher missions they're going to hurt you more than you're going to hurt them.

This is not true. Flameburst has a .75 sec aftercast like most other spells. There are supposedly a few (inferno, crystal wave) that have a 1.75 sec aftercast, but FB is not one of them.

[jibikao]

At lvl 12 Fire Magic Flare does 40 damage whereas Conjure Flame adds 13. With an 11-22 (max damage on a wand) you come out pretty close to Flare. The difference? Energy usage. Flare uses a whole lot more for relatively the same result.

Conjure doesn't give you +11-22 and +13 on all monsters. When you use Conjure + Wand against warrior/ranger, the damage is reduced further because the damage are reduced individually by armor/resistance. You will be lucky if you can do 20 conjure+wand damage on warrior/ranger. Flare probably does more than that... +25 I guess.

Against casters, conjure's damage doesn't get reduced much so it's good.