81 replies to this topic

[-PenguinFetish-]

Video Example

 

Abilities

 

- Wall of Fire (6m plane that panics and burns enemies that touch it. 20s duration 200% weapon damage per second. 4s fear duration, burning duration 8s. 32s cooldown. 35 mana cost. Upgrade gives 3m extra size and 4s extra burn duration) 

 

- Firestorm (Meteor shower that hits 12 targets, knocks them down and deals 100% weapon damage. 60s cooldown. 65 mana cost.)

 

- Winters Grasp (freezes a single target. 200% weapon damage, 4s duration, 8s chill, 16s cooldown. Cost: 65 Mana, upgrade grants 3m AoE chill effect) (use fadestep if you prefer)

 

- Barrier (provides additional health bar which must be depleted before you are damaged. 4m AoE, 24s cooldown. 50 mana cost. Upgrade reduces cooldown by 4s)

 

Mandatory Passives

 

- Death Siphon (20 mana and 10% health restored when an enemy is killed near you)

 

- Gathering Storm (0.5s cooldown reduction per attack)

 

- Control of the Elements (15% duration for all status effects (frozen/burning/panic/chill)

 

Unlock Order

 

Beeline Firestorm (level 6), then upgraded Wall of Fire and Death Siphon (level 9). Get Gathering Storm, then Barrier (level 14). Upgrade Winters Grasp and Barrier and get Control of the Elements (level 17). Then fill out the rest of your points (I choose Strength of Spirits, Veiled Riptose and Chaotic Focus).

 

Strategy 

 

The Elementalist really isn't that difficult in terms of strategy. The one thing I will mention though is that you should always wait for the Flashpoint icon to show up on your HUD before casting Wall of Fire or Firestorm (its the yellow star with a red flame inside it). This ability is incredibly useful, and you get it while beelining to Firestorm. As im sure you can imagine, 2 wall of fires active at the same time does an insane amount of damage (2x 200% weapon damage per second for 12 seconds = 4800% weapon damage over 12 seconds)  (Was pointed out to me that you can only have 1 firewall up at a time, the first one disappears when a second is cast. while 2 firestorms active means that an area can be completely locked down for a significant period of time. 

 

There is no specific casting order, though I recommend casting firestorm first if its a large group being targeted in an open room, Wall of Fire if there is some kind of chokepoint. Or both. Because you can do that. 1 directly after the other from a full mana bar.

 

If you have a tank, or teammates that are being targeted, throw out a barrier when you need too. You aren't a keeper so don't feel obligated to keep barriers topped up at all time. You are for the most part, an AoE crowd controller, and this is the role you should prioritize.

 

When enemies get too close to you (which  does happen, but rarely) just cast winters grasp on them. Try not to move around too much, as Winter Stillness increases mana regeneration by 50%, meaning barriers will be available faster after casting firestorm for example.

 

Death Siphon should keep you alive, besides, enemies wont get in melee range of you, and if they do, you can just cast Winters Grasp/Fade step and continue the onslaught of magic.

 

Please feel free to check out my other character guides:

 

Necromancer

 

Arcane Warrior

 

Reaver

 

Assassin

 

Archer

 

Legionnaire

 

Alchemist

 

 

 

 

[IamTheAttack]

Nice guide as usual.

I am not a fan of winter grasp, when it comes to freeze bigger target that are immune to freeze, i don't really see the value except for the chill effect. I prefer an upgraded stonefist. 

Can you stack multiple wall of fire? I am not a fan too, but with my third ele promote i have try out this skill and the first wall of fire seem to disapear when i try to put a second one.

I always pick and upgrade the first ability too which i find really good with the cooldown reduction.

[Drogonion]

This has been my preferred setup for Elem also.  Very team friendly and a ton of fun.  (In pugs tho I go Fade Step or Cloak.)

[-PenguinFetish-]

Can you stack multiple wall of fire?

 

Thanks. No you can't afaik. You can have both active at 1 time though

[21T09]

I find Firestorm so obnoxious!
Agree with IamtheAttack, Stonefist might be more useful for cc than winter's grasp. It has a lower CD as well?

[IamTheAttack]

I find Firestorm so obnoxious!
Agree with IamtheAttack, Stonefist might be more useful for cc than winter's grasp. It has a lower CD as well?

 Yup sir,

[PvtNiss]

You can't have multiple walls and you should drop firewall at the start of a fight. You can have 2 firestorms use your flashpoint for that. Winter's grasp is junk the mana cost is huge and so is the utility. You're better off just using immolate or fire mine for some DPS you get plenty of CC with the wall and firestorm knocking stuff over like bowling pins. Fire mine knocks stuff off their feet aswell and honestly whatever blows up besides elites doenst even need to be CC'd it will die. The extra DPS you'd get from the freeze detonation on winters grasp is meh, targets you want to detonate on don't even get frozen by it. If you still want to freeze, use the freeze mine.

[Mindtraveller]

I think this would've been better as the video example https://www.youtube....h?v=NOErZuzZpS8

[-PenguinFetish-]

You can't have multiple walls and you should drop firewall at the start of a fight. You can have 2 firestorms use your flashpoint for that. Winter's grasp is junk the mana cost is huge and so is the utility. You're better off just using immolate or fire mine for some DPS you get plenty of CC with the wall and firestorm knocking stuff over like bowling pins. Fire mine knocks stuff off their feet aswell and honestly whatever blows up besides elites doenst even need to be CC'd it will die. The extra DPS you'd get from the freeze detonation on winters grasp is meh, targets you want to detonate on don't even get frozen by it. If you still want to freeze, use the freeze mine.

 

You can absolutely have 2 fire walls up at the same time. 

 

I like winters grasp, it freezes and debuffs all enemies around it. Might give stonefist a try though. 

 

To be honest though, Wall of Fire and Firestorm are the only two abilities that are a must. the other two slots are subject to preference.

[Sir Jessku]

You can have 2 walls up.

I love stonefist on elementalist.

[SicMirx]

Yeah, can't have multiple Walls up in my games. What the H? Otherwise, I like the build in theory. No defensive ability turned me off, too. Still fun to read and think about.

[PvtNiss]

You can absolutely have 2 fire walls up at the same time. 

 

I like winters grasp, it freezes and debuffs all enemies around it. Might give stonefist a try though. 

 

To be honest though, Wall of Fire and Firestorm are the only two abilities that are a must. the other two slots are subject to preference.

I was ingame testing during that post to confirm. Go try it again when you cast a 2nd fire wall anywhere the first one will disappear.

 

Edit: It's in your own video, 2:40 the one at the top of the stairs vanishes when you cast the one at the bottom.

[IamTheAttack]

i ve just tested it again myself and everytime i cast a second firewall, the first one vanish.

[J. Peterman]

Firestorm? Kicked!!! j/k

 

So many great ways to build this guy. I recently promoted him so I could switch from fade cloak to fade step. I also stick with Immolate, winter's grasp and stonefist.

 

I love stonefist on elementalist.

 

This I can agree with.

[IamTheAttack]

I am a huge fan of immolate/stonefist, i have to try fire mine tho. Dunno if it's realy worth it!

[-PenguinFetish-]

Yeah, can't have multiple Walls up in my games. What the H? Otherwise, I like the build in theory. No defensive ability turned me off, too. Still fun to read and think about.

 

Barrier is defensive

[-PenguinFetish-]

I was ingame testing during that post to confirm. Go try it again when you cast a 2nd fire wall anywhere the first one will disappear.

 

Edit: It's in your own video, 2:40 the one at the top of the stairs vanishes when you cast the one at the bottom.

 

Oh wow, thanks for pointing this out. I had never noticed this. Ill edit this out

[Cirvante]

It's also worth noting that the Barrier upgrade Elegant Defense reduces the cooldown by 4 seconds for every Barrier that expires naturally and not through an enemy attack. This goes for teammates as well. That's why when you cast it on more than two players it will almost always come off cooldown when it expires.

 

I personally think that an Elementalist with Barrier can replace a Keeper, since Firestorm has better CC than Static Cage. Definitely one of the best classes for Perilous.

[Hiero_Glyph]

Also, Chaotic Focus is not activated by Wall of Fire (bug?) so you can benefit from the 50% barrier strength without worrying about having half of your Barrier consumed when you cast Wall of Fire.  Firestorm pretty much requires having Flashpoint active (except for final wave encounters) so you would usually cast Firestorm and then Barrier.  Even if you Barrier (with Flashpoint active ) and then Firestorm for end of wave encounters it won't hurt you too much since it's the last encounter of the wave.

 

I will note that using Fade Step is cumbersome since you want to save Flashpoint for Firestorm.  As a result if you end an encounter with Flashpoint active you will be unable to use Fade Step until after you have cast Firestorm.  Well, you can use it but your Firestorm will suffer.  You can always use Fade Step to reposition after casting Firestorm but that severely limits its utility.  As a result, I'm not a huge fan of Fade Step on the Elementalist despite loving the skill on the Keeper and Necromancer.

 

I'd agree that Barrier, Firestorm and Wall of Fire are all great but I'm still not sure which 4th skill to use. I'm actually debating about Fade Cloak since it would allow me to cast a clutch Barrier and would be situational anyway, allowing me to maximize Flashpoint with Firestorm.  Chilling Grasp is also good and gives you even more CC without interacting with Chaotic Focus.  I'm still a huge fan of Immolate as it is one of the most efficient damage spells in the game so the optimal 4th skill is still open for debate.

[PvtNiss]

Timing your flashpoint use right can make a huge difference. Sometimes it's just not worth saving and other times it definitely is. Having a set of rings or staff with mods that increase your crit chance are probably the best choice for elementalist's and can really change up your game. I just about had at least 1 firestorm up during the entire zone 5 earlier on my elementalist and there was a 2nd Ele I think also on this forum using wall and firestorm in a different area. Fire for days. Barrier/Wall/Storm and my personal choice fire mine is so much fun to play with you have the barrier, knockbacks, a panic inducing wall and a very large damage mine at your feet that blows enemies away and deals absurd damage. Fire mine with both burning duration passives does around 3800% weapon damage over 11 seconds placing it at the center of a PotA or SC is sick.

 

Also would like to add that I think I may have been wrong and had 2 fire walls up earlier. Like it's a bug or fluke thing that maybe you experienced penguin. Either that or the other Ele put his fire wall right on top of my first. I have the ability improvement ring (duration) for fire wall too its great fun with the passive cooldown reduction from using skills and basic attacks I easily have an infinite wall without flashpoint. Perhaps a combination of this ring and passive on-hit CDR can get my firewall to cool down naturally fast enough to get 2 up at once. I will try to test this further.

[Cirvante]

When you cast a second Firewall, the first one always vanishes. Does Fire Mine do aoe damage? I might give it a try on my next ele build.

[PvtNiss]

Yes it does but it's kind of hard to use sometimes, the explosion isn't any bigger than the trigger area so you will only get effective AoE if it primes with several enemies on it immediately exploding.

[Markk0082]

Iagree and been tested my build like this on perlous key is have 2 eles

[PvtNiss]

Also, Chaotic Focus is not activated by Wall of Fire (bug?)

 

Pretty sure this is because chaotic focus only works on direct damage. Firestorms 12x100%, fire mines 1600%, immolates 400% and flash fires 300%. Thats pretty much it. Also works with barrage if your staff is fire typed I'd guess.

[Hiero_Glyph]

Yeah, I knew it worked with Fire Mine, Immolate and Firestorm so I guess that makes sense, although the description reads any fire spell.  I do like having the massive Barrier (+100%) and use a 30% decay reduction ring to keep it active on my team even longer.  Still, Chaotic Focus is amazing if used on a more spam oriented build.  I'd probably say Barrier, Immolate and Fire Mine would work best for maximizing Chaotic focus.  I get more kills with this type of build but my CC definitely suffers.