Grasping Darkness - Enchant Removal?

Howdy,

While fighting in the UW, whenever my party comes up against the Grasping Darkness, our 55hp monk is unable to stand against them because of.. we're not even sure why, to be honest. She'll have her enchantments up, casts prot spirit--and then it's removed, and she dies.

There's no Dying Spirit or whatever, 'cause we've cleared those. Unless, that is, they're hidden and respawn when you active the quest.

If that's the case, then we've simply missed them each and every time.

Anyone?

Well, in the ToA UW, graspings use rend enchants. I've never seen a grasping in the ToPK UW.

Dying nightmares use Rend Enchantments in UW.

Could it be that you guys didn't cast SV to keep your monk from getting all of their energy sucked out when the Grasping Darknesses came?

They also daze and interrupt.

Personally I think enchant removements should be very rare because enchantements are vital, especially to monks. Unfortunately, due to balancing, enchantment removal has become something very comon, which makes using enchantments very rare... Dont think this was meant to be when GW started. I sincerely hope Arenanet will reconsider this.

I agree, actually.

Kind of upset me that we were given this particular strategy to play with--and then suddenly had it nerfed. Sure, I don't mind a little enchantment removal here or there, but when it becomes a staple to high-level areas, when I can't be bothered to even bring it because it'll be constantly removed.. o_O

Oh, well.

In any case, I hadn't been using Sympathetic Visages on him at that point, no. I started using it on him, and it seemed to resolve the problem. How come, though, the energy drain effects protective spirit? And even if he had zero energy, wouldn't his maintained enchantments remain?

Well, you have to remember that the 55 monk pretty much has to spam PS and Breeze in order to stay alive. No energy = no PS = instadeath

Prot Spirit isn`t a maintained spell.If the monk has no energy to recast(Grasping`s use "Fear Me") then it all goes tits up,as you know.

Well, yeah, except our 55hp monk was reporting prot being removed five seconds into casting it, and, you know, dying at that point.

Was just surprising, is all.

you are in the tombs right? anything with a monk primary or secondary will have its enchants reoved by their attacks. its not a spell or anything

Um, IIRC, the Grasping Darkness does strip enchants if they hit a monk. Or rather, the skill Fingers of Chaos strips enchants when it hits a Monk.

And, yeah, that causes random status ailments when it hits a Warrior, it's a garanteed hit against a Ranger, they lose a hex if it hits a Necro.... can't remember what it does to a Mesmer off hand.

But, I think I know why the massive enchantment stripping has become so prominent in the game and especially in the higher level areas: A.Net is trying to make the PvE portion of the game comparable to the PvP portion. It's quite common to see enchantments Rended or Shattered in PvP, so it goes without saying that it's gonna happen in PvE eventually.

Also, I do believe that most of the enchant hate was added to the new Tombs specifically to thwart the 55 Monk. Just an oppinion, mind.

In the actual Underworld, not the Tombs area, the Graspings shout Fear Me, which removes 3 energy per foe. A monk low on energy then can be in trouble if tanking 6 or more.

It's Dying Nightmares that Rend Enchants.

Do they have any interrupts? Or is that just the ataaxe?

They got two, as far as I know:

Distracting Blow: Swipe your weapon at the target, dealing no damage but disrupting the target's current action (and the actions of foes adjacent to your target).

Skull Crack {elite}: If this attack hits while target foe is casting a Spell, that foe is Dazed for 15 seconds (truly annoying skill imo)

55 monks are not staples. They are a choice given, but Anet isn't going to just roll over and make it easy for you.

First of all protective spirit is also an enchantment, so when something uses rend enchantment it will get stripped. Something that I am surprised nobody has stated in this forum is that, in the New UW at the Tomb of Primevil Kings there is a chained soul that pops up behind your team alot ( you know the one that only takes a couple of shots to kill) that casts rend enchantments as soon as he pops up. Then he has health degeneration that kills him off. Sometimes people don't even know he is there. As soon as you see a red blip appear on your map turn around and go kill him off, you will see he will already be in the middle of casting rend enchantment. This is why a 55hp monk can't last in the new UW.

int he old UW
grasping darknesses dont scatter/rend enchants

they did interrupt ur monk thats all

he should take care of their arm movements and then it souldnt be a problem


int the new UW its mostly the lost soul as mentioned above and finger of chaos which is a stance and removes enchants from every char except mesmers

Actually I think they remove 4 energy, with 16 tactics.

Only thing i can think of is that fearme got them... or that their prot was interrupted while recasting and they didnt notice.

If you are monk primary or secondary, fingers will remove a monk enchantment. There's nothing you can really do to stop it. It's not a spell it's a monster skill, so taking a 55HP monk down there isn't the best idea in the world. You get 2 or 3 Graspings around you and all your enchants will be gone, and you won't have time or energy to put them back on before you're kissing dirt.

well seeings how he was talking about toa uw i will challenge the guys post about tombs uw. no the enchantments will not get removed with fingers of chaos use archane echo and sb u have like a 75 sec sb lol none of the enchantments get removed we use the build regularlly

I wasn't referring to 55 monks.

I'm pretty sure this thread is talking about normal UW, but for completeness...

Tombs UW:
All the new enemies - Fingers of chaos. The only important bit to this thread is the "removes all enchantments from monks". So yeah, its impossible as a 55 mo/x.

Normal UW:
Grasping darknesses - Skull Crack{e}, Distracting Blow, Fear Me, Flurry.
Dying nightmares - Rend Enchantments, BiP (funny as hell to watch em suicide).
Bladed Aatxes - Sever Artery, Gash, Riposte, Deadly Riposte, Savage Slash.

Bold signifies nasty stuff that can mess a monk up that isnt paying attention.

The grasping darknesses do not strip enchants as they're pure warrior enemies, not mesmers. The only thing that could have removed your monks enchant is a nightmare, but as you said there were none around. I've done plenty of UW runs and no new ones spawn under the floor when you activate the quest either. The other (more plausible) explanation as to why your monk died is because the graspings beat the living shit out of her .

There's a few scenarios i can imagine. Either:

a) Skull Crack dazed her, and she couldn't recast anything untill she died.

b) Breeze and/or Protective got interrupted and she didn't notice, or it happened over and over untill she died.

c) "Fear me" killed her energy, thus making it impossible to recast protective/breeze and so leading to death.

The last possibility is (which not many people seem to take into account) is...
d) A 55hp monk can only be hit a maximum of 11 times -at once- or they will drop dead. Even if you have 9 arrows of regen, 12hits all at the same time (within half a second or so) will destroy your hp before the regen can replace it and you'll be dead. Heck, even WITH a mending+4 and breeze+7 sufficient hits will outweigh the regen, so unless you use divine favour to your advantage chances are you'll die.

If your monk was tanking say... 15 graspings and they were all using flurry, then there's a good chance that she just keeps getting killed outright and is too embarrased to let on that they just died, thats probably why she said "her enchant got removed". If its just 1 group, then it must be interrupts, lack of energy or skull crack.

Offtopic- I remember when deep wound broke, now that DID mess with 55hp monks quite a bit :P