Elementalist Deep Dive Discussion

GM_Trent

https://monstersandmemories.com/class-elementalist-deep-dive

Fidric

Elementalist - Deep Dive

Overview

Elementalists command the forces of fire, water, earth, and air, channeling that power both into direct magic and into a living elemental servant that fights at their side. This update leans harder into that partnership: your companion isn't just backup anymore, it's a real part of how your own spells work.

Two new signature spells put that partnership front and center. One is a strike your companion delivers on your command. The other is your new primary nuke, that hits harder and gains a bonus effect based on the elemental companion you have summoned. Beyond those two, your companion's summon matches your level rather than falling behind, and the buffs and heals that keep your companion fighting have grown alongside everything else.

As MnM's most pet-focused class, you'll want to rely on the Companion Strike as your main damage dealer. It is the biggest hit for the mana cost, and upgrades more often than your classic-style Blast nuke. The Blast is still helpful, both for damage and the extra elemental utility effects it causes, but we wanted to increase the connection between you and your elemental pet as your main damage source.

One thing we'd planned on in the original class overview, but decided against as we worked on the update:

"Less: generic convenience conjurations" didn't happen. Food, Drink, Bandages, Manastones, and the elemental weapon-summon lines all carried through essentially unchanged. When talking with elementalist players, it was clear that they valued these spells and the utility they bring to a party and did not want to lose them. The one genuinely new elemental-themed conjuration is a Ring of Waterbreathing.

Companion Strike

Command your companion into a devastating attack.

You spend the mana and your companion delivers the hit. The strike carries your companion's own element and does extra damage against elemental creatures. The damage on this strike increases based on your pet's intelligence, which enables it to channel your will more effectively.

Elemental Blast

Blast your target with arcane energy, dealing Magic Damage. If you have an elemental companion summoned, this spell also deals damage in your companion's element, along with a bonus effect matched to that element.

This is your primary nuke, and it always does a solid hit of Magic Damage on its own. Summon an elemental companion and the spell grows a second half in that element, along with a themed side effect - a burn, a chill, a snare, or a casting slow, depending on which companion you brought.

Elemental Empowerment

Infuse your companion with elemental power, increasing their Attack Speed, sharing a portion of your own Intelligence, and restoring their Health over time.

This spell gives your pet a hefty burst of stacking haste, an intelligence buff that scales with your own intelligence, and a solid amount of regeneration.

However, this spell is also mana intensive so keeping it active on your pet is an investment. It's up to you to decide how to split your mana between Strikes, Blasts, and Empowerments - but they all have real value.

This stacks with your normal long-duration 'Elemental Fury' line of pet buffs.

Elemental Resurgence

Infuse yourself with elemental resurgence, letting your next companion-summoning spell resolve in a fraction of its normal time and for less mana.

Handy after your companion falls in a hard fight, or any time you need to swap companions without eating the usual downtime.

Speedy Companion

Infuse your companion with elemental speed, increasing their Movement Speed.

Summoning Your Companion

Your four elemental servants - Water, Earth, Fire, and Air - summon and play the same way they always have.

What's changed is the pace: your companion now stays in sync with your own level when summoned, up to the maximum for that summoning spell.

You'll no longer get pet upgrade ranks for all four pets every four levels. Instead you'll unlock all pet types by level 12, and get a new rank every 16th level.

However, each rank grows with you so your rank 1 Water Pet summon will give you a pet from level 1-15, based on your own level when summoning.

There's no gap, as you'll get rank 2 when you hit level 16, which will summon Water Pets from level 16 - 31.

Elemental Spellshield

Surround yourself with elemental power, increasing your Health, Armor Class, and Magic Resistance, plus your Cold and Fire Resistance, and granting you the ability to see magical effects when considering targets. Attackers who strike you are chilled and slowed.

Your core self-buff, now merging the original Spellshield, Water Shield, and Sense Magic lines into a single self-buff.

Ring of Water Breathing

Summon a temporary ring that grants Enduring Breath when worn - adding additional elemental-themed utility for you and your party.

Fount of Mana

One benefit of your Water Pet is their Fount of Mana spell. This is a mana regen aura that benefits your party when you have a Water Pet summoned. We’ve updated this spell to now stack with Primary Mana Regeneration spells, so it’s additional mana regen that works with other buffs.

Retained Spell Lines

Pet-themed

Heal the Elements

Elemental Fury (Attack speed and Strength buff)

Damage

Flameburst (your level 1 nuke - this is replaced by the Elemental Flash line in later levels)

Element Break

Defense

Cold and Fire Protection/Resistance

Utility

Gate

Soulbind

See Invisibility and Sense Magic (also folded into Elemental Spellshield)

Polar Alignment: North

Reclaim Essence

Dispel Magic

Summon Companion

Charm, Fear, and Lull the Elements

Master of Elements

Conjuration

Summon Food and Drink

Summon Bandages

Summon Manastones

Elemental weapon summons (Earth Mallet, Fire Staff, Water Trident, Wind Blade)

Removed Spell Lines

Fireburst through Fires of Eth - the old escalating Fire-nuke chain. Elemental Blast is now your primary nuke.

Repel the Elements through Devastate the Elements - This got merged into the Strike and Blast spell lines, rather than having a separate spell. You still do more damage to summoned creatures, it just happens as a bonus on your normal damage spells.

Invisibility versus Elementals - narrow, low-usage utility spell.

Thanks for taking the time to look this over, and for your participation in our ongoing Beta. We look forward to getting your feedback after you try out the Elementalist update

Ofs

No CotH is a real bummer, not gonna lie. Never understood why they removed it in the first place. Tons of ways to avoid abuse with it (and it is so damn COOL)

Supposed to be our flagship utility. The thing that makes our group go «thank god we have an ELE» when the healer has to go to bed. Our translocate type spell that defines the class as something more than a wizard with a pet.

Mesh

your companion now stays in sync with your own level when summoned, up to the maximum for that summoning spell.

+++1

Excellent change, long overdue. Here's hoping Necro receives a similar change.

This spell gives your pet a hefty burst of stacking haste, an intelligence buff that scales with your own intelligence, and a solid amount of regeneration.

Also an excellent change. I'm not sure how much overall effect INT has on pet DPS (the bulk of their damage is from autoattacks, isn't it?) but the fact that we're introducing some type pet of scaling via player stats is fantastic and should be adopted for all pet classes IMO.

Nazgrimn

Wow, you guys really knocked it out of the park with the Ele and Paladin Deep Dives. Serious props to the dev that worked on this.
These 2 are the quality that should be expected.
Not going to keep beating a dead horse but Shaman should have received this same treatment.

Looking forward to testing these new changes. Appreciate the work fellas!

eldub

Can anyone confirm which effects trigger off Elemental Blast for each of the pets? Does the "effect" (snare, dot, etc) apply every time?

zhompster

Master Gedric gave me only a handful of the new spells, tried to relog, but still no luck. And i cant afford to buy them. Maybe it would be a good option, to lower the prices after such an update for a while?

Krooguh

Overall, I like the changes. Probably will main an elementalist on launch. Great group utility.

Pet SoW
Pet Temporary Oooguh Booguh Dmg high mana cost buff
Water Pet Aura stacks with clarity
Retained Bandages
Pet fast cast summon on 5min CD

Lost our Instant DD from range and instead that instant is now with a pet ability.

Fidric

So I can see you might be able to justify a water pet in a group now (despite grumbling of melee for no air proc) but have their been any improvements to justify using fire or earth?

What are the blast interactions now per pet? Any tooltips for

a burn, a chill, a snare, or a casting slow

Are the combo old ones still here? Not really mentioned

Have any of the direct pet abilities been adjusted?

Feels like air will still be demanded as default choice by a long shot. Wind fury Aura, stun, cast slow.

tummystix

[unknown] Fire>burn, Water>chill, Earth>snare, Air spell cast debuff

inb4 ele nerfs... They were strong before, but wow...

New level 52 pet heal (they scale off int now) heals 830 at 160 int.
Level 52 Exceptional Elemental Empowerment 90s pet buff that gives 30% secondary hate, the int, and heals them for 100hp (scaled w/ int) every 6s for the duration. So 90s of ur pet swinging w/ 72% haste + 1.5k HoT.
Plus the 600hp every min from bandages...

The sustain is nuts.. haven't really delved too much into the nuke and pet smack.

Darguth

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the changes expressed in the revamp. I'll have to kick the tires to see how it all feels in practice.

I'm curious on the intended interplay between Companion Strike's scaling with pet INT as it seems the only way for the pet to get additional INT is via Elemental Empowerment. Might feel a bit weird if the gear scaling function for pets is transient. Plus it only affects that ability by the sounds of it. Was hoping for gear to have a more direct scaling function on pets, otherwise still have the age-old concern that as the game/server ages pet classes will fall behind in this regard.

Phlyn

I've spent a bit now reviewing things and i have some basic feedback. i have not yet actually played with the changes.

I dont understands:

companion strike: scales off pet's int not ours? are we getting ways to scale our pets int or is this just some kind of cross class perk to make it so int buffs help our pets? I know we get int from ele empowerment but i'm just curious if theres any long term plan.

Positives:
Overall tl;dr this is a pretty sick update, super hyped about everything and my existing complaints are pretty minor.

Active buffing for pet dps is really cool, ordered pet attacks cool.
Sustain on pet is crazy
Int healing scaling is great.
Pets staying equal level is easily the biggest buff I could have possibly asked for I'm so grateful it is in.
Speedy companion? i never expected to see this buff in the game absolutely crazy.

Disappointments:

No player summon
No direct pet scaling, we'll have to see long term but it is disapointing that our pet damage doesn't increase with our gear in any way other than while empowered and also companion striking.

I get it but its a miss:

Staggered weapons - This is actually the one that's annoying. the weapons aren't scaling but they stagger like the pet summons. this means the ~~water trident~~ earth mallet is always the best weapon or tied with the best weapon you can have. there's no reason to ever buy anything but ~~water~~ earth.
- potentially I'm wrong here I'm mostly looking at the proc damage amount, if the actual weapon scales and we have to buy a new weapon spell every 4 levels i guess that's something but i still liked the weapons more as a style choice than anything.
- ~~I'll have to do some testing later tonight on this.~~
- It looks like i was correct the weapons dont scale at all so only ever buying earth mallets is the most efficent.
  - it'd be really nice to start with fire staves not cause i think they're coolest (i prefer the swords). but because Eles can use them. so we could summon our own weapon at level 1 would be dope.

Nitpicks:

I don't like the level scaling/order of pets. I'd prefer earth > fire > air > water... dumb complaint but i feel like starting with the least durable pet is ... weird.
Spell inflation, this is pretty minor but I'd have liked to have seen a couple more things combined especially with all the new abilities we got. i went from having 7-8 things i need to keep on my bar to like 12-14 i want to have on my bar.
- Why isn't speedy companion part of elemental fury?
Elemental resurgence, cool, but i expected instant cast, at least of the resurgence buff its self.
Brand new Elementalists should start with a pet. Our nuke is bad, its a terrible starting experience.
Crushed malachite, I don't think this reagent adds anything interesting to the game. Its prohibitively expensive at level 1-2 but becomes completely irrelevant by level 10. its super super punishing costing 2x the cost of a single spell at level 1 and then is never relevant for a gold sink ever.
- I think it'd be more interesting if each tier of pet required a new tier of reagents if we want to keep the illusion its there for a gold sink OR just remove it.

tummystix

[unknown] Staggered weapons - This is actually the one that's annoying. the weapons aren't scaling but they stagger like the pet summons. this means the water trident is always the best weapon or tied with the best weapon you can have. there's no reason to ever buy anything but water.

Yeah, I reported this as a bug. I guess it may be intended, but I don't think so. There's only Exceptional Earth Mallet for end game lvl 60 weapon summon w/ the 20 dmg proc on it. All others end at Greater w/ 15 dmg, but I forget its either water or air has a level requirement of 60 despite only being Greater w/ 15 dmg.

Xilith

[unknown] companion strike: scales off pet's int not ours? are we getting ways to scale our pets int or is this just some kind of cross class perk to make it so int buffs help our pets? I know we get int from ele empowerment but i'm just curious if theres any long term plan.

This is working around an implementation detail to get a spell cast by your pet to scale off the Caster's intelligence. I'm not sure if the side effect of int buffs on the pet directly affecting it's damage was considered or not.

eldub

What does ‘chill’ do from the water pet component of Elemental Blast?

tummystix

Do they apply every time ?

eldub

I agree the crushed malachite feels overly harsh at low lvl and super irrelevant later when you just buy 100 or more.

Maybe lvl 1 Elementalists should start with 5-10?

Tsunamisan

Regarding summoned items. Do you plan to ad more things like earings of safe fall. Pet summoned armor?
Do the current summoned weapons damage and proc scale appropriately as you go up levels? Currently we have the 4 elemental type of weapons but they did not stand apart from each other. Besides just having a proc do they have a effect that can also work with the pets abilities?

I see that Master of the elements is still there. How has it been fixed or is it planed to be tweaked later?

What about the ability to suspend your pet and pull it back out later. IE: Bypass et pathing issues until you reach the camp spot.

Phlyn

tummystix oh is mallet the lowest level weapon option? i assumed it was water to match the water pet so thats my bad.

also i'm really glad to hear i'm not the only one who noticed this, was feeling like it was on the nitpicky side.

Pineappl

bit disappointed there wasn't combo stuff with the pet and the elements.

Taron

On the pet int thing - I'm assuming that in addition to the one built-in ability to transfer some Int to your pet, this means things like Enchanter Int buffs could help your pet as well? Or stuff like the Spellblade Aura of the Arcane that increases Int of all party members, maybe increases pet Int too?

In fact, since the one way you can buff your own pet's Int is based on your Int, and your own Int can be buffed by other players, does that mean Int buffs from other party members could basically double-dip? Like would the Spellblade aura buff your Int, then you transfer some of that increased int to the pet with your own spell, and then the pet's Int is also directly buffed by the aura as well? So Elementalists may love having a Spellblade in their group if that's how it works...