Costume Brawl 2008

Wow, the mesmer has my favorite bar. >_>

Agreed. 100% People need to remember its not like these builds are going up against a top rated GvG team. They are going up against each other.

As such, they work fairly well.

The monk's bar is effective in this game type, and if they had made a true WoH style monk build, it would be RIDICULOUSLY overpowered in the game type for no one would get any kills, the games would drag on, and become like actually Hero Battles whereall people do is cap. NO ONE should want that to happen because we can all agree the HB blows.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I honestly think this event could be about a million times better. Woo hoo? You get to play as a henchie with a predetermined bar, fun. I mean, if the bar was built out of skills that you couldn't normally use, yeah, it would be entertaining, like Christmas with all the snowball skills... But, no. You're forced to play with a bar that caters some classes over others, get to cap shrines, and get to deal with all the garbage that is late loaders and people that don't even know what the hell is going on. Why didn't they implement something new like Zombies, Vampire, Pumpkin Head, and Werewolf classes with special skills? Could this event be worse? Yes, everyone could have Echo Mending Frenzy on their bar, but that's about it...

If by rules, you mean, has no mobility needed to win the game type, does subpar damage compared to even the freaking Mesmer, and has the worst self healing compared to every other class, then yes, it does rule. His only pro is Smite Hex, and it's on a 12s recharge that won't help you much if they have more than 1 hexer. It's other people healing is also subpar since its the same as his self heal. (And yes, all this is neccessary to keep the game type working, so the Monk will always suck. I get that.)

The Monk bar is effective vs random people who don't even know what a split is, and I can win 10 times in RA with 4 skills on a Monk bar



but I think (rather: hope) we both know that isn't any "good".

I was counting matchups and versus each other. The warrior is really good. The warrior is outmatched in matchups in the real game too (every class can shut one down), it doesn't make it any less not the best class in the game. The Warrior is the most effective melee out of the 3 (Sin requires a Hex to do his full combo and has to wait if he's blind, Dervish has no disruption needed to really get kills quick.), but you have to be smart and take advantage of openings and weaknesses.

Also the Assassin can reliably neutralize the Ranger as well. HC negates their IMS & block, and Iron Palm disrupts their only self heal.

the para bar is rather week.

Tbh that is a terrible idea and sounds extremely lame. I like it the way it is, like ra except your team mate's skill bars are guarenteed to be semi decent.

I wouldn't put ranger as the best. It has to be either ele or rit.

Rit is ridiculously resilient. Need 3 people to kill him, or a good mes/lucky ranger. (I had some people interrupt me through warding like it wasn't there...) Meanwhile rit also puts out some damage and doesn't run out of energy.

Ele just owns anything 1v1, except rit, who can outlast. Can't take on multiple people like the rit because you can only keep one reliably controlled, but in group vs group fights, ele is one of the best in damage AND utility.

Warrior gets owned hardcore by blind and cripple, but if you have a monk to smite conditions, it's a good bar and it kills shit. Which is what warriors do. So if you're alone, it heavily depends on the matchup, but with a monk war+monk are one of the best combos. (Other than pulling conditions/hexes, monk is pretty shitty. Does less damage than the rit, has a knockdown and two bad heals.)

IMO:

Good: Rit, Ele, Ranger
Ok: Warrior, Mesmer, Sin
Not-so-good: Derv, Monk
Go play something else: Necro, Para

How about making it so you don't have to rearrange your skills every single time in costume brawl...lawl. Suppose this goes with the theme of playing GW by rolling your face on the keyboard, maybe it's a trick...or a treat. ^_^

I agree that the ranger and rit are probably the best classes this year, Melandru's Shot is really good.

Tremendously laggy. Nuff said.

The games I played were mildly entertaining but it's only really fun when your playing with synced teams who know what their doing. There's a lot of strategy and movement necessary that the average team can't be expected to know, hence making it quite frustrating.

Also, I just lagged out about 5 times in a row, finally got a game, lagged out, came back with dishonourable and decided this was bullshit and quit. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have to play in the mAT under these conditions.

85k ms woot.

why so much necro hate? having 1 necro on ur team is awesome. he neutralizes P, R, W, D, A... thats pretty fraggin good. its just those damn Rts that seem impossible to kill

ranger pwns ele in this

aside from +100al vs ele dmg
ele has 1s and 2s casts which r very easy to interrupt
and even if he misses interupt on either goi or steam
his antidote signet recharges much faster than his steam does

matchups tend to give the advantage to the defensive bar
war can potentially output the most dmg
but derv has cripple which covers the bleeding, which covers the dw (ws > evis in costume brawls)
the advantage of the sin is his ranged snare (build is missing dash tho)


iron palm recharges too long
a good ranger will be able to interupt combo
or even the 1s cast hidden caltrops hex
oh..and if all that fails...removing dw and poison from a single cast of antidote signet will keep em alive

Because anyone with half a decent idea will just ignore the thing and cap something else. It's a 5v5 character in a format where if you're in a bad matchup you just go do something else.

The assassin is decent but only because HC is such good movement control. In a 1on1 all the decent classes should easily beat it. The ranger should D shot one of the leads and s shot the other, the ele should have it blinded, the Rt can survive it easily enough with WoW and wielders and the warrior just has to shieldbash the twisting fangs.

I was using the monk and with the team I had it was working pretty well. The Necro would be good in certain matchups. Had one on my team who died 1 time I think while tanking things out of 5 matches. Warrior I didn't like much. Rit is really nice, had fun with that. Mesmer and Paragon I didn't bother with. Ele was okay same with Sin. Ranger is decent but not all the time.

Mesmer vs anything but monk = win for Mesmer in under 15 seconds. Monks can usually keep going for a while if they cancel cast healing breeze and get it off a few times, but they almost never do. Every other caster = dead in under 10 seconds, physical = useless vs empathy without condition removal. Ranger can be hard if you are unable to dodge the arrows while casting, which not many players can do.

Most the builds are pretty good though, I would say it goes like this:

Top: Mesmer, Monk, Ranger
All Good 1v1 most of the other classes, and are very powerful in larger battles.
Middle: Warrior, Dervish, Assassin, Elementalist, Ritualist
The melees are partially gimped because the game is about ganking, can't gank as well when your attacks are melee. Ele and Rit both are powerful in team matchups, but rather weak is a number of 1v1s. These all work very well paired up with one another or with a top tier class, which can cover their weaknesses.
Bottom: Necromancer, Paragon
Necro is just plain outclassed by everything else, paragons will forever be weak in any format that promotes 1v1s and 2v2s

IMO, best team would contain 1 Mesmer (strongly counters every class, very good for soloing shrines/displaced enemies., 1 Monk (conditio/hex removal, knockdowns, healing), 1 Assassin (excellent ganking and quicking finishing running enemies.), 1 Ranger (high degen and interrupts do well vs 5v5s and most casters, the cripple lets it take down melee's), and 1 of whatever else, probably another mesmer or assassin.

Did about 90 battles tonight, only lost twice when someone had to leave and it was a 4v5. 75% of it is good teamwork though. Control the shrine buffs (especially battle shrine) and gank people dumb enough not to see the dots on the map surrounding them. As long as you hold battle shrine you have the mobility advantage, you can run away from any fight you don't like and get into the ones you want.

If this was a real competitive format the balance would be much different, but as it is its pretty much about getting into fights with people who dont realize they have no chance with certain class matchups, then doing it 19 more times.

Haha, just played with a 3 monk+1dev+1 ranger team. Got 25 games in a row, pretty good lol I like monking=D

DOHOHO
almost had me there for a second

Ele does it better (except on rangers), in addition to doing way more damage and snaring stuff. Necro is just a bad bar... I think anet just way overrated draw conditions/plague sig combo and thought it would somehow carry the template.
Line of sight.

Yeah, I'm guessing a good ranger would kill me. I just haven't been fortunate enough to run into one in ~3 hours of playing this. (lol RA, rite?) Hell, half of them don't even have a brain to use antidote sig. They just troll at half health and think they'll survive or something.

yeah, mesmers can pretty much shut down everything. ele can take down pretty much any other class.

....

Yea, some other people just never learned how to play smite, their loss. If you dont know how to play a smite monk, dont knock it, the only thing bad about this monk build is the player behind it.

Explain to me how I soloed an elly spamming his shatterstone bar on my monk???

Reversal of Damage - Spam it through healing breeze + vig spirit, use your signets, smite the hexes and conditions, anything including ellys and rangers die from ganking you. The monk can survive everything while killing his attacker. The only time it fails is when you are being hit by 3+ people, of course, that is exactly what a full WoH healer build is designed to last against.

(Smite condition - 7s recharge, Healing Breeze + Vig Spirit covers Degen extremely well and pushes red bars up along wit RoD spam).

Riptose monk in RA is actually a good build idea for that particular game, considering that everyone attacks you. Dish out some damage back to them, and watch the people ganking you die. I also use Whirlwind + Tenais Wind sometimes on my monk, they are epic lifesavers.

Of course, the elitist GVG'ers and HA'ers are going to knock on anything that doesnt use their - Spike in 2 seconds to kill, Infuse or die - rule.

Um wow anyone else think the Rits are bloody amazing in this? I went with a pub team (Yeah, I didn't sync :0) and all we did is me + other rit went to whichever shrine the enemy is most likely to take, rest of the team went around and capped. Me and this rit tanked the entire team while they just capped. This isn't a show off thing, the Rits are seriously amazing with that bar in the brawl.

Also, the monk hate is kinda funny. People are taking it out of context. Of course the bar is bad for a normal monk, but in the brawl it's alright, albeit not the best but at least we dont have WoH monks dragging out the game for 10 minutes.

I love this format because all of those builds suck in the hands of somebody who doesn't know how to play them, but become really powerful when used by somebody who can use the bar to its full potential and choose their fights well.

Eh I duno, the necro one seems so much weaker than the others, and the mesmer is really just a mosquito.

that's great good sir, except I have spent considerable time playing a Smite monk for PvE farming and for Smiter's Booning with Thumpers for free wins when it was possible, I haven't been elitist at all this entire topic, you're the one whose saying I don't know how to play basically. (and outright said it just now.)

However, either way you slice it, the Monk build is bad. It's bad because the Ritualist is better. The Ritualist is better because it does more damage and has better healing. The Monk has no prots that make a difference except for RoD which is a subpar prot. Let's look at the Monk's bar:

Reversal of Damage: The whole point people use Reversal of Fortune is because it's a skill that you can use to make up for a mistake. Maybe you'll get lag or screw up, no one is perfect, so people throw RoF to make themselves look perfect. Reversal of Damage doesn't serve this purpose, in fact all you do is throw a light damage packet to a possible random target if multiple people are hitting you/your target. Without Smiter's Boon or Divine Boon (or both) this skill is terrible and not worth the energy investment.

Smite Hex: 1 of your only tools that is unique to you amongst the costume brawl, too bad it has a long recharge that makes it useless compared to the 2 hexers which all have quick recharging hexes. A Necro can just cover Faintheartedness over and over again and you won't be able to do anything. Not so useful except versus a solitary Mesmer not getting backed up at all.

Smite Condition: The other tool that is unique in this years CB. It is just 1 second faster than the Blind application this year, and all the Deep Wounds are nice and quick to be applied anyways. It's handy, but it's not defining as making the entire bar good either.

NOTE: The damage of the above 2 skills isn't worth the energy cost either and the DF heal is subpar cause the Monk has 9 in it.

Healing Breeze: I could go on about how this is a Rip waiting to happen, how the energy cost per health gained is inefficient, how it takes so long to actually heal you and it'll rarely actually happen, but I won't, because anyone who isn't a godawful player (read: Wammo) knows Healing Breeze is one of the worst skills in the Healing Prayers line that is outdone by everything on the Rit's bar.

Vigorous Spirit: Would actually be useful if all the damage bars weren't spike bars, but since they are, it's pretty much useless.

Bane Signet: Has the worst damage per second output in the game nearly, has an effect that will screw up your Assassin if you don't call it or he isn't aware enough (yay for no vent).

Signet of Judgment: Most useful skill on the entire bar.

Castigation Signet: See bane signet but addon the fact that the effect is useless if you know how to weapon swap.

The Monk bar is damage that is outdone by everyone else (hey thanks for not arguing this point at all! Seriously, even the Mesmer does more damage than you do.), that has heals that combat pressure that no one is outputting (meaning your heals very rarely matter except in a 1v1 situation which is rather stupid to be thinking about), and is a bar that is deliberately gimped and made the worst bar in the mode to keep the mode working (see: Izzy's talk page archives.)

Meanwhile, the Ritualist has a strong e-management and self heal spell that does more damage than anything on your bar, one of the strongest PvP legal attack damage bonus spells in the game that isn't strippable, another heal that outdoes anything on the Monks bar, the strongest most broken unstrippable defensive protection spell in the entire game, another spell that does just barely slightly less damage than anything the Monk has and gives you energy, an AoE Party Heal that outheals all the Monks stuff combined instantly, a nice DoT, and a spirit which adds considerable pressure because its lifestealing.

:hm: I wonder which one is better.


EDIT:
And again, just because you can win with it doesn't make it not-bad. The Ritualist is a superior option in every single way, and you can win with anything (see: 4 skill Monk bar on last page), but that doesn't make it not bad. The Monk bar is terrible, izzy says its terrible, and it's made terrible on purpose. Yes, it's possible to kill something with it. Yes, it's easily possible to beat bad players with it (like say, the people who are theoretically attacking you while you spam RoD on yourself.). No, it is not a good bar because it can do either of those things.

No one was debating who is better between Rit and Monk. We all know Monk got kinda screwed this year, it's just that there other ways to play the Monk. Isn't it a nice change that no one spams CRAP HEALER NOOB MONK! Monks get to play another role for once in this god damn game and to be honest it's kinda nice. If you wanna heal play Rit then.

I'd say the warrior is outclassed by the dervish here for sure.
The assassins bar is very good as is the rit and rangers.
Ele is also very strong against any softies so long as they don't have a good mesmer. Paragon would be quite bad as well if it wasn't for the fact he's got fallback. The worst template is definatly the monks one now.

Please stop QQ'ing about the monk bar. I can make it work good and work against the other characters, again, I am sorry if you either cant or dont know how to.

It is called adapting. If you are unable to adapt to a new build, that is your problem.

I am so glad that I can play monk without having to use over rated WoH or Healers Boon for once, I'm kind of fed up of playing the same thing over and over - Heal this, heal that, OMG you missed Infuse noob monk, /kick next match.

I can make it work and enjoy playing it immensly. If you dont, then simply roll something else and quit the whine.

For one, Healing breeze is highly efficient - when VIG SPIRIT is placed on top of it. I suppose you never played Healers Covenant with Healing Breeze and Vig Spirit in RA, I wonder why it works so well when you arent under heavy spike pressure.

The only place where Healing Breeze is a bad skill is a agianst a team of 6-8 with an uber spike build. In smaller groups which arent relying on spikes, healing breeze becomes a very efficient heal, particulary when used to counter degen.

It may not be good in HA or GVG conditions, but for the purpose of the costume ball it works far better then it would in real PVP. This isnt a top 10 GVG battle for the tournament crown, it's meant to be a silly little costume brawl for halloween.

People that actually take this brawl and RA seriously in terms of builds are just being ridiculous.

So if a monk can solo the Elly, then the monk build is better. /End of disscussion regarding 'lulz munk build is sux'. I can also solo the Sin and Ranger, havnt gotten a chance to solo the other classes yet.

I couldnt solo a rit though, but neither could he, and I always had more health then he did, therefore my healing was better then the Rits.

Calling them bad players is looking at it the wrong way. I just know how to use my build against them. The shatterstone elly I picked of wasnt a bad player, he was doing exactly what his build is supposed to do - Spiking. I just managed to reverse it all against him and watched his health bar go down, down, and down, wait, up with Resto glyph ... too bad its going down again, while my health bar just kept on going up and didnt even fall below 66%.

Do you enjoy losing? I don't hence I care about builds. Maybe you get your kicks out of seeing a 20:3 reverse against you but I don't...

No of course not. That is why I like the monk build because 2-3 monk teams in costume brawl are getting 10-20+ consecs in the hands of capable players. I wonder why.

Like this screenshot here that Jessyi posted:

I had a similar group myself, and my internet dies around 16 so no screencap from me.

I've gone on 20 match win streaks in RA with an empty skill bar. Does that make it a good skill bar?

could you get me a screenshot?

Do you think this is a good skill bar? Mind you, I don't have any weapons, so the 3 melee attacks are unusable, and resurrect was there for the lulz and I never used it.

If you say yes, you discredit everything you've just said because anyone with half a brain would say it's a bad build.

If you say no, you discredit everything you've just said because it's a bad build winning and it is still bad.

Bad builds can win, but it doesn't make them any less bad.

I also like how I gave you an essay post on why each individual skill is terrible or bad on the Monk build and you tell me I didn't adapt. You're quite the fool Mr. B., as I have said repeatedly I know how to play Smite Monk. You ignored the fact that Izzy himself has said it's a bad build on purpose to make the game type work. You've ignored the fact that the Rit is better in every single way making it a bad build. You haven't refuted any of my points at it, instead just saying I can't adapt, which is very elitist of you. You go on to say that anyone who go on about the builds is being silly, when that is what you are doing is trying to defend the Monk build. If you're going to defend the Monk build, then do it on a statistics and realistic game standpoint (hint: that doesn't mean you won 15 times so it must be good or it beat X/Y/Z so it rules.). Statistically, it is bad. Until you're willing to argue these points, I'm just going to say l2troll because you're doing a very poor job of it.

If a bar beats another bar 1vs1 in costume brawl doesn't make it a good bar..

monkvsele might be favorible for the monk as warriorvsnecro might be better for the necro, at the end of the day, the ele/warrior bar is just better in most situations than the monk/necro bar.

Speed boosts/snare ftw

I kinda disagree with a lot of people in this thread :x
Playing ranger myself (Got 31 consecs but I know noone cares), it is A LOT easier to kill a rit then it is to kill a monk (dshot WoW svg the other weapon and wielders sucks, sure I dshot hbreeze too but dshotting vig and RoD is kinda hard). Id like having both a rit and a monk in my team though, theyre both strong templates.

From what I have seen the warriors are free kills because they get owned so bad by rangers and eles. Dervish is about the same but with better self heal..

The mesmer bar is pretty strong, it doesnt have a lot of ganking for 1v1 (enemies can just run away) but they can beat all templates in 1v1 if the enemy doesnt run (unless you use Ether Feast on recharge and it gets dshotted). If you can catch someone with the mesmer+any random other template its like a guaranteed kill though.

The necro is trash, they can only kill warriors (but so can anyone else) and possible a bad assassin, they are strong support in a bigger fight but its easy to gank them out (did I mention most necros in CB are like the worst players ingame? Using rip ench on ppl without enchant, trying to plague sig hexes etc)

The assassin has a pretty nice bar, its not instagib but the snare is strong and it allows for easy ganks (If people see your spike coming it usually doesnt work at all though.. steam/dshot/fainth/SoJ/sbash.. the list goes on).

The ele is one of the strongest templates, lots of damage and good physical shut down and SNARES)

Paragon.. worst template ever (No selfheal except from fall back and just bad skills)
And the one I didnt mention yet.. the ranger. Can beat everything in 1v1 (except mesmer maybe) and has a strong snare and speedboost.

In short:
Top: Ranger, Ele
Good: Mesmer, Assassin, Monk, Ritualist
Bad: Warrior, Necro, Dervish
Epic fail: Paragon

Pwnd. I wanted moar but i had to go unfortunately.

The D build is most wrothless thing I've ever seen. Wind prayers is lame I wish they used earth.

I enjoy the N at least.

Its a wounding strike Dervish which is extremely powerful.

Bad RA monk builds win because it's still better than not having a monk.

Admittedly the rit is insane but, the monk is the only source of removal, and as with stupid smiteway teams, the damage he gets in the process of removal adds up. Also while the rit heals are more efficient, the monk has a whole bar of divine favor-buffed skills that will save someone under a psuedo-spike better than waiting for wielder's boon to recharge. Also that smite condition/hex stacks nicely in groups in a way that WoW doesn't.

Deep Wound and Bleeding are worthless?
Since when?

@^
its even Deep Wound COVERED by bleeding. Its too imba anyway.