Summon Water Elemental

Does raising the Summon Water Elemental to a higher level actually make your water elemental more powerful other than just more health?

 

Yep, but not to the extent of the other elementals. The Air, Fire, and Earth Elementals do more damage, but the water elemental heals.

 

Water ele is most useful summon in game by a wide margin

Edited original mesage to make sense

 

I assume useful. From my point of view the only elem worth getting (depends on scene context)

 

Is it worth taking the skill to 100 from 80 considering the additional focus penalty? What is the focus penalty at 100 anyway?

 

I would recommend it, since the healing you get from the water ele supposedly increases as its summoning level increases, plus having additional health means that it has a greater chance of surviving a direct or AoE attack. If my Ice Elemental is anything to go by, then the Focus Upkeep for a level 100 Water Elemental should be just over 100.

 

At 80, the focus penalty for the water elemental is 105.

 

As the Water Elemental goes up in level, does it also heal more often or at the same rate?

There have been times where my elemental is just sitting there for long stretches of time as I'm getting clobbered by mobs. Not sure what it's doing. I have it on passive. Maybe this is my mistake?

 

I have mine on defensive and it seems to be Jonny on the spot with the heals.

 

You want to keep it on Passive, as a Water Elemental that is fighting can't very well heal at the same time. Also, and I don't know the exact amounts, but when a Water Elemental's health gets below a certain point it will heal itself rather than you. Also, you may want to play around with the Follow Distance of the elemental. There may be instances where you don't want it too close to you. If you are in a dungeon, however, you would want the elemental to follow you closely. I don't know if it is worth raising it to 100, I think mine is around 105. My elemental normally heals me from around 90-130, but I have seen it crit for 232(rare)

 

I put a lot of points into the life tree and the water elemental is just about as effective at healing me. It's making me consider putting specialization somewhere else.

 

Yah..wasn't sure if Water Ele gets better with higher levels. I'm specialized in Water. I did do Life Spec for a bit, but then I switched to Sun for the extra Enlightenment buff. I now get 48.1 INT and, if I remember correctly, 15.6% Spell Critical Chance increase, which helps out with healing, among other things.

 

It's the critical chance increase additive or multiplicative?

 

I can't definitively say, but I believe that it is/should be multiplicative; as it will take your current SCC and multiply it by the, in my case, 15.6%. So, if I'm right, and you were at say 30% SCC it would probably look like this:

.30 * .156 = .0468

Then, that would be added to your current SCC:

.30 + .0468 = .3468 or 34.7%

This is just a guess, but I believe this is how it works. Maybe someone else can clarify.

 

I have a tangential question: You water-lubbers, do you sometimes use the ice elemental in some situations? Or do you find it totally useless?

 

I don't use/need them. If I'm in a rough situation, I'm more likely to need extra healing, rather than extra damage. Granted, I haven't tried Ice Ele since all the elementals were upgraded, so I can't say how they compare to the past elementals, but, regardless, I prefer the healing. A dead player is a useless player! (^8