Can the earth elemental be made less bad?

[Party in the forest at midnight]

The earth elemental gets caught on geometry and doors. It's impossible to use, it's just awful. I'm trying out Skal start, there are no stream books. I filled my entire 6th level slots with summon creature and all of them were earth elementals, which are so bad I dismiss them and rest and try again. It's unplayable even with using -fetch. There's a 2 minute fetch cooldown, I can't -fetch at every single doorway or piece of geometry it gets hung up on. Which is absolutely everything inside a cave.

[magistrasa]

Hey, here's a cool tip for when you summon the earth elemental! If you press R on your keyboard, you'll open up the rest menu. All you gotta do from there is just set your character to rest! All your spell slots will come back and you can get another chance to summon something that is actually useful. Hope this helps! :^)

... Anyways, yeah, +1, earth elemental makes me sad.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Hey, here's a cool tip for when you summon the earth elemental! If you press R on your keyboard, you'll open up the rest menu. All you gotta do from there is just set your character to rest! All your spell slots will come back and you can get another chance to summon something that is actually useful. Hope this helps! :^)

... Anyways, yeah, +1, earth elemental makes me sad.

It gets to a point when my rest meter is over 50 and my sobriety is far too low to drink more. Unless I want to drink to death to drop rest to 25 again and spend 20 minutes contemplating how much earth elementals suck as I wait for res sickness to fade.

[Anomandaris]

The earth elemental is awful even without it getting stuck on stuff. It’s pretty universally considered the worst elemental to the extent is pretty much isn’t used by anyone with stream books unless for some rp purpose (svirf).

[Arienette]

Agreed on all fronts.

As soon as I get my first stream book, I use whatever that is simply to avoid the chance of getting an earth elemental.

I would actually not mind it being removed from the default options entirely. Make the random cast pick from one of the three useable ones and make it so earth can only be cast from a stream.

[magistrasa]

Honestly, I think if the earth elemental could be a lot better if it was just the big damage guy. Better crits, more strength, or maybe some added acid damage to help with troll fights? Or give them WAY more health and damage immunity to make them tankier. IIRC they already have some but not enough. Maybe I'm just crazy but I feel like they kinda melt in a lot of high-level encounters where other elementals are mostly fine.

[Hazard]

The only good earth elemental is the monolithic one, because it does big ground-wobblies. But it also breaks all the loot, and might kill a party of unpartied adventurers.

Oops.

[Scylon]

Right now

- The "tank" pet is the air elemental. High AC/low damage
- The Damage pet is the Fire, 40-90 hits and high AB
- The sustain/support elemental is the water due to regen aura

The earth one has no real "job". I wouldn't mind seeing it get a STR and con boost, some serous resistance/immunity and a bit of self regen so it could be the tank pet. Have the air one tweaked as maybe a speed/sneak attack pet with some AC balance to wiggle it out of the tank pet role?

Then you would have the earth one filling a role it feels like it should be in, while the air gets into a supporting one that might fit it more.

[Skibbles]

Huge summons getting stuck is certainly a frustrating experience, and the earth elemental struggles with the same thing the dracolich does - DR and crit immunity totally does not mitigate having low ac.

Balance pass is probably far from being realized, but maybe a 'quick' fix would be using the smaller brown colored model of the earth elemental that is seen in some dungeons.

The duergar fort on the iceroad has mines with 'Living Earth' (or something) that look exactly the same but are smaller and less fiddly.

[Straxus]

I had no problem with mine.

[-XXX-]

Looks like the real issue here is the absence of -stream books in Skal.

[ReverentBlade]

Right now

- The "tank" pet is the air elemental. High AC/low damage
- The Damage pet is the Fire, 40-90 hits and high AB
- The sustain/support elemental is the water due to regen aura

The earth one has no real "job". I wouldn't mind seeing it get a STR and con boost, some serous resistance/immunity and a bit of self regen so it could be the tank pet. Have the air one tweaked as maybe a speed/sneak attack pet with some AC balance to wiggle it out of the tank pet role?

Then you would have the earth one filling a role it feels like it should be in, while the air gets into a supporting one that might fit it more.

The secret fourth role hiding behind the Holy Trinity is CC. Give the earth dude a stun on his meaty rock fists.

[AstralUniverse]

I really hope no summon gets a buff because of this thread. Sounds like the problem is in the door-ways and the lack of stream books in Skal.

[ReverentBlade]

Making the least valuable summon slightly less bad does not affect the balance of summoners, since they could still just use the best one. It just provides a little bit of variety for people that aren't obsessed with optimal.

[-XXX-]

How can summons in any shape or form be an issue on a server on which the current apex predator (both in terms of PvP and PvE) is a character build that is mechanically barred from using them?

[Cybren]

give the earth elemental a bonus to mining ore and gems as a way to trick people into using it in areas where the geometry is most hostile to it.

[Edens_Fall]

Agreed! Earth elementals are pointless and right now only serve to waste a spell if you summon one by mistake.

Removal or buff would be a nice option.