Elementalist, a HUGE let down

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RestInPieces wrote:

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silumit wrote:

Well, at least as Elementalist you don't have to be hit for 20% of your life to get that 100% inc.dmg, y'know...

LOL seriously? Have you been fighting any bosses? Getting hit for 20% of your life will proc at every "serious" enemy you will come across! Unlike elementalists, they don't get trash-only skills that are useless for bosses.

And no you don't get 100% increased damage for 4 seconds (which is elementalist's ONLY good talent). You get something perhaps even better. 20% increased damage with 20% inc att speed, a multiplicative bonus which is almost equal to ~85% increased damage by itself and also max lifesteal.

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sidtherat wrote:

it is quite easy. berserk has only 2 nodes worth taking and one of these two is conditional.

for elementalist my picks are the ele prolif tree (despite what people say ele prolif even with 9 range is very strong when done right) and the '8% reduced damage from element' as a very strong albeit humble in looks defensive mechanic.

with berserk you have lots of conditional fluff and useless big numbers - with drawbacks. conditional leech? so you cannot use only this as a leech source so why bother at all? 100% attack damage? who cares.. 100% leech? cool looking noob trap as it does nothing when already leech capped. fluff on warcry? this might be good if there are more warcries. the only good node is 10ms/25aspd. elementalist would make a better melee class than berserker!

You call that prolif? What do you mean "when done right"? You mean if you beg the monsters to hug each other tightly and stay there for you to take a picture or smth? 9 radius is too little -at most my clearing speed will increase by 0.1% and doesn't help at all with the real threat - bosses.

"8% reduction to an element is a very strong mechanic? You forgot the part where you have to be hit by the respective element and that it only lasts for 4 seconds...

I don't like Berzerker much either but Elementalist takes the cake.


They should at least have given us something to reduce enemy ailment thresholds. If that was the case most of these talents would gain some worth.

well. you think prolif and think full screen clear. if your build clears screens already you can just leave ascendancy choice and move on. for me this prolif is a defensive tool (chill/freeze - reliable with hypothermia), damage tool with shock and strandlers killer (fire prolif). id love to have it on my melee builds (oro's sacrifice or wild strike or multi-ele molten strike). it not killing entire screens does not make it worthless. this node (esp with the preceeding auto-status one) might allow for some really cool stuff. ofc people wanting old absurd prolif back wont ever be happy but still

that 8% reduction will matter esp vs bosses as you will get hit by that element anyway (wonder if it counts when hit-and-block). id take this node instantly on my melee characters.

that 20% penetration one is also good for melee (full ele aspd build) using stuff like molten strike or wildstrike. for spellcasters.. discharge :/

i agree that as a witch this class is t great but id take it immediately instead of berserker on my melee chars. berserk is that bad

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sidtherat wrote:

well. you think prolif and think full screen clear. if your build clears screens already you can just leave ascendancy choice and move on. for me this prolif is a defensive tool (chill/freeze - reliable with hypothermia), damage tool with shock and strandlers killer (fire prolif). id love to have it on my melee builds (oro's sacrifice or wild strike or multi-ele molten strike). it not killing entire screens does not make it worthless. this node (esp with the preceeding auto-status one) might allow for some really cool stuff. ofc people wanting old absurd prolif back wont ever be happy but still

that 8% reduction will matter esp vs bosses as you will get hit by that element anyway (wonder if it counts when hit-and-block). id take this node instantly on my melee characters.

that 20% penetration one is also good for melee (full ele aspd build) using stuff like molten strike or wildstrike. for spellcasters.. discharge :/

i agree that as a witch this class is t great but id take it immediately instead of berserker on my melee chars. berserk is that bad

Ironically the 8% reduction might be more useful for a regen marauder. I don't get hit by boss attacks that often - not twice in 4 seconds. Playing on hardcore, that often means death. That's why I consider it be nearly worthless.

The penetration - can't see how I will be able to use it without playing in an annoying inefficient way, flame dashing every 4 seconds with my frost builds, warping with my fire builds and well, lightning builds don't even have a spamable frost skill.

The old prolif could clear screens just like that. The new prolif got nerfed so much that it is not used by anyone. That says something for an even shorter radius prolif.

There are 2 real values in POE imo. One is clearing speed, the other is boss "killability". Prolif obviously won't help with bosses at all even if they are for some reason surrounded by other mobs - not after the nerfs - their thresholds are way too large. And personally, I don't see how would I need a damage boosting mechanism with shock for white mobs that die in 2 hits anyway, or a defensive mechanism with chill for white mobs which never killed any of my characters. As for ignite - with that short prolif we won't ever get to play these builds again and also, ironically, that one might also be better for a melee MS class.

Anyway I just don't see anything that will really help my witch characters besides the pendulum. I'll probably roll either shadow/templar for a caster this time. My elementalist will actually be safer/more efficient getting the ailments on the boss with all that crit/steady pen.

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Well, at least as Elementalist you don't have to be hit for 20% of your life to get that 100% inc.dmg, y'know...

What do you mean? Are we talking about the same node?
Aspect of Carnage - 100% increased damage, 10% increased damage taken. There are no conditions here.

Are you talking about Cloak of Savagery, which gives 100% life steal when you get hit for 20% of your life? If so, what is so bad about that trigger condition? You get that life steal when you most need it, after taking a big hit.

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for elementalist my picks are the ele prolif tree (despite what people say ele prolif even with 9 range is very strong when done right) and the '8% reduced damage from element' as a very strong albeit humble in looks defensive mechanic.

The other poster already responded to you, but seriously don't joke about this Proliferation, it is not good. 9 Radius is melee range, you know that right?

Hahahaha... If they just listened to themselves in the videos.

"Mastermind of discord rewards the elementalist for diversifying into a variety of elements. This is great with multi-element spells like discharge"

In other words if we spend 100 points boosting a single element, we should switch mid-battle instead to another element we have no bonus damage in, in order to get 20% penetration?
Am I reading something wrong here? Because this looks like something, someone who has never played the game would say. Am I missing something?
This is great with discharge but not so great with the rest 99% of spells, so wtf GGG?


"Paragon of calamity attunes the elementalist to the types of elemental damage that she receives, reducing incoming damage and increasing damage dealt. This works well with items like Cloak of Flame that cause enemies to deal fire damage."

"This works well with 2-3 unique items!" Bloody hilarious!


So unless you are trying to reduce the elementalist builds to a CoF/LC WS/discharger, what the heck are you doing?

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RestInPieces wrote:

"Mastermind of discord rewards the elementalist for diversifying into a variety of elements. This is great with multi-element spells like discharge"

Well, it's a fact we have no way to penetrate resists with builds that do multi-elemental damage. Let's say you made an elemental SWT build, it would do something like a quarter each of physical, lightning, fire and cold. If you just have an elemental hit socketed somewhere you can swing at the air every 4s and keep up the 20% all element penetration, you don't even have to hit anything, just use the skill, and as a totemist you got all the time in the world to do it.

So the passive is pretty good in certain situations and I think that's as much as we can expect out of ascendancy passives, to be good for certain setups in certain situations. If we assume you can make, say, ten combinations of ascendancy passives within a class that make sense and the passive is used in three of those, it should cover 1 to 3/190 of possible applications, not a lot of ground, really. It's just one passive in one ascendancy, after all.

However, I agree with you the passive won't be used for the purpose they're advertising, that's also the problem with EE, nobody actually does an honest-to-god spell alternating. That's probably the flaw of socketing system, we can't support that many spells properly. Actually, I think that elementalist branch should have had Hierophant's Illuminated Devotion as a mid-way notable, they messed up big time there.

Well, Elementalist can use non crit Elemental Hit or Wild Strike. She even got attack speed :D

While not EVERY little aspect of Elementalist looks great, I think we get some really powerful stuff. Here´s my take on this, especially the left and middle branch of the Ascendancy tree :

Paragon of Calamity : when hit by an element, you take reduced damage of that element.

How is this not great ? Extra % elemental mitigation, this will be very helpful against strong elemental map bosses (Crematorium, all variations of Piety, Residence Dominus...), perhaps even more so in maps where monsters do extra damage as elemental damage. Absolutely nice !

Pendulum of Destruction : Don´t really see myself playing defensive for 6 seconds and offensive the other 4. Still nice to get that extra damage for sure, and maybe adjusting to this will come more naturally than it first seems. It´s a guaranteed Passive to take for me, though, cause it leads to the ultimate :

Mastermind of Discord :

IF this works with triggered/procced spells, it will be amazing for Mjölner Discharge or CoC/Discharge.

But even if not, you can easily set up a lot of skill combos to match your favorite damage type, without needing to invest much (passives & supports) into the triggering skill.

Fire Skill to get cold pen : Flame Dash, Molten Shell...use those and blast away with your cold skill. Definitely prefer Molten Shell when I have other movement abilities, but there are more options I´ll let you think of on your own.

Lightning skill to get fire pen : Lightning Warp... this is propably the easiest, as LW is a popular move skill anyway and will fit into a lot of fire builds easily.

Cold Skill to get lightning pen : Freeze Mine, Cold Snap, Ice Nova... Not so sure if these fit in too well with a lightning caster, but the same concept applies, no need to use an extra 4L to get the effect.

Then there´s skills that have all 3 tags (cold/fire/ligthning) like Discharge and Elemental hit. Many possibilities, and Penetration - in all other cases - costs you a gem slot and/or Witch/Templar passives, and that´s just for ONE element usually.

I am glad to get just these buffs on my witch, not going into detail about the ailment/golem thing, it´s not interesting to any of my builds, but I am sure that those who like to play around status ailments and proliferation will already have thought of a good use.

TLDR : Imo these new passives are awesome, I don´t understand any of the disappointment you display here.

Elementalist seems very good, you basically get 100% chance to cause status effects AND elemental proliferation for free. So 2 free gem slots. At least, it seems like it would be possible to have permanent elemental conflux uptime. Seems good for a flameblast build. My only feedback is that it should be a templar class, not witch.

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Starxsword wrote:

The other poster already responded to you, but seriously don't joke about this Proliferation, it is not good. 9 Radius is melee range, you know that right?

I ran an ignite prolif Flameblaster to 90 in Tempest. Elemental Proliferation, even with a small radius, is very powerful. The only thing that seriously sucks about it is that it's a less multiplier on the initial hit, a second less multiplier on the ignite damage, and it eats a support slot. The fact that it was nerfed from its previous ridiculous AOE to a much, much, much smaller AOE doesn't make it bad. It just makes it much worse than the older, absolutely ridiculous form of the gem.

Prolif (the effect) significantly increases your clear speed if you're running an ignite build and it significantly increases your safety if you're running a freeze build (and damage with Herald of Ice). Getting it with no gem cost and no damage reduction is fantastic. If you really don't believe me, watch GGG's video for the Elementalist again. Note the size of the proliferation circles late in the video when they're boosted with some increased AOE. Assuming you're playing a build that can make use of the proliferation, it is very much worth having.

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Grumlum wrote:

TLDR : Imo these new passives are awesome, I don´t understand any of the disappointment you display here.

Cause Inquisitor has a way better form of Paragon, Pendulum and Mastermind? That the spellcaster class has the worst spellcasting passives?