ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Elementalist/Ride the Lightning

Note: As of September 2, 2009 this page is no longer active. If you have suggestions for Guild Wars skills please go to Feedback:Main to learn how to submit suggestions that ArenaNet can use.

Ride the Lightning

Lilondra's Issue -- 14:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Issue

Exhaustion makes it unfavorable for any builds,although the skill has great potential it is ruined by the exhaustion that cant just be taken off because of use for assassins and other melee characters

Suggestion

Drop the exhaustion

Increase recharge to 8 secunds

Increase cost to 15 energy

(If necesarry add a energy storage requirement)

(If necesarry drop armor penetration)

(If necesarry make it half ranged)

The table should look like this :

Progression
Air Magic Lightning damage	0 0 1 8 2 15 3 23 4 31 5 38 6 46 7 54 8 61 9 69 10 77 11 84 12 92 13 100 14 107 15 115 16 123 17 130 18 138 19 146 20 153 21 161

Skill could be great, but the exhaustion makes it worthless.

Issue

Exhaustion prevents this skill from being useful.

Suggestion

Remove exhaustion, add "all your attack skills are disabled for 10...6...5 seconds." This prevents melee classes from spamming it as a shadow stepping substitute(assassins have to WAIT 6-10 seconds before their combo, and warriors get their adrenaline cleared). Furthermore, to reinforce this as an Elementalist skill, add "and for 3 seconds, you have an additional 3 armor for each point of Energy Storage" since Elementalists shouldn't be tanking.

To prevent overuse by melee

Issue

Exhaustion makes this useless, but removing exhaustion would allow overuse by secondary elementalists.

Suggestion 1

Add "50% failure with Air Magic 7 or less".

Suggestion 2

Add "For each attack skill you have, it takes 4 more seconds to recharge. The average melee character has 4-5 attack skills, resulting in a 21-25 recharge time, balancing it against elite shadow steps like Aura of Displacement.

Needs some tweaks... 86.26.89.66 12:32, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Issue

Exhaustion really hurts use of this skill, especially for non-eles, and yet the high damage means it can be quite dangerous in RA for example (there are some nasty PBAoE/toucher builds which use it).

Suggestion

Remove / lower the exhaustion (see this page) to make it more useable.

Raise the recharge slightly to prevent spamming (at least if the exhaustion was removed completely).

Possibly lower the damage a bit depending on what else is done.

Possibly add an extra effect (I would have suggested KD since that's not only very useful, it also effectively protects the skill's user from the foe they use it on, but that would lead to Ride the Lightning -> Shock combos becoming horrid, even though the ele would suffer for it in the end. This would be especially bad in RA and TA where the fights normally don't last long enough for the exhaustion to be a problem).

Maybe:

10 2 10

Elite Spell. You ride the lightning to target foe. That foe is struck for 2...64...80 lightning damage and is weakened for 2...8...9 seconds, and all other adjacent foes take 1...32...40 lightning damage. This Spell has 25% armor penetration and causes 5 points of Exhaustion. If you are not under the effect of an enchantment it causes only 3 points.

Reasoning

The exhaustion is decreased so that it becomes more viable for non-eles or in longer matches (e.g. HA & GvG as well a PvE so you don't have to wait ages between fights).

The weakness is added so that the ele doesn't get minced as soon as he or she jumps into the frontline, allowing the skill to be used on powerful melee foes.

The damage has been very slightly lowered to take the edge off it (certain PvE foes get very nasty with this when multiple ones use it) and the lower end lowered more so that other classes can't deal as much damage with it (imagine starting an assassin chain on a target who has already lost 100 hp).

The small AoE damage has been added to make it more powerful.

To make up for the decreased exhaustion, the recharge has been raised a bit. This is to prevent over-spamming and allow people to kite away a bit more easily.

Due to the added weakness and AoE damage, the activation time has been increased to allow interrupts more easily. This means that good players will be able to spot a foe using the skill and interrupt it before the sudden PBAoE attack which can be quite powerful if it takes you by surprise.

Anyway, the specifics aren't really important but I think the general idea is right. The skill needs a buff but without it becoming really nasty. Simply increasing the damage would do that.

Frostymoo

Issue

Way too crap to be used in general play but OP for HA zquest farming.

Suggestion

Increase recharge to around 15/20 and remove exhaustion, increase energy to 15. 90.218.239.232 20:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)