Thoughts On Earth/fire?

Gaia with fire powders and mantlewalkers is surprisingly good, courage goes well with everything really but I think it's best in melee builds

 

The items are legitimately weak not because of the ID's but because of the play style it encourages. (I played an Earth-Fire warrior for the first 6 months after gavel was released before Rainbow Warrior was discovered.)

Like BethJerry said,

It's slow walk speed doesn't help its play style against ranged or super mobile mobs that tend to deal damage against the elemental weakness that Earth-Fire tends to have, such as Water or Air. This stuff really discourages the element combo even more. (This also kinda applies in pvp too, but theres always gonna be that guy who says pve is more important than pvp so oh well)

I feel it's also the fact that super slow melee gets left behind when compared to tier stacked melee, and while this problem isn't just a problem with Earth-Fire, it makes Earth-Fire bad compared to other combos. Even when you try to stack Taurus with other Melee% boosts, you most likely won't reach a super high dps like you could with tier stacks. It kinda ruins the image of a "tanky but hard hitting melee" build, as spell and tier stacked melee builds will out do fire-earth in performance.

Not gonna lie, mixing some of the Earth-Fire items like Rekkr or Mantlewalkers into tier stacked melee builds kind of works, but pure Earth-Fire is just trash compared to other pure combos. I know other people have said this some of the ideas I have said, but the best way to probably fix Earth-Fire is to either introduce a new ID that favors Earth-Fire or redefine Earth-Fire's combo identity.

 

Never used it because of how bad the color of earth and fire look together in wynncraft

 

Earth, as an element doesn't make sense in my opinion.

Water focuses on mana and spell damage
Agility focus on walk speed and some "defense" as high agi reduces the chance of getting hit
Fire focuses on health regen and overall tankiness
Thunder focuses on both high melee damage and spell damage
Then Earth comes along. It focuses on melee damage and harder hits but with the state of weapons such as Cataclysm, Infused Hive-Weapons, Divzer, Fatal, and T-crack, Earth has virtually no chance of out dpsing thunder consistently. I understand proper builds can have huge quakes and all that but again, thunder still out damages it in most situations.

This could be countered by doing some of the following :
- Nerf thunder items (I don't think this would be a good idea because it's better to buff other items to increase the power in-game a player feels they have)
- Buff Earth Items/Add New Ones
- Change the purpose of the Earth element as a whole

As for Fire/Earth builds, I feel they don't do well due to Earth almost entirely. Thunder/Earth builds can increase the dps as both elements focus on raw damage, Water/Earth builds are mostly used to balance melee and spell, Air/Earth builds rely mostly on walk speed to be successful.

Fire/Earth builds don't have the dps Thunder/Earth can provide, the hybridness Water/Earth can provide, or the speed Air/Earth can provide.
Instead, Fire/Earth simply make one tanky with additional melee damage which is both boring and ineffective in most situations as Rainbow Tanks have more elemental protection and allow for more than just melee.

Overall, Fire/Earth may not be terrible in itself, other builds simply reduce its use in comparison.



Actual Last Thoughts:

Earth has always struck me as the "no-class element".
The war-scream of warrior is designed for high defense (fire) and while it does provide some strength, the 10% seems to hardly affect melee damage. The escape of archer is designed for walk-speed (agility). The heals and reliance of spells on mage design the class for well, spells (intelligence). The spin attack of assassin adds a ton of thunder damage and all but the vanish spell are meant to do huge dps (thunder).

No class is really focused around Earth in the way the other classes are focused around their respective elements.


If you disagree with anything I said please let me know, they are just observations I've made but I may be wrong, who knows.

 

I've noticed from a few people I know who make builds, defense isn't too great, from a war standpoint at least. Agility can be favored over defense for numerous reasons. But let's just go over a few for now.

I heard from someone on staff a very long time ago that defense does not effect elemental damage taken, so you could have 150 defense, but still take a ridiculous amount of damage because your water or air defense is in the gutter. I don't know if this is still true, but if it is, it might be something worth looking in to, seeing as agility negates all damages, both neutral and elemental.

One of, if not, the biggest reason agility is so favored over defense is that you don't have any -ws. Because of that, you are pretty much free to do whatever you want. Want to do a melee build? Sure, here's 120% ws to keep up with those pesky teleporting mobs. Want to be "tanky"? Here's 150 agility, have fun not taking any damage 4 out of 5 times. Want a spell build? Sure! Here's a bunch of intel/agi items to spam those spells with! Obviously this is a bit of an exaggeration, but the general idea still stands.

Agility is just flat out better than defense in many situations. Strength isn't the problem in an Earth/Fire combo, as proven by the fact that it can work pretty well with pretty much any other combo of elements/stats. The actual problem is how underpowered defense can feel when you look at what it gives you. Yeah you hive high regen and hp, but regen still takes a while to heal you, even outside of combat (unless you're using guardian, but that opens up a whole other problem). Oh, potions also exist, and they often heal faster than regen does. Then there's the problem of -ws. You may be tanky, but if an enemy has high walkspeed or is long ranged, have fun running from that thing.

This is all a matter of opinion of course, but I feel that I've explained my points well enough. If some of my information is wrong, let me know, I haven't had as much time to play recently so I might've missed something.

TL;DR:
Defense is the problem, not strength/defense combos. It just feels too weak when compared to its brother, agility. -ws is bad, very high health and regen aren't great when potions exist. Fire's damage is lackluster compared to air's.

 

There's a bunch here I agree with, but also a bunch I disagree with.
Everything here is pretty much true down to "agi gets more damage than defense"
Though air items have higher base attack speed, fire items get more base damage, so it cancels itself out. Also fire can get away with using a lot more glassy high damage items, because of the much higher health. There's a reason why fire sanc is so popular in fire builds.
Also don't discount consistency for decreased damage vs single no damage spikes. Often a single hit in bosses will result in a death with agi, and how little health you tend to get with air, where fire can deal with damage and use life steal or regen(lol) to get back to health.

 

Those are all fair points, and I agree I got a my point wrong with the whole damage talk, as one of my guildmates pointed out. (I'll edit the post later as I have to go do something today, but yeah.) However, I do still feel like Def/Fire could stand to be better than where it currently is. It just generally feels lackluster when compared to the other elements.

 

One of the problems with defense is also that it is dependent on the classes base dmg taken. This makes defense as a skill point objectively weaker on archer and mage than agility, even if defense did block all damage.

 

I am using a Fire/Earth Ninja. I am using Alizarin for it because I couldn't use Gaea-Hewn Boots if I used infused hive.

Gaea is da gud stuff.

wynndata.tk/s/AEJ3js <-- Tanky.

I think that Earth/Fire Builds are not underated at all. they just suck oof.

Mana regen is also a problem for fire/earth builds since there are not many mana regen/steal items with the right skill points.

Also... there are only around 25 Earth/Fire Armor Pieces from lvl 75-100 most won't work in builds at all.

There are really no good points in using an Earth/Fire build than having a special build (lenny) almost every kind of build is better.

 

This isn't an argument that helps your case, Earth/Fire actually has MORE armour than every other dual element combo.
The rest, I agree with.

 

I was high af when I wrote that. k no