I think the conclusion I'll draw from this thread is that supporters of (B)DSM are never going to admit they're wrong, regardless of what happens. Everything will get mentioned: Raisu Palace being an unrepresentative area, BDSM being stable (as though other teambuilds aren't stable), BDSM can be run by every primary profession while other teambuilds cannot (as though that's true), etc etc etc. This denial's at the point where nothing will ever be sufficient proof. Like, VoR never gets triggered because of Panic, even though monsters in Raisu Palace have Song of the Mists ... ? Who cares then, I suppose. I don't. Run BDSM for all I care, just don't claim that it's the best teambuild around.
Quote:
6. What was quite surprising though, to me at least, was that spirit+mesmer teams are as fast as they are. They have a lot of mitigation (mostly in the form of decoys and shutdown), but they really do not pack a lot of offense -- spirits are solid, but single-target damage; minion bombing is relatively low DPS; mesmers are high damage on long recharges that results in low DPS; etc. And yet, they are fast. This basically turns on its head the mantra of "bring just enough defense to survive, everything else should be offense." I have to admit that I haven't quite figured out why this works like it does. If you're looking for the big development here, reread this paragraph. Sooner or later it will prove important.
Challenging S/D/M users to a time trial
Jeydra
@Foxbat - ESurge does 99 damage (11 energy lost, 9 damage per point). Problem is, at that amount of damage, Invoke Lightning under EBSoH often does more, especially after Cracked Armour support. Which leads to:
Invoke Lightning has lower recharge (6s >> 15s)
Invoke Lightning hits only 3 targets, ESurge can hit more (but not always the case)
Air Magic has more consistent damage spells than Domination (Chain Lightning / Lightning Orb > Mistrust / Shatter Hex / Unnatural Signet, of which only Unnatural Signet is always reliable).
Both skills can use wards - EBSoW and EBSoH
Mesmers naturally come with utility, e.g. Mistrust has defensive uses, Shatter Hex removes a hex, Shatter Enchant removes an enchantment. Elementalists can also bring utility, but of a different sort, e.g. Fall Back, Stand Your Ground, etc.
Elementalist energy management is largely passive. Mesmer energy management is active, but has other uses (they interrupt).
This doesn't look like a very convincing case that Mesmers are better. However, of course, theory always pales in comparison to experiment. I haven't run 5 Mesmer builds, so I can't seriously comment on them.
@Kunder - if you're convinced that's the case why not provide some evidence to back it up? Isn't that the point of this thread?
Quote:
I commend you for admitting defeat. Now retool and improve. These threads are useless of they're 100% ego stroking and 0% learning.
To be honest, I learned a lot from this thread. It showed once again just how powerful spirits are in PvE right now. Some results coming from it are too exciting to write about right now - besides, EFGJack did most of the pioneering, so he deserves to post them first. Hint hint 
Gabs88
Uhm, what kind of drugs did you take in order to write that post? Have you even played with 5 mesmers?... Seriously? That's just painful to read, and it certainly doesn't speak well for the case of using mesmers over elementalists ;p
Perhaps you should do a little more build testing? Cut the BiP (WTF?) and rework your mesmer bars (remove spiritual pain for instance)..
1. Reliability is importaint, and achieved both with mesmers and air elementalists.
2. Energy management is a bit complicated, but nothing you cant work out.
3. If you're gonna say you can beat Jeydra using 5 mesmers and your BiP, feel free to do a 9 min 30 sec run on first try.. Or do a few more and do a 8 min something run?
4. Air elementalists do to some degree gain power in numbers, and hence a class that isent a primary elementalist would not be able to use his build as proficiently as an elementalist.
Other then that, it's pretty clear that for an elementalist Jeydra's current build is beyond anything else posted on this forum and is working on par or better then anything currently made up using mesmers. I'm not saying I'm convinced that a variant of mesmer spike cant beat his team build, but right now he's definitely more then proven theyre perfectly on par with mesmers. Though again, mesmer builds are complicated and tiny changes can have huge impacts due to the team synergy, so if you find the right balance, I still believe you can go as low down as 8 min to 8 min 30 sec using a S\D\M based build.
Perhaps you should do a little more build testing? Cut the BiP (WTF?) and rework your mesmer bars (remove spiritual pain for instance)..
1. Reliability is importaint, and achieved both with mesmers and air elementalists.
2. Energy management is a bit complicated, but nothing you cant work out.
3. If you're gonna say you can beat Jeydra using 5 mesmers and your BiP, feel free to do a 9 min 30 sec run on first try.. Or do a few more and do a 8 min something run?
4. Air elementalists do to some degree gain power in numbers, and hence a class that isent a primary elementalist would not be able to use his build as proficiently as an elementalist.
Other then that, it's pretty clear that for an elementalist Jeydra's current build is beyond anything else posted on this forum and is working on par or better then anything currently made up using mesmers. I'm not saying I'm convinced that a variant of mesmer spike cant beat his team build, but right now he's definitely more then proven theyre perfectly on par with mesmers. Though again, mesmer builds are complicated and tiny changes can have huge impacts due to the team synergy, so if you find the right balance, I still believe you can go as low down as 8 min to 8 min 30 sec using a S\D\M based build.
Jeydra
Frozen Ele
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeydra
I know you're not a big supporter of the Symbolic and Graphical Investigation of the Efficiency of Water Magic Snares, but using it as an example, if you wanted to experimentally derive the "convergence" efficiency percentages and be 99% confident that all of the experimental efficiencies were within 0.01% of the true efficiencies, you'd have to perform about 166 million trials for each snare combination. Doing this for all 54 total combinations (an average trial time of 200-300 seconds - since you have to perform each combination ~10 times sequentially to reach the "convergence" efficiency), it would take about 56.8 to 85.2 millenniums.
FoxBat
FoxBat
I ran this build many times and was getting in the 9:15ish range on average, with the occasional 8:45. Then I tried a different strategy to pull this time off.
1) run up the right ramp. Panic the 2 mes/1 monk group while flagging heroes up to the top (so spirits have line of sight). Blow stuff up, hit AotL and move on.
2) flag heroes at the very base of the ramp down. Panic the group and let heroes fight it, walk along the side of the southern wall to aggro the warrior boss and another ele group, pulling them down to my heroes position, kill everything but a monk/rit or two.
3) Run up to the center of the central ramp, pull the last ele group to ball with some monks/mesmers already hanging on the ramp, explode them. Then clean up all stragglers so I have minions in tow.
4) In next room (Necro Boss), run heroes all the way to the base of the ramp and flag them there. I continue running up past the 1st group of warriors to aggro the second to come down the ramp, then let them all collect to get AoEd. Once the warriors are dead (but their necro buds are still alive), flag my heroes at the top of the ramp, throw a few hexes on the necro boss, and I let them fight it out while running into the next room, pulling the slow NPCs behind.
5) In the next room I head to the left while heroes are still finishing the necro. I aggro the first group up on the ramp and back off, also waking up the ranger boss group in the center. Bring my heroes over and kill all warriors/rangers in a ball. I leave the necros and run my party up towards the ele boss. I pull the ele boss without waking up the ranger hordes, and let my heroes fight it while I sneak up the ramp, running for the gate. After that I trip the two cutscenes and everyone teleports with.
6) Run myself and heroes up to the top of the left stairs, then summon spirits and kill the nearby rangers/assassin blocking the path. Once those are dead, I run past the remaining necro/ranger mobs letting spirits entertain them, and keep running all the way down the trapped corridor, not stopping until I'm literally on top of the ritualist boss. Once he's dead, run and trigger the cutscene, finish as normal.
So that's the kind of speedclear-esque bullshit that can shave a minute+ off your time. Someone who could actually micro their heroes could likely improve further, proper 40/40s on everything could help as well, but I don't think we are even discussing build efficiency anymore... nor does whatever we are discussing matter if you're TDL to micro or do this crazy balling in an average PvE situation.
AndrewSX
So, after all this(and others) discussion and words spent about it, we came to a result that almost everyone know.
If you're and experienced/skilled player, doing team builds by your own has the best results.
If you're a casual/newbie/notsoskilled player, D/M/S is a quite universal,standard and (why not?) reliable teambuild.
It was true using 3 heroes, it's true using 7.
If you're and experienced/skilled player, doing team builds by your own has the best results.
If you're a casual/newbie/notsoskilled player, D/M/S is a quite universal,standard and (why not?) reliable teambuild.
It was true using 3 heroes, it's true using 7.
Daesu
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azazello
Inspired me to work on the build, I'm certain physicals could go faster, considering all that.
From experimentations of the successful builds presented here, certain skills seem to work great in Raisu HM, for example RoJ, Invoke Lightning, and EBSoH. EBSoH, a common damage boosting pve skill for physicals, seems to be underrated for boosting the damage of casters.
Knowing what we know now, there are already many 7H builds that are superior to SMD even without taking micro into account.
Quote:
