Let’s talk about a few things. Earthquake. This either needs to be a much larger size diameter, or needs to apply all of its damage immediately or like a dot so the damage sticks. This constant trying to guess what the tank is going to do next and only being right sometimes is honestly so unfun. It’s also unfun for tanks, they have to constantly try to keep the mobs in the EQ while dodging new ground effects or kiting mobs to drop various deadly stacking effects which is an added challenge that only gets the ele their full damage value where other classes are doing equal and more damage without any such hindrance. I can see it being a thing if it was like super op and did alot of damage but then you’d have to have ground effects everywhere or it’d be op. It would help in raid tremendously as well if the damage was applied instantly because right now as it stands you have to put down EQ before the mobs even show up to do mediocre damage and most of the time it’s not even worth it and you are better of just spending the maelstrom on a single target spender and chain lightening which is capped at 5.
Next issue is 2 and 3 target. you don’t even use EQ until you hit 4 targets. so our 2 and 3 target feel incredibly anemic. 2t you literally do your single target rotation and can spread 1 extra lightning rod for a whopping 18% total more damage when you add a whole 2nd target. Simple fix would be to let chain lightning be a viable button to press here. one idea i saw was let chain lightning bounce back and forth between 2 targets for a limited amount of extra maelstrom, tuning tbd. either it does more damage by itself to fill the void, or it help to generate more maelstrom so we can get more spenders which in 2 and 3 target are extremely lacking. spenders…. another issues, we use single target spender until we get to 4 targets…. EOGS sort of solved this in TWW because you could both get your stat bonuses from EB and then get a near double value EQ thus getting to get the stat bonus and do aoe damage. as it stands now, the stat bonus is so strong we HAVE to use EB up to 3 targets because it’s just more damage because of stats. so by getting rid of EOGS you seriously hampered our ability to do 2 and 3 target damage which were already seriously not great. we need some kind of filler effect to help do more damage somehow, there’s no reason for ele to be so weak for this target count that I can understand, we aren’t the strongest in aoe and classes that are stronger than us in aoe are also SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than us in 2 and 3 target. make it make sense.
this is what our output looks like in m+ build for instance which is marginally different tbh than raid spec.
1t - 100% damage
2t - 118% damage - this is seriously unbelievably bad for how many encounters are 2t, this needs to be at least 140% to be near the bottom of the pack, we’re well below the bottom as it stands in this target count.
3t - 180% damage - we are, compared to every class I have seen, VERY weak in 3t to give an idea of how bad 2t is. the only reason this looks somewhat ok is because of how bad 2t is it seems like a large uplift, but our 2t should be more like 160% to feel on par with many classes. this is where the liability is in bringing ele you are doing tank damage.
4t - 272% damage - we feel ok in 4t this is where we can at least start to EQ
5t - 383% damage - we finally are generating full maelstrom and feel on par with most classes which is odd because we’re supposed to be the kings of 5t
6t - 420% damage - EQ is our only ability that scales beyond 5t so the jump up per target suddenly stops and we get small increase per target
7t - 450% damage and on and on, it’s about 25% slowly diminishing per target added beyond this point.
The right side of the tree doesn’t seem cooked at all, the crit modifier on voltaic blaze is bugged and isn’t doing full damage which is TINY for a 15s button? the only way this button would feel good is all of the points associated with it were baked into that one and then it would be halfway decent. right now the only reason we take voltaic blaze is for the 10% bonus damage from inferno arc it gives on only 6 targets, why not just apply flameshock to everything, why are we doing this 6 target count thing, it does almost no damage anyways and there’s no way to guarantee that chain lightning even hits those 6 targets when there’s a large pull of like 15+ mobs, that value is just lost. there’s so many de-synergized things about elemental that the class feels so clunky and unfun that i imagine many people are turned off to ele which was one of the most exciting classes to play in TWW.
that being said, I love ele and am playing it right now and will continue to do so. when I say unfun, it’s just like vague, unnecessary half mechanics that don’t seem to be fully developed into their intended roll with strengths and weaknesses.
i don’t have all the answers and am interested to hear what yall think could be solutions and things you are missing or wish were part of the class either tuning or vibe or other.
goodluck
