Wither & Malaise

For all of you who never have had the pleasure of suffering from these hexes, they go along the lines of:

Malaise: 5 mana, 2 sec cast, 2 sec recharge (curses)

For suffers -2 energy degen for 5-35 seconds and you suffer - 2 health degen. Ends if target foe's energy reaches 0.

Wither (Elite spell) 10 mana, 2 sec cast, 10 sec recharge (curses)

For 5-35 seconds, target foe suffers from -2 energy degen and 1-4 health degen. Ends if target foe's energy reaches 0.

These are some VERY powerful spells, however, I don't think people should be able to remove them JUST by switching their weapon sets.

It works like this: You have (x) amount of energy, then someone puts one or both of these hexes on you. If you are low enough energy, you can switch to an empty item set, lowering your energy by 12 or 15 or whatever your set gave you. If this bring you to 0 energy, the hexes end. Then you switched back to your normal set and gain your energy back.

I'm pretty sure Anet didn't intend hexes to be remove just because you switch your weapons when they first designed these spells. You should have to use a skill or something to remove or add anything ( reguarding these types of spells) Even skills like energy burn, surge or sig of weariness can be avoided this way. (Before I knew of this method, I accidently hit a different weapon set and switched my weapon set when a mesmer used Energy burn. I took 0 damage and lost 0 energy.)

I don't think these skills should be stopped just by switching your weapons, it doesn't make any sense.

It's a commonly-used and well known tactic in high level pvp. Active weapon switching separates the skilled from the true veterans.

/notsigned

Cant punish people for being smart.

/signed

Hopefully we'll see the return of energy denial.

They stop working when your energy reaches zero so...why do you think that a player forcing his energy to zero should not work to remove them?

I think weapon swaps are exactly the way Anet wanted something like this to work. Look at the Forgotten and Frozen Fan from the recent Green update. Anet put energy hide weapons in the game.

/notsigned. The skills would become overpowered otherwise.

Where did they "go"? I see plenty of Edenial mesmers in game using EDrain, Eburn, ESurge, etc. They deny mana not simply but cutting out regen, but by actually taking it out of your pool. Its brutal healing against an Edenial mesmer. And its not like Malaise and Wither don't have their uses. They just aren't overpowered.

/notsigned.

Don't put them on the same target nub, and try putting it on a warrior or a ranger sometime, they're way more screwed by it then casters.

/not signed.

If you use your weaponswitch your smart. But you cant do that on your warrior or ranger. Its the fact that you need to change weapons that annowing. And if you are to late you must wait for regen. Thats what you want as Wither necro.

Yea I have to agree, its a valid stratagy. the only solution would be to dip into exhaustion numbers for those cases, but in the end, its not that big a deal...

Its just a hex, and its doing plenty to mess them up in and of itself, so the tactic is a valid one... a simple remove hex is about the same thing... still takes a sec or two to switch out the set anyway... thats a sec or two near the end of the hex effect, not at the beginning... so all in all its job has been done by that point if it wasn't removed by that time.

Those buggery hexes are spammable anyway, if you're not causing effective e-denial, then for a weapon-switcher, your capping his energy pool at... what... 20 energy? Buffing these two skills will simply make them overpowering...

/notsigned

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Energy will be obsolete if this is implimented.

I agree Malaise malaise may be a very overpowered skill if they they made it so item switching didn't cancel it. They would have to up the recharge to 10 seconds or something.

All hail monk skills that cost Adren

The recharge on those 2 skills is completely retarded. And yeah casting it on a warrior screws them over so badly... I don't have a -energy set because... well you rarely actually need it. But when you have 3 energy and 0 regen things get a bit lame.

They were given 'end at 0 energy' for a reason. If you want it to last longer, use Panic.

/not signed

_Zexion

If this only way you can deny a monk is to cast 2 hexs on a monk and hope it dosent get removed then you are bad and I suggest you try a new route to learn how to properly deny a monk

No, Wither and Malaise generally suck when used against anyone who isn't brain dead.

I'm pretty sure you're just pulling things out of thin air here.
So? Your opinion is inconsequential when the hexes clearly state that they end when the target reaches 0 energy. Weapon switching is something smart players do as a counter - there's no reason to waste hex removal on these hexes if you don't need to.

I see no reason this shouldn't work if the target can force themselves to reach 0 energy, especially since they won't be doing anything else for a while, and will ultimately lose some energy and be shut down for at least a little while. This is simply part of the game mechanics; a natural counter, if you will. Learn to deal with it or just find better ways of shutting down a caster.

I always like mind wack on em, and keep hexing them. lol every time they switch off they take a hit for it... but thats just me... lol
Add fragility and the Nec/Mes build becomes a REAL pain in the a$$ets lol

Sounds like these are one skill short of overcoming the counter, just bring mind wrack ( I think that is the right skill ). Punish them for reducing their energy to 0, and they will still take a penalty even if they manage to overcome the hexes. I think there is spirit shackles too, isn't that the one which destroys or steals 5 energy every time an enemy attacks?, devastating to an Assassin.

There is also another factor which is clearly seen from your example, both of those hexes have low recast times, the first a recast time of 2, that means it can be reapplyed readily, besides the fact that this is obviously a skill to punish players with alot of energy, and as formentioned, bringing a skill which punishes players who run out of energy helps cover both ends of the spectrum for lasting energy burdens.

You could also get creative and start with soul barbs, that one is always a winning hex application and reapplication punisher, it will make reapplying Malaise over and over again a little more effective.

@ the OP

Hi, obviously you aren't using theese spells correctly, or you wouldn't be asking for them to be buffed. The suggested buff would make both very overpowered.

In the correct build, used correctly, they *can* be used in high level play, and you can get a descent effect out of them. However, if you put them both on a single caster, it's "GG nub".

I've run several hex/degen builds in Team Arenas, Heroes' Ascent, and even Guild versus Guild and done very well using Wither or Malaise, or even both. If they're playable in non-scrub level PvP anywhere why do they need to be any better?

Sure, the way I was using them was mostly on Warriors and Rangers, or to force casters to weaponswap. Not for actual energy-denial on casters, because somthing like a single Debilitating Shot or a Surge/Burn mesmer is alot better at that.

Oh, and if you're really having trouble with casters weapon swapping running theese in a pure hex/degen build, try running a descent speced copy of Mind Wrack...


/Not signed