Elementalist point of view

One of the characters I love is the Elementalist. Right now, with my current character, I am debating on either working with my Fire magic or Air magic. I'm still trying to debate whats best.

What I'd like to know is what magic other people are working with, how its working out and some of the builds that you've created with the Elementalist either being the primary or secondary profession.

Inquiring minds want to know...

Well, fire is largely for AoE attacks, while air has strong single-target attacks. Personally, I don't like fire very much, but it really depends on what you're trying to do with it. As for secondary professions, I tend to prefer mesmer for some of the energy drain-type skills and/or interrupts. You could also go monk for a little backup healing/protection or a ress, or necro for hexes, etc.

Elementalist/Ranger, why? FOR THE PET!! I love pets and my primary is Fire elementalist. Well at least for the time being, i may experiment more with the next beta weekend. Send in the pet and just nuke from a far! If you are ok with equipping a bow thats a plus to if you put points into marksmanship.

If you're thinking of using Air Magic, don't. Just use a Ranger - better damage, less energy usage, much more disruption. There's really no reason to use the Air line for anything besides, like, Conjure + Blinding Flash.

Peace,
-CxE

I love using Fire for the nukes (Phoenix, Meteor, Fireball, etc). My second choice would be Water.

During this last beta, I personally perfered 'Fire' over both water and air. Possibly, because of the larger radius and the 'nuke' type factor you get with fire. The little testing I did however was rather biased as I didn't try air and water out for to long... Anyways, I personaly like fire because of it's larger damage radius.

-Shawn

in lower arena i played an El/Ra with water and pet.

in tombs i played an El/Mo with fire and spam healing.

I used to play an ele/mes with water magic. Of course, water trident was my staple (or spammable, to be more accurate) spell. I didn't stick too long with it though -- I think the main reason I played an ele is because I'm so used to playing mage/wizard-like characters.. and I've always liked the element of water more.

But water is good if you want a side effect of slowing down targets while doing damage.

i like fire with my elem, provides defense from melee to i think. I hve an elem/monk that heals a lot so i find fire helps me defend myself in melee against warriors. hers my build if u want to look at it...

elem./monk

fire - 10 + 2
healing - 11
e storage - 10 + 1
protection - 1

lave font
flame spurt??(close range one, not inferno)
flare
pheonix
heal other
orison of healing
word of healing
mend condition

so basically here i just used fire for my own close range fighting protection, i could usually survive 2 warriors, soemtimes more, one time i ran into a 6 paladin, 2 monk build in gvg. i was able to take out 2 warrior monks on me, and make the other run. of course this is more of a heal my team build, with occasional flare if were doing good, and the rest of fire is for awsome protection against melee.

Fire and Water are supposedly the best for primary elementalists. And Earth is of course for keeping people off your back for a little while. I'd personally go with Fire for the AoEs and spammability of flare but Water is nice too.

well water is very effective for primary elementalists i agree there. But when going for damage output as a mian elem id prob go water. I mean they hve water trident(the ultimate spammer), then just about all there skills cause slowness. I relaly like ice spikes, good skill and slows down and hits a group. Deep freeze is a lot of energy and long cast, but good when u hve the free time. shard sotrm can be used when ice spikes is rechargin and u just used trident. although water only has one defensive spell, i forget what its called, where fire has more.

Id have to disagree with anyone who wants to use an elementalist for spaming the damage per second just isnt good enough when your being limited by mana.
Go fire AoE or high burst damage like a series of 100 dmg air spells.

On a side not exhastion really doesnt mean anything to a primary ele so dont be affraid to use 1 or even 2 of these skills. Gale is one of the best interupts in the game.

[COLOR=DarkGreen]ill agree with gale being a good disrupting skill, but ill have to disagree on exhaustion

exhaustion only does not matter that much when u hve high energy storage, and even then u dont want to get to much of it[/COLOR]

Just so everyone knows exhastion doesnt effect your max energy just your max usable energy so it really doesnt have an effect at all unless you get down to 20 . So yes you do need to manage it but its not hard i was running 3 exhastion spells with some judicial casting it caused very little trouble.

I agree, air is seriously lacking, the abilities it does have is stopped by excessive exhuastion. earth isn't too great

ill hve to disagree with u there
air has some advantages, faster casting, armor penetration, etc. I mean lightning orb does same as fireballe, with same energy cost, but 1 sec cast time and only 5 sec rechargen i think, which means u could destroy a fire elem just about, by the time a fire elem has used firballe u could hve gotten off lightning orb and lightning strike. if ure realy fast ud be casting another damging lighting skill at about the same time fireball hits u.

so summing that up u just did like 80 + 40 + 80, and he did like 94 damage. who won that competition there. also by the time u cast all those u would only hve to wait 1 sec about, and look at that your ready to cast again, wheres hes still waiting...

o + armor penetration, beat that : )

If you are looking to play an elementalist and you don't care about the numbers, then just pick whichever element appeals to you most.

Earth with a conjure would be the runaway winner for best and most varied element, no contest. I imagine that's why the Devs didn't put a conjure in that line.
Water is a fine line with a bit of variety.

If you're not planning on doing a lot of PvPing, Fire is fine. Monsters are dumb and they like to clump together, so you can make good use of Fire's AoE spells. At this point I'd have to say stay away from Air- the more I look at it, the more it looks like their best spell (after Conjure of course) is Windborne Speed, and that makes me sad. Air's reputation says it's good for killing single targets, but if that's really all you're after, play a ranger, as Ensign says.

If flare at level 12 couldn't do the same damage as lightning orb + lightning strike before they finish recharging i would be highly surprised. Your assumption for win is letting air elementalist use 2 skills while only allowing fire elementalist 1, asinine. If you want to make up ludicrous EASILY OBVIOUS slanted scenarios, just tell me ahead of time and I will go ahead and fix them and make them more believable. Just for a hint this time: leaving off the lightning strike would have made it more believable. And will we be assuming Fire mage with aeromancer armor v wind mage with pyromancer armor?

it seems that the Fire line is by far the best, for two reasons:

- it has very good AoE
- it has immolate

if you want to single-out and kill a particular individual (a monk, let's say) immolate / mark of rodgort / flare is a nice combination; the only think you need is a quick "hex" to top off the mark so it doesn't get removed; if you are a necromancer for your 2nd class, you have many quick hexes to choose from

...

If you are wanting to shut-down warriors, then I think the "air" line is excellent -- weakness and blindness are great ways to render a warrior harmless