Exhausting Failure

Exhausting Failure - Dual Attack 5e 10re
Must follow an off-hand attack. Target foe's action is interrupted. If that action was casting a spell, target foe suffers from Exhaustion.

this attack skill the assasin has is really quite unique. so far, its the only skill in the game (that i know of) that can cause exhaustion to the enemy.

here is a description of exhaustion:

this is the old guildwars guru description of this condition, as you see, its inccorect now. it says "purely self inflicted"... but now the rules have changed with the addition of the assasins Exhausting Failure.

now lets take into account of say 3 assasins that have the skill to actually land hits with Exhausting Failure on a opposing monk.
say monk A has 40 energy. within 10-15 seconds, this monk can be totaly out of energy due to exhaustion from this skill with the right number of assasins on it.

the skill is so dangerous that im afraid of what lies ahead in future pvp matches after factions is released.

just imagine this 4 skill combo being used by just 2 assasins on your team.

Sharpen Daggers - Enchantment Spell
For 10...30 seconds, all of your critical hits cause bleeding for 5...13 seconds.

Mantis Sting - Lead Attack 5e 12re
If Mantis Stings hits, target foe takes +5...+17 damage. If this attack strikes a bleeding foe, that foe is crippled for 3...13 seconds.

Temple Strike {Elite} - Off-hand Attack 10e 12re
Must follow a lead attack. If this attack hits, target foe is interrupted, Dazed, and Blinded for 1...7 seconds.

Exhausting Failure - Dual Attack 5e 10re
Must follow an off-hand attack. Target foe's action is interrupted. If that action was casting a spell, target foe suffers from Exhaustion.

this chain of attacks can get target bleeding, crippled, dazed, blind(not that this one matters) and exhausted, not to mention interupted a few times (depending on assasins skills)

now add in a crippling shot apply poison ranger attacking this same target, the dazed would get covered very fast and really leaving this enemy monk useless untill one of its teamates rid of all condtions with either "draw conditions" "restore condtions" or "martyr". say the assasins were smart and did this to the prot monk that usually carries one of these 3 skills. now he must rely on a teamate to either spam mend ale or of having a second char on the team with one of the three skills listed above.

i guess my point is, this exhaustion can get abused and seriously cripple an important member of a team very fast.
no longer a need to kill a monk when you can just "over" stack exhuation on him and that dazed just makes it worse.

so all in all, a really heavy conditions team + the use of this exhation abuse can be really overwelming. teams my have to adjust their total mindset of "protection" in the future of guildwars if this skill "Exhausting Failure" remains the way it curently is.

warriors dps of 40+ per second
necros disease on 5 enemies = 40 dps also.

If this were a lead off attack it would be more interesting, but any monk casting through concussion and have this skill stick against him deserves to die more or less. Otherwise the monk has to play a waiting game and hope the rest of his team can re-enable his ability to act. Re-applying it every 12s or so to build up the exhaustion over time could prove to be problematic considering it is the "last" hit in the combo. I would be willing to guess that the monk would be dead long before the exhaustion built up to the point where the individual was unusable.

Against condition stacks like this, i believe mend body and soul from the ritualist lines may become popular because it heals and removes multiple conditions and is relativly cheap to use. I would guess 2-3 per casting on average depending on the range and spirits involved. It is not as fast as draw conditions and is not eliete like restore conditions or martyr. Purge is a little slow on the reuse though.

I suppose its something that time will tell the outcome.

well said.

the use of ritualist will indeed be a factor in what lies ahead.

I'll bet a monster will get its hands on Exhausting Failure... perhaps some high level place like NUW/HoH...

That was never true. Glint could cause exhastion.

Glint can not cause exhaustion on you unless you use a skill during that hex time.

Those assasin exhaustion and daze skills only remind me of how awkard the skull crack was... The only target those things can hit are ele.

I was just going to point this out. Assassin daggers attack at 1 hit every 1.33 seconds, just like swords and axes. The attack in question has no activation time, so it goes on the same timing as the next attack. This makes it just as likely to cause exhaustion as a sword or axe warrior is to cause dazed with Skull Crack, if they bring it. It's not a simple process. Also, since the attack must interrupt to cause the exhaustion, the 3 assassins would have to interrupt multiple spells with this unruly skill to cause the exhaustion stacking you describe.


One also has to consider that there may very well be a skill still hidden behind the curtain that removes/transfers exhaustion.

I think you should get over the whole noobish "OOOH LOOK AT WHAT IT CAN DO EXHAUSTION@[email protected]$@!" mentality and take a good look at why this skill (and why assassins, in general) is absolute shit.


This will never be run by anyone decent in GVG because:

a) It's a dual attack. Which first requires an off-hand attack. Which requires a leading attack.

b) It's an elite. Even if this WASN'T an elite, nobody would run this over Twisting Fangs.

c) It requires you to actually interrupt a spell to get the exhaustion effect.
Chances of you interrupting a .25-1sec cast spell on a run of the mill boonprot is nil. This is also ignoring the fact that you will be blinded, crippled, and will have missed your leading and offhand attacks multiple times from guardian, aegis, weapon of warding, and shadowsong.

d) Even in the one in a hundred chance you do land it, it only causes 10 exhaustion. Big f'ing whoop! You are helping the monk by providing him with an extra bar of natural regen from the exhaustion quirk.

e) It's nothing but a shitty attack based interrupt that will never land on anyone and never be used by anyone except in CA and noob pugs in HA.


What I'm trying to say overall is that Assassins are flawed from a design perspective. They'll be played by noobies in CA, and will be used for nothing more than utility in games that matter.

Alright, man, geez there's no need to start flaming Assassins in general. They've got their useless skills, just like everyone else (Flourish ring a bell?), but they've got their really powerful skills too (*ahem!* Temple Strike). From a design perspective, Assassins are basically the elementalists of the physical attacking world: they are meant to do a good amount of damage in a short period of time, but sacrifice survivability for it. Not to mention the fact that:
1) Critical Defenses refreshes every time you score a critical hit.
2) Wild Blow is guarenteed to be a Critical Hit, and blows through Whirling and other Evasion/Block techs.
So their defenses aren't really quite as bad as people make out.

Other things you say that are blatantly incorrect:
b) It's not an elite. Temple Strike is the Elite, not Exausting Failure. Granted I would use Twisting Fangs over it, nevertheless, with Disrupting Stab, Temple Strike, and Exhausting Failure, you can chain-gun three interrupting stabs very fast (especially if you've got something like Flurry active).
d) His idea wasn't a single Assassin using it, but mulitple Assassins running it, in an attempt to Exaust a monk to death. Granted, it won't work, but it's no reason to start flaming.

I do have the feeling that Assassin primaries probably won't be so critical in GvG, but don't diss the whole class, especially since I imagine that teleportation skills like Recall will be critical for roles like the flag runner. They already run fastrun skills like Storm Chaser, I don't see why they wouldn't consider casting Recall on the Guild Lord for an instant port-back-to-the-flag tech.

By the way, one thing that really should be considered is the inherent fragility of the assassin class. It's really got very few ways to defend itself, and is very easily shut down (much easier than a warrior, because it needs to combo its attacks). Misstechs will hurt you, so you'll have to consider possible ways to ensure your attacks will land. Possibilities include:
Expose Defenses: the only advantage of this is that you don't need to rely on a secondary for this. Bad part is you might not want anything in shadow arts.
Rigor Mortis: Might not want Necro secondary, might not like Curses, which gives this hex something of a downside too.
Warrior's Cunning: problem is, without warrior primary this (being Str based), wont last very long.
Alright, granted, you don't have too many options for guarenteed hits. Still, these options ARE here. You could even consider Guided Weapon.

Monks if you got a Assassin on you who intrupts one of your spells and causes you exhastion don't use anything after a while after he does a Offhand attack.

However there might be a good combo...

Some Lead attack--> Some offhand Attack---> Repeating Stike (use a few times)---> EXHASTING FAILURE

Sacrificing 4 skill slots just so you can get exhaustion on the target (not to mention being a easily destoyed combo) seems fare to me.

Basically this is ideal for those Repeating Strike Assassin

Repeating strike is rather unusable by the assasin primary. In order to sustain it, you would basically have to crit on every attack with critical eye triggering every time. Its one of those ranger things.

I guess its "nice" in a sense that you can stall the combo, but in reality the combos recycle relativly quick enough to make it a non-issue really. The bigger issue tends to be having the entire combo land in the first place.

Sorry if this is a noob question, but how does this work?

Assuming it's becuase you get back the energy that got greyed out by exhaustion, aren't you still only getting back energy you lost in the first place?

When you gray out completely, your energy will recover even if you have 0 pipe of energy regen.

If you use obsidian flame when you have full mp... the cost is actually 10, not 5.

Exhaustion recover at the rate of .3 energy per sec, which is basically another pipe of regen.

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but the Mesmer is going to have an elite hex skill that will also cause every spell cast in the next X seconds to induce exhaustion.

So it's not an Assassin-only deal.

Causing exhaustion is going to be the next new fad...

Arcane Languor - Elite Hex - Domination - 10e, 2c, 30r
For x seconds, all spells cast by target foe cause exhaustion. [src]

The very skill I mean. Thanks for posting the details.

In that list I saw soul reaping skills.

One of which is one I suggested. A different name the same ideal.

This skill will never be used.

1. Its an elite.

2. Why they hell would you ever choose this over temple strike?

3. Its an attack interrupt which only has a chance of interrupting a spell that is 2+ seconds casting unless by luck.

4. Its a dual attack. Since it is an elite you cannot use Palm strike to go directly to your dual attack. You are forced to go lead>off-hand>dual unless you can work falling spider into the mix. That req even more "perfect" conditions. Besides the only dual attack that is ever going to see play is twisted fangs (unless it or others have been changed).

In general all melee attack interrupts are horrible with the exception of distracting swipe. The only reason that's usable is the 1/2 casting.

I wouldn't waste more time on this skill or any other melee interrupts unless they are 1/2 casting.

It's Elite?

I never noticed. I seem to have brought it with Temple Strike...

Meh, people are just spewing it out their rears. Exhausting Failure isn't great, and there's really no reason to run it over Twisting Fangs, but it's not Elite and it's not total garbage. People just love to hate on Assassins and anything connected to Assassins.

Don't worry. It'll get better.

Just like 95% of the elementalist line for the past year and a half, right? If anything, they'll end up nerfing Assassin skills even harder since they have a history of balancing the game around the lowest common denominator; data acquired from roleplayers, "casual" testers and second rate guilds.

The GWWC games have been broadcasting for a week, and by now every noob should know what the metagame consists of. Skills should be balanced properly to reflect how the game is played at the highest competitive level in PVP. You can't say a skill like Exhausting Failure is made for PVE, either. Monsters die long before you'd get a chance to see exhaustion kick in.

Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can look at the skill descriptions and not immediately tell something is utter garbage. Especially when it's as glaring as seeing "Dual Attack" and "requires spell interruption" in the same description. Dual attack automatically entails that it has to come at the end of a combo chain, along with the regular attack speed unlike the 1/4 cast interrupt skills... um.. right. Granted, you probably have a good chance of landing that on a water ele casting maelstrom in competitive arenas, and we all know how great those are!

Distortion, guardian, aegis, crippling shot, ward melee. Gee Alex, I'll take B! WHAT MAKES MELEE CHAIN ASSASSINS USELESS?

Damn! It's like people are totally blinded by the whole "OOOH NEW SKILL THAT'S NOT A COMPLETE CLONE / MINOR VARIATION OF AN EXISTING SKILL CAUSES EXHASTION%%%" factor and are willfully ignoring how worthless and gimmicky they'd be in actual competition.

No wonder we're stuck with a game where every single team in the finals runs minor variations of the exact same shit, all the time. In conclusion, if it's not worth bringing to competition, then it's essentially worthless. Why even bother adding a ton of shitty new skills to GW when 95% of the existing ones are so crappy and unplayable? Seems like nothing more than a ploy to blind noobs with promises of new stuff before they've even figured out most of the stuff they're running sucks so badly.

Why are you playing Guild Wars at all?

1. Trust me its not an elite
2. Remember all skills by assassin and ritualist are probably going to be changed. So Buffs and Nerfs will be given when the game comes out.

Did anyone even pay attension to my Repeating Strike--> Exhasting Failure combo. That can allow Exhasting Failure to be timed....if its not blocked.

Can we stop argueing about stuff that isn't released yet...

Done?

What's the original source for the skills listed there?

If that's a real list, I have to say I'm kind of disappointed in Anet.

I do not know the original source, only that the .txt was put out on the day that the magazine was mentioned with the skills in it.

There are some there that were not in the magazine, however, and it is obviously not a full list of skills that will be implemented into the game.

I would not trust anything on the page too much, but that's your choice. The 'snare' skill seems pretty pointless to me, it simply cripples the enemy... why not spend 10 energy more and do damage to them + cause them bleed? Useless skill, I don't see why anet would put it in.

It would be tough to pull off. It has to follow another attack and interrupt a spell in order to inflict exhastion though. Just a thought.

well, aside from the fact that you just proved to us all that you are only the biggest n00b to play this game, that was an interestingly designed statement.
comboing attacks is part of being an assassin. so say you play a ranger, you use a bow. thats part of being a ranger. part of being an ele is casting spells, and likewise, part of being an assassin is comboing attacks. so if you cant understand the concept, we're fine, leave it to those of us who can.
Next, your lack of research really, really makes me belive the lack of anything accurate in this statment. it is NOT elite, as evidenced in GuildWarsGurus skill section. the exact page is found here.

spend 30 seconds looking for the skill, its not a real waste of time.
moving on, for those of you who read the skill description, you will know that it doesnt specify that your target has to be running a boon prot monk. so, you might use this on a mes, or a necro, or say an ele, or maybe a standard heal monk. people do still use those, and they arent n00bs just b/c of it.
i dont know about those of you that actually play monks, but i think that -10 energy+ e-denial mesmer, or even just the -10 can be pretty effective. exaustion doesnt exactly recede quickly, so thats a period of time where the caster is weakened, and you can drop him/her. since this isn't a damage skill, we arent trying to directly kill the caster, just set it up so others can. or even so the rest of your combo can.
i'd like to finish with this rant. assasssins arent for n00bs. n00bs play them, but that doesm't make them FOR n00bs. n00bs play monks, warriors, eles, rangers, necros, and mesmers, and they will play ritualists as well. so if thats the logic you use, then we might as well just stop playing, cause every class is for n00bs. there are some skills that are useless, but you have to think about all the possible uses. for instance, was iway a really popular skill before the PvP build surfaced?(i dont play Primary warrior, so i really dont know here) if you're looking for useless skills, skills like otyughs cry. see, thats useless. desigining a build isnt just throwing skills together. its more complicated than that. this build could be a big skill in an assassin anti-caster build. you could use this, either shroud of silence or temple strike for elite, disrupting stab, maybe golden pheonix attack to lead into exausting failure, and for some energy bonus, then maybe bring mes secondary and carry some anti-caster spells. or you could go all assassin. heres a random build that has has NO testing and i came up with in 5 minutes.

Temple Strike {E}
Golden Pheonix Strike
Exausting Failure
Expunge Encahantments
Mantis Touch
Mark of Death
Black Lotus Strike
Rez Sig

Attbs are:
Critical Strikes
Dagger Mastery
Deadly Arts

kinda wimpy anti-caster, but i havnt really gotten a chance to actually use it yet. expunge enchants to clean monks of enchants, (duh) follow with temple strike+golden pheonix+exausting failure. interrupt+energy+possible exaustion.
mark of death on a monk+black lotus strike for even mor energy, + a -20% heal on that monk. temple strike interrupts holy veil/remove hex, and wail away. and all my builds carry rez sig, so thats why thats there. not to mention that its actually useful.

so now that you've seen the 5 minute version of "how to use this skill and not be an assassin n00b," maybe i can edit it and come out with a real, tested, and actually working version when i get Factions.

Did anyone see my other 2 posts about using repeating strike over and over and over again until finally the person starts to use a spell then use Exhastion failure and you can do a little dance and be happy that you caused Exhastion on the target.

As for energy management for the skill

There the combo is set.

Way of the Empty Palm---> Some Lead--> Some offhand---> Repeating strike (a few times)---> Exausting Failure


Still that mesmer hex is better......

It might be useful to throw Spinal Shivers into an assasain anti-caster; with the use of cold daggers and attack speed increases, Spinal Shivers would allow an assasain to work his way up to the Exhausting Failure dual attack while interrupting with his leading and off-hand attacks.

Again, this is assuming he isn't blinded and that guardian isn't on his opponent, which it should be.

Just a thought.

Ya it is not an elite. The site I was looking at had it listed incorrectly.

First of all, i'm a nOOb! Yeah right, i have only rank 2.
Rant about this skill because has many counters it's a bit overranting.
I mean, when you play ele you know you'r weakness is armor and being interrupted, when monk energy management and being targetted until death,etc...
Say that this skill is garbage because it's a dual attack and you must do a combo it's the same.
I mean, all assasins will know that their strenght is combos and criticals, and all will know that there are several ways to fail an attack.
All this that aegis, guardian, etc... will render assasin at poor level is not true. All assasins know that, and the vast majority will play with this weakness in mind. There are a lot of counters to the monks protections, we all know them, and we all know that's the Overplayed monk at the moment.
Assasins have skills to avoid block/evade failure, an hex that makes no protection available,etc...
And this game is about team play. Someone say, you will be lucky to hit someone meanwhile casting (relative to monks perhaps). Well, there are much migraine mesmers nowadays. Some necro can cast some hex to avoid failures. Even some elite of the assasin makes imposible to enchant someone for x time. And all this skills have the antihex skill to deny it.

All have counters, and this game is about metagame. Say that a skill is not worth needs a context, and with the next update i wish that nearly all skills will have their use in some context. I really wait to factions with the new skills for old classes, like the ele skill that knockdowns people with move boosts etc... i expect that these new skills will rich metagame a lot. And the two classes, but this is sure!

The problem with this skill is its a dual attack. Think of each attack as a cast time. That means you have to land 2 previous hits. Which will take 2.66 seconds (without any IAS, 1.33/attack) then you will have a 5 second opportunity to interrupt with another 1.33 cast time. At minimum it will take you 4 seconds to interrupt a spell. A 4 second interrupt is not my idea of a good interrupt.

I would take this in a heartbeat if it was a lead off attack.

Thinking about it, if mesmers will have something to provoke exhaustion and assasins also, there's something to counter exhaustion? I only know about ritualist skill that enhances your energy by 20 if i remember well. But exhaustion seems a "condition" that's not healed/countered the way other conditions are. With this i don't want to make exhaustion a normal condition, it would be too much easy to counter it this way.
I'm not afraid of the assasin skill, it's some puntual skill, with the fact that's dual attack it needs some time and attacks to repeat (i mean, not peril of echoed), but if the mesmer skill it's right, even being elite, would be something to see, with arcane echo it would be nasty. I suppose something have done, for these issues have their beta team.

That there's no way to remove exhaustion doesn't necessarily mean that the ability to inflict it is unbalanced. There's nothing your monk can do to help you with skills disabled by Diversion, Blackout, Distracting Shot, and the like, but those haven't quite broken the game yet.

I'd also like to mention that if your target is indeed Dazed, all his skill cast times are doubled, thereby increasing the chance of hitting with Exhausting Failure.

That is, if you don't attack him over and over and cause the interruption anyway.

...and I thought this topic was going to be in regards to ANet's decision to allow only 6 character slots if you link Chapter1&2... carry on...

har-d-har-har......please leave, you are failing at life


on topic: I am waiting to see the kinds of conditions that will be thrown around before I make judgement on this skill. Remember there are new skills that make it to where you cant miss.

All I can say is broadheaded arrow will replace cripple shot. If it has a low recharge be ready to never leave home without mantra of resolve. Condisdering Rangers are the best interrupters on the game this going to get nasty.

I can see a use for this skill. I'll keep it in mind. Only way to combat exhaustion is weapon switching. We might not want to have that changed just yet.