Unbalanced

I'm talking about hexes and enchantment removal options.. their costs need to be updated so that they reflect the current state of the game. Seriously, the game is so lopsided towards defense right now it's a waste of energy to use them in pvp against any decent team.

There's a reason why the korean teams run Warrior heavy builds with power healing/enchants (and their builds look nearly identical since last winter when enchants and healing became all-powerful).

A single decent monk can get rid of any hexes in an instant for 5 energy, if he wants he can get rid of hex stacking with convert hexes. It doesn't matter that you've just wasted 25 energy and 10% life on Lingering curse, or 20% health and 10 energy on Defile Flesh, it'll be gone two seconds after you finish casting.

There aren't enough effective ways to get rid of enchants. Enchants can be spammed at low cost in both time and energy, yet there's no equivalent of a "Remove Hex" in the game. The enchantment removal options that are available cost entirely too much and have high recycle times.

If you play against any of the top korean teams, they rarely waste time with hexes since they know utter defense with a high constant dps is what wins games.

I agree somewhat. I think Rend Enchantments is a great skill and I always have it running. I do agree that the cost of running it seems a little steep to me. I've killed myself more than once by rending someone who had a ton more enchantments than I realized they were running.

I seriously hope that the W/Mo build dosent totally dominate this game. It would be nice if Necros were given some spells specifically to jack up Monks, since Necros arent very popular.

I couldn't agree with you more about enchantment removal. The problems with enchantment removal are a combination of long cooldowns coupled with popular 'spam' enchantments that end up being used as chaff for enchantment removal. Spending 10 energy on a skill with a 20 second cooldown in order to remove a 5 energy, 2 second recycle enchantment is a battle that you cannot win. Tactically you have to play around these spam enchantments, but with the cooldowns and costs associated with that it just isn't worth the effort.

I can't quite agree with you on hex removal, though - I think it's right around where it has to be to keep things in balance. Are there any hex removal options that jump right out as must haves? I don't see 'em.

Remove Hex would be outstanding if not for the two second cast time - that translates into 2.75 seconds being devoted to removing a single hex, and when the battle is raging hard time like that can be hard to spare. That also removes but a single hex, and while Remove Hex recycles reasonably fast (castable every 7 seconds) it isn't fast enough to fight off someone being targeted with multiple hexes. A cast time of two seconds is also fairly easy to pick off with an interrupt, and as a Monk you're going to be getting hit with a lot of those.

Inspired Hex is faster, but the cooldown is brutal. It'll be useful if your opponents just have some incidental hexes, but not if they're using it as part of their strategy in any meaningful way.

Convert Hexes is *expensive*. When you're a Monk who's already being taxed hard having to drop 15 energy on a Convert is brutal. Sometimes you absolutely have to if a teammate is being hit by 3-4 hexes, but you're never happy about it.

A dedicated hex strategy is going to get hit by Convert, certainly, and a couple incidental hexes are going to be knocked off by the incidental removal, but those are problems for every strategy. What a moderate dose of hexes do is tax their defenses even further - time spent removing hexes it time not spent healing. Think of hexing an opponent as buying yourself some time, some of it from them being shut down and even more time from someone trying to remove it.

You're absolutely right that the expensive, single target hexes aren't going to be viable. So what? There's nothing that can be done about that. If you make removal bad enough that it squeaks by as a counter to Lingering Curse, you're going to be stuck with a game where even midrange hexes like Backfire are effectively uncounterable. I'm not OK with that. Right now, hex removal is good enough to fight off power Mesmer hexes like Backfire and Arcane Conundrum - if you put the effort into it - but it isn't so good as to stop people from using those skills. You don't have 1 guy on a team with removal who shuts down hexes - you have 3-4 guys on a team working together to defend against hexes. That's an indication that things are pretty well balanced, methinks.

You see that balance, too - there aren't a lot of dedicated hexing builds out there, but Mesmers are perfectly happy to slam 2-3 hexes on someone and make them fight those off. That's how it should be.

Enchantment removal is on the other side of things - the only piece of removal that gets played is Rend Enchantments - it's pricey as hell, as something with this power should be, but it gets the job done. Individual removal is too weak to try and fight with - the cooldowns just kill it. You can't make enchantment removal good enough to fight through spam skills - that's just going to cause problems - but it does need enough of a buff to make it a reasonable counter for 'standard' enchantments. Again you're going to have the same problem - 25 energy, long recast enchantments are never going to be playable if there's any removal around - but that's just a parameter of a game with counters.


While we're at it, I think condition removal is about where it should be. It's cheap and easy to throw around, but so are conditions. A lot of conditions are just incidentally tacked onto spam skills, so even if you want to use important conditions like Deep Wound or Silence you can bury those in spammables to gunk up the removal. Just expect any condition to be short lived (hell, most are anyway) and they'll do exactly what you want them to do - be another tax on the Monks.

Peace,
-CxE

Yep, I also think that the game still needs a cheap no-frills enchantment removal comparable to Remove Hex. Just a plain vanilla one enchanment removal that takes a little energy and recycle in several seconds would definitely help.

some of you are forgeting one thing about the war/monk and his/her enchantments.

a warrior only has 20 energy.

to effectively clense them of their enchantments you will need to drain their energy also. without the energy to recast them, then they cant do jack but prey to god a monk heals them

energy draining skills are very underrated imo. they can go so far when put to good use and good combos.

just casting shatter enchantment on a warrior isnt doing you very much, focus your powers and completely make him sufer from the inside out.
"with no energy for the mind, one cannot think'

I agree completely. One of the best way to take out W/Mo is with energy drains. One good mesmer could make many W/Mo's cry easily with help of those skills. Energy drains are both offensively and defensively helpful when you think about it.

Oh, I'm perfectly fine with the current Hex removal options. The last thing GW needs is more nerfs/Elites to slow things down even further.

The problem lies with the high cost, high recast hexes and enchantment removal options (such as Lingering Curse). They're simply trash, and I'd like to see them fixed to reflect high level gameplay.

Hexxing to divert healing and tax defenses is a flawed strategy from conception, and I think the korean teams realize this, which is why they rarely if ever waste their time on such things. The defender doesn't have to remove every hex, only the ones that matter (for example the person who's obviously being focused upon and just got hit with lingering curse). Against something like Conjure Phantasm, why bother when a simple heal does the trick anyway? Also, I've noticed the korean teams run with at least two people with hex removal.. Important Hexes drop the instant they're put in play (could be because they're all on lan). So while players were wasting all that time and energy on hexes, those resources could have been better used for disruption, healing and enchants. In the end, you're actually giving them more time to heal because you're depriving yourself of resources to actually do something that matters.

The problem is compounded when you realize that a lot of the skills that are direct counters to damage mitigation or damage enhancement (rigor mortis, barbs, etc ) and healing (lingering curse, defile flesh, malign intervention) which are only good for coordinated focus firing, have sickening costs and recharge. So much for diverting healing with hexes, eh? If it seems like I'm focusing a lot on Necro hexes, it's because they suck so badly in high end pvp.. although some hexes in other lines could use some work, too.

Holy non-sequitur Batman!


Hold up, when did we start giving half a shit about either a Warrior/Monk or their enchantments? I think you missed the memo about Warriors - no one cares about them. They just kinda run around through traps and get hexed out while everyone focuses on targets that matter.


Wait a second.

So you're telling me that all of these enchantments on the opposing Warriors that I'm supposed to be worried about are *defensive*?!?

What do you think this is, PvE?


Have you suffered a traumatic head injury lately?

The best way to kill a W/Mo is the kick the living hell out of the Monks keeping him alive. No Monks = no healing + random dude standing in the middle of my team with no support = /beg.


Wait, so you're trying to shut down a class with an adrenaline based offense with energy denial? Why would you do that?

Please, think about these things before you post them.


Ok, seriously, what's up with the whole Korean worship? Last I checked the only Korean team that was worth the time of day was KOR, and it isn't like they're doing anything particularly revolutionary. Every other team I've run into was just some PUG that was about as easily dealt with as any other PUG.


What hexes are you talking about where a simple heal will do the trick? I'm talking about good hexes here. Backfire, Shame, Arcane Conundrum. Hexes that will shut someone down if they are not dealt with - how exactly is a simple heal going to help with that?


That's just coordination. If you're casting a single hex and hoping it'll stick you're delusional. If you want to shut someone down, you need to back it up.


Agreed, Necromancer hexes, particularly damage amplification, are pretty much trash. Which confuses me - why are you using bad hexes as a basis of comparison? The problem isn't with the hex/removal dynamic - which is pretty much where it needs to be - but with a particular subset of hexes that are pretty sad.

If the problem is with big, slow, klunky skills, that's unavoidable in a game with counters. The 25 energy enchantments have the same issues, as well as any skill with a 5 second cast time. They're extremely vulnerable and get countered by good teams. This is just a consequence of competitive games - better play becomes faster and tighter, and those slow plays no longer cut it. I'd just assume that skills like Weaken Armor are for PvE and other areas of the game - not everything is going to cut it in PvP but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.

Peace,
-CxE

Buddy are you for real... Im not giving any 100% reviewed strategies. Im saying that without energy W/Mos cant heal (obvious) . I never said it was the best way i said it was one of the best ways a class with this skill could make them cry.

Second, what class did I mention. Mesmers... okay, we know its not their job to kill monks or warriors anyways, so what can they do to stop them?


Thanks, ill tell the warriors, but in the meantime what I AM going to do (cause im a mesmer remember) is cast some energy drain spells on them, in addition to shuting down the healer. Last i checked i cant really do much offensively to warriors and im already doing regualar mesmer shutdown on the healer.

And by the way the best way to kill a W/Mo is to kick the living hell out of the caster AND make sure the W/Mo has no energy of his own. I dont like flaming but think about my post before you try to tear it up.

Peace

Oh yes, I'm for real. So very, very real.


I'm not asking for 100% reviewed strategies. I'm asking that you think about what you say before you say it.


Nuh-uh. No revisionist history here. You said, and I quote:

"One of the best way to take out W/Mo is with energy drains."

Period. You can look it up.



Actually, no, I don't remember that, since you didn't mention it before now.

But please, by all means, cast your energy denial spells on my Warriors. I like free rating points.


The healer? Singular?


And you care why?


Why not just assume you can shut down their entire team in the process?

Any effort spent trying to kill a WaMo is effort that is better spent on another target. There are very few exceptions to this rule.


Clearly.


Seriously, go back and re-read your post. Ignore everything you're thinking about it that you *didn't* say. Did you really mean 'well, I'm a mesmer, and I've already got the opposing teams Monks wrapped up, and I have this warrior in my face and hitting him with some energy denial will help.'? Sure, that makes sense, don't just sit there doing nothing.

But you didn't post that. If you meant to, please do so in the future. It saves everyone a lot of headache.

Peace,
-CxE

Not only is Ensign for real, he's the Stark Fist of Reality.

IF you're doing your job well, you shouldn't have any time to worry about the warriors. Shutting down healers is a full time job- if you're not hexing them, you're beating on them with your wand and waiting to power leak them. If you're not power leaking them, you're power draining them. If you're not using those skills, why the hell are you playing a mesmer?

The last thing I want a mesmer on my team worrying about is how to solo warriors. (Except IW builds, but even they have trouble after hundred blades was made elite.)

IF you have time to think about how to take down the warriors, that means the monks and other casters are already down, and now you're just mopping up whatever is left. Why are you worrying about that? Just do what brought you to the steps of victory, continuing to do so will get you through the door.

Let's all stop and think before we post.

Good organization, wonderfully coordinated. Seriously though, I really dont want to continue an argument which is obviously not going anywhere, so for the record: I was suggesting something that works on W/Mo's. And yes it is possible to sneak in energy drains on warriors because it will replenish your energy so its win-win. Remember there's more than one way to play as a mesmer, and I doubt so early in the game you've mastered it. However... you do have more raw knowledge of the game than I do, so I will finish by saying excellent points, thx for the ADVICE and yeah I will probably use some of the info myself. Cheers

Sure, but why are you trying to sneak in an Energy Drain on a Warrior, who has a pitiful max energy, and not an Elementalist or Mesmer, who you can almost always hit for full? Energy Draining a Warrior rarely hits for anywhere near max, and remember that Warriors are the least energy-dependent class due to adrenal skills.


Definitely true, it's a deep class with a lot of tactical depth. But not every way to play a Mesmer is an effective way to play a Mesmer. I'm sure that in the long run even what I understand now is just novice-level material, and that there's a whole lot more to be learned. Figuring everything out is going to be a long process that I'm looking forward to - but we have to set a foundation before we can begin to understand the more advanced tactics, no?

Peace,
-CxE

i definitely disagree with this.. a lot of enchantments(esp elementalist) are 30-60 secs recharge and having an ER which recycle in several seconds would make them useless.

i'm not in favour of any spammable enchantment or hex removal, like remove hex for eg.. it would just make hex/enchantment builds useless. think about it.. you're only using ONE spell slot to counter ALL the enchantment/hexes that your enemy has.

I also agree, best to energy drain someone using enchantments. I would like to really see a spell similar to the old Magic The Gathering card, Power Leak.



I'd only recommend doubling the energy lost via each enchantment though.

Btw, in reply to the above poster, I wouldn't want it to be spamable either. If it worked say through the Mezzmer line, I'd rather see a 5-20 second usage, 40 seconds or more recharge.

Not entirely true - it'd mean that you couldn't use those enchantments on a low-enchantment team without protection.

But remember that if you can't counter an enchantment with a 60 second cooldown, you basically can't counter enchantments at all. I'm not exactly comfortable with a world where you can't counter enchantments after the fact, but clearly some people are.


Not at all - you'd just have to protect your enchantments if you wanted to rely upon them. Remove Hex doesn't make Backfire useless in the slightest, even though Remove Hex is cheaper, casts faster, and recycles more quickly - we could have a lively debate about whether it is even worth it to cast Remove Hex on a Backfire!

In a world where enchantments could be countered, you'd just need to play smart - only use long term enchantments on low priority targets where they won't be noticed, or be prepared to protect your enchantments. Or, a bit more relevantly, don't expect your enchantments to stay up too long, instead plan around them giving you a burst of power until your opponent removes them.


That's hyperbole in the opposite direction. Right now you can't counter enchantments outside of Rend. Making it so that a single player could shut down opposing enchantments is equally bad (if not moreso). But a balance point where a team with 3-4 different enchantment removal options can fight off a fairly typical assortment of enchantments? That's about what we want, and we're nowhere near there.

Should we really have a game where running around with a naked enchantment, with no expectation that it'll ever be removed, is considered the norm?

Peace,
-CxE

I kind of like the setup. Where conditions are easy to apply, and almost take no energy or casting time, enchantments and hexes are different. Most enchantments and hexes have a longer casting time, and cost more energy. So it makes a bit of sense that the counters to these should either: A - cost more energy; or B - have a longer casting time(or longer recharge).

Ive noticed that hex and enchantment removal have been nerfed a lot through alpha testing, and to me it makes sense. If you have a build based around hexes and enchantments, you shouldnt be hindered by another build that is all utility. I think the setup now still allows people to kill their targets, but also gives them "balanced" methods to save their allies.

My thought exactly. Right now the only viable enchantment removal is Rend Enchantment, and although it is powerful you definitely pay the price with the high recharge time.

For the other posters:
Like Charles said, if you have a long recharge important enchantment that you wish to keep, you better protect that investment. Either stack some buffers to protect it or prevent the enemy from removing it. Hexes work that way, why shouldn't enchantment?

Yes hehe ... but only cause I always play an IW memser. If enchantment removals ever gets balanced then there goes my livelihood.

I have a question.?? Keep in mind that I have not yet played PvP.

Everyone keeps giving the cold shoulder to Warriors. What if the Warrior were to go straight for the oposing monk.?

Everyone goes for monks first. Without them, it's a lot easier to kill everyone else.

I don't think anyone is saying that Warriors aren't useful. They just aren't high on the priority list by any means.

Interesting topic. Rampant and inexplicable Korean worship aside.

Basically, there's going to be a spectrum of conditions, enchantments, and hexes that you'll be matched up against with your removal (And stances and shouts and rituals, if those things had effective counters, but they don't, so we'll ignore them. And abuse the heck out of them.). Against certain "weight classes" your removal is going to be ideal. Such skills have no prayer against you if you've brought effective removal. Against others removal is going to be ineffectual. It won't matter if you've brought removal or not because you just can't affect such skills in time. But it's against the last class, that removal is really pitched towards.

First, there are the heavy-weights. These are those skills that have long cooldowns or high resource costs that make them ripe targets for removal. If they stay up they're generally of great benefit because they're either so efficient or so powerful as to justify their cost and/or cooldown. These are the skills that don't survive in the face of effective removal. They're too bulky, too slow, too costly, when someone is capable of consistently removing them in an efficient manner. These are the skills that you want to protect, if you can, through throwing up chaff and other methods because they're the ones that hurt you most to lose. They still have their place because if you can get them to work, they're good enough to make it worth it, it's just with effective removal you can't get them to work each and every time. They're high risk - you'll see them stripped often, but high reward - when they do work you can really take advantage, but when removal is up to snuff they're by and large sub-optimal - at least until people stop using them enough to lull strategies to sleep and you can do some damage before they wake back up again . These are your Dazed, your Mark of Rodgorts, your Aegis.

Light-weights are next. These are those skills that are either so quick to act or so quick to recharge and cheap enough to recast that removal is all but useless. They're more efficient and more rapid that removal. Or, their benefit is something that you can't catch with a removal because it'll trigger almost right after a skill is cast. They're just too quick so they slip under the radar, as it were. Removal can't touch them so they get ignored. Fortunately, because they're ignored by removal they tend to be pretty ineffectual. They do something but they're not going to swing the battle one way or the other with just one cast. They're weak and a large part of why you use them is that they're unlikely to be countered and when they are they're likely screening another, bigger skill that you don't want countered. These are the skills you use for chaff because they're cheap and expendable. In the face of effective removal they become the mainstay of any buffing/debuffing strategy. These are your On Fires, your Malaise, your Reversal of Fortunes.

The final class is the medium-weight. As the name might suggest they live right in the middle. Neither too big nor too small. They can't be ignored, as light-weights can because they have effects that can actually cause some harm but they can actually be used often as heavy-weights can't because they're cheap enough or efficient enough to make it worthwhile. It's here that the most pitched battles between move and counter move are waged. And it's here where the balance point lies. If these medium range skills are worthless to cast then removal is probably too strong. If these medium range skills are impossible to counter then removal is too weak. When removal is fine, you won't be getting the full duration out of such skills, in all likelihood, but you'll live with it because you've done your damage. They're either front-loaded, like Lingering Curse, or the benefits of having it around even slightly are good enough to keep it in play, like Backfire (Well, maybe... If people are stupid, certainly. And most people are pretty stupid yet. Soon as they learn to stop casting or to change their casting patterns Backfire is nothing. Although it still is pretty disruptive). Simply put, these are the skills you want to counter. And these are the skills your opponent wants to use.

Now, where exactly those weight-classes are defined is probably the most important consideration. The more you think people should be able to use hexes effectively, the comparitively weaker you make removal. You add in cost or recharge time and push it upwards so the marginal skills in the middle-weights become light-weights. You still get the heavy-weights but you also get more skills that can't be countered well. If, no the other hand, you think such skills are gettin got strong, you pump up removal. Make it quicker, more efficient, more effective, and you turn some of the bulkier middle-weights into heavy-weights. There'll still be some skills that removal can't compete with - those hexes or enchantments that are just too quick or too cheap still - but there'll be a lot less of them. Removal has to be carefully pitched to what you consider to be the middle range. It's never going to be a "sexy" option because if it is it's gone too far. But it has to be more effective and efficient than those skills in the middle range so that it can be a proper counter. There's always going to be a reaction time, a casting time, before removal can take effect so it needs to be strong enough to smack anything worthwhile right off once it finally arrives.

IW builds have only ever thrived because enchantment removal has been weak. If they get fixed then you're going to be in a lot of trouble as an IW. Probably to the point where IW's duration will need to come down - along with the recharge and energy cost - in order to make it viable again. That, or as Chuck says, you'll need to get used to running it in bursts and relying on something else. Same thing with Conjures or anything else with a long duration and a long cooldown. Those are the types of enchantments it should be ridiculously easy to counter, the big, sitting ducks. That's just the way things go.

Nothing much probably. One or two warriors are hardly anything to worry about. Most teams would probably cast ward against melee or hex these warriors with shadow of fear+enfeebling blood. Your warrior may cause a little trouble if he is using a disruption build (skull crack, discrupting chop, etc.) but even then he is still not a number one priority on the kill list.

Now, I have seen some teams use their warriors to box in the enemy monks on a corner and have their elementalists cast AE on them. Or hamstring/knockdown the monk while the eles cast eruptions/meteor storm. In these situations warriors can be nasty, but you still want to kill eles first before the warriors if possible.

But do they not deal the most DPS. And are the second hardest to kill.
Could not a good warrior take out the Mesmer casting the interups and the Elementalists. Would not his prime targets not be these people and not other warriors.?

For targeting order I follow this: (copy/paste off my Tombs guide)
If you are the target caller, you will want to call healers first; Mo and E/Mo, then casters since they have lower armor, and then Rangers and Warriors. You may also want to take out Monk secondaries after their healers are down, to stop them from resurrecting.

You always have to take out healing first. If you go for those targets, they'll get healed faster than what you can dish out and no lone warrior can take out a target that is monk supported. If you want a simple strategy that's quite often very effective: get 3 Wa/Mos with Final Thrust. When the target reaches 50% insta-kill him with 3 simultaneous FT's. It takes coordination with your teammates but when you learn to pull it off it's deadly.

The only time a 'good' warrior ('good' because a warrior's 'goodness' is often dependant on the status of the battle itself) is when the first monk is dead. With the rest of your team pounding away at the second or third one, you can, if the you judge by how the fight is going, peel off and murder casters or rangers. And to do so doesn't require a good warrior, you just need Berserker Stance, a few conditions, Galrath Slash and Final Thrust. It can take just a few seconds especially if you have left over adrenaline from the previous target to charge your Final Thrust. In my experience, monk supported characters are near invincible while non-monk supported characters are often left with the best counter: running away.

So you guessed it, the best way to win is to kill monks and this explains the nature of this thread: enchant and hex removal since monks generally enchant themselves and break the good hexes cast upon them.

Right, they're not doing anything special, they simply stick with what works. The game is skewed so heavily towards defense right now, it's obvious to them that it's what wins games. They don't bother wasting time on things like hexes. They know that enchants, hex removal, and power healing are so much more powerful than the available counters, doing anything else is generally a waste of effort. The $30k tournament is running, and I'll eat my hat if the winners don't end up using a Warrior and Monk heavy team based almost entirely on enchants, power healing, and constant high-dps.

I'm talking about hexes like Weaken Armor, Life Siphon, Conjure Phantasm, etc (not like they're played much in high end pvp anyway). There's no reason to make an effort to remove them on separate players when a simple heal does the trick. As for Backfire (maybe not so much now that it only lasts 10 seconds), Conundrum, Scourge Healing, etc.. the worthy ones get dealt with as soon as they're put in play. For hex stacking, there's always Convert Hexes.. and also remember they run with multiple monks on the team doing hex removal, so often it's not needed. I'm all for the theory that hex stacking should be a valid strategy, but with the current costs, recharge rates, and number of playable hexes it's a losing battle against a team based utterly on defense, especially when they can focus hex removal better than you can hex.

Exactly. So you've gotten most of your team to stack enough hexes to annoy a single player for a couple seconds, now what about all their other monks?

I think we can generally agree that the problem isn't with hex removal.. It's the lack of feasible hexes and the lack of chaff, like how there are 5 energy, 2 recast enchants that are cheap but useful in their own right. All the options you have for hexes are either high cost/high recast, or not worth having on your skill bar in the first place. That, and I'm not fine with the fact that the number of competitively playable hexes is so low. There's not much room for strategic diversity when you have an entire class that consists of unplayable hexes. In the end, it'll make for a better game even if they only get around to fixing damage amplification and healing reduction skills. Man, those Necro hexes sure are useless. *hint hint*

As for enchantment skills that have high recharge/costs like IW, if enchantment removal is ever fixed their costs should be lowered to reflect high end gameplay.

Well, in an ideal world you'd have to. But right now, don't bother - enchantment removal is godawful, you can run around with naked enchantments with little fear of them getting hit.


Well, what were you planning to do with your Warrior? Attack their Warriors? Please.

No one's disrespecting Warriors, at least in this thread. The point is that trying to kill Warriors when the other team still has a solid healing and disruption base is pointless - you're not going to deal damage fast enough through a Warrior's natural defenses if he has Monk support.

You're much better off disabling Warriors and attacking more critical targets on the other team - their Monks and Mesmers. Once those are out of the way you can deal with actually killing the Warriors.


The strength of a Warrior is his ability to extend deeply into the opposing team and cause chaos. The weakness of the Warrior is that he has to extend deeply into the other team to be effective.

If I'm targeting a Warrior in the middle of a fight, it's because he's grossly overextended and cut himself off from his healers. Without Monk support, even a defensive Wa/Mo is going to go down pretty quickly under focused fire. So a Warrior has to always be careful about how far off he runs, balancing his effectiveness against getting cut off from the team.

That said, if not dealt with a Warrior is the most dangerous attacker on the battlefield.


That's why they ran a one Monk, heavy offense build last BWE, right?


I'd bet against Warrior-heavy team, actually - they're far too easily neutralized. But heavy enchantments, power healing, and sustained DPS? Definitely. I'd guess at a 3 monk config with several Rangers, myself.


Right, and dealing with them eats up a good chunk of time. Disrupting their Monks so that they can't spam heal a focused target - that's the entire point of a Mesmer, and their hexes are very good at that.

Agreed that you really don't want to try and pile hexes onto a single target because you're just asking to get converted. You want to get enough midrange hexes onto someone so that they're ineffective and it's non-trivial to get them back into action. In practice that means a hex that sticks and a chaff hex or two.

But, again, these are shutdown hexes, not junk like DoTs or damage amplification. DoTs are best used as chaff hexes - damage amplification is a PvE trick.


What sort of hex stacking? Debuff stacking? The thing about hex stacking is that it's something that inherently diminishes. If you're trying to shut someone down, you only need so many to make them useless - hell, just getting one to stick will do the trick. Piling damage amplification onto someone? Well, ok, but we know how that goes.

I don't like to think of Guild Wars as a game that rewards extremes, but one that rewards synergy and balance. I'd prefer to see hex spam team builds as an interesting exception instead of the rule. That's pretty much the case right now - you can do some combo smashing with Soul Barbs / Fragility as a team but in general hexes are something to use in moderation, not to gorge on.

Is that really a bad thing?


'Enough' hexes in this case is 'one', because Arcane Conundrum or Backfire will shut someone down perfectly well on their own with only a minimal amount of support. You don't have to hex spam someone out - judicious use of a couple well timed ones works fine.

Just take the case of Arcane Conundrum, backed up with an interrupt or two. There's no way that he's going to get to remove Conundrum himself given the current state of hex removal - he's going to have to have a teammate remove it. Communicating the need for the removal, plus the time spent casting Remove Hex, eats up at least 3 and likely 4-5 seconds. The guy with Conundrum on him isn't going to be doing anything for those 4-5 seconds, either - if he does he's just going to eat a Power Leak and be in even worse shape. So overall, for spending roughly 2 seconds and 10 energy casting Conundrum, you've knocked 8-10 seconds of healing power off on the opposing Monk team. I'd take a trade like that any day.

If you have a chaff hex or two (like the DoTs), they're going to have to resort to Convert Hexes, which hits their energy hard. Then you just do it over again with Diversion, or Shame, or Backfire, or whatever.

No, hexes don't have any issues. They're bloody powerful and the fact that teams run 3-4 unappealing options for dealing with them speaks to that.


I think you're focusing too heavily on the Barbs/Mark of Pain/Weaken Armor trio, which is indeed weak. The Curses line is actually pretty solid - Shadow of Fear both recycles quickly and is AoE, hexing out an entire Warrior train - spot removal isn't going to come close. Malaise is *the* spam hex - it's so good that I don't even think of it as a spam hex, but it ends up functioning as chaff anyway because you cast it so often. Best reason there is for going Mesmer/Necromancer. Add to that some of the more marginal hexes (Faintheartedness), tack on the Enfeeble skills and the critical Rend Enchantments, and you have a playable PvP line. Curses does to Warriors what Domination does to Monks.

Granted, offensive hexes *are* bad - I wouldn't mind seeing recycle buffs to Weaken Armor or Barbs. They might be getting stifled by PvE concerns, I don't know. Mark of Pain isn't going to be good in PvP, at least if people ever learn to not stand in AoEs. It's an outstanding PvE skill, though.

Necros just aren't very deep PvP characters - a fact I blame heavily on them losing two of four attributes to PvE on. They have a critical niche, and I'd be wary to run a team without a Necro or two, but they certainly don't have the diversity their skill list might indicate at first glance.

Peace,
-CxE

I think you're putting too much value into those 8-10 seconds of healing disruption.

When it comes down to fighting for that $30k, would it be better to have a player that diverts all his attention to potentially shut down a single monk for a few seconds, or replace that player slot with someone that actually does high sustained dps or someone that can improve your defense and keep your team alive?

It will be interesting to see if the finalists of the tournament actually run with any hexxing (Arcane Conundrum, Backfire and everything else included), if at all. My prediction is that the winner will just stick with power healing, mass enchants/defense skills, and sustained-dps characters (mixed in with some interrupts and knockdowns), and just *maybe* you'll see a hex or two sneak by, but their strategies certainly won't be based around incorporating them.

Anyway, I'm hoping ArenaNet's not just throwing $30k away and not actually providing videos and detailed coverage. It would be the obvious way to introduce Guild Wars as a legitimate competitive gaming platform.

It takes someone doing 50DPS - not an unreasonable benchmark, especially over a small time frame - roughly 10 seconds to kill an undefended target. Two characters doing 50DPS slaughter someone in 5 seconds. Three just over 3 seconds. Four and you're at just under 3. Say you're running with idiots and your damage dealers only top out around 40DPS. That's 4 seconds with three of them, 3 seconds with four.

Tell me again why you wouldn't run characters to take those Monks out?

8, 10, 15 seconds. That's how quick it is to decide a battle. I'll take a character who can control those windows of opportunity any day.

False dilemma. Mesmers don't spend all their effort on shutting down a Monk for a few seconds - a good Mesmer, using a combination of hexes, interrupts, and energy denial, will knock out *multiple* monks for an extended period of time. We're not talking about a character spending all of his effort to shut down a Monk for 8-10 seconds - we're talking about *a single hex* being used to buy 8-10 seconds *per cast*. You have a whole skill bar full of disruption that can gunk up the opposition.


I would be extraordinarily surprised if they do not. Not just because hexes are strong, but because of cultural bias towards such things.


Basing any strategy upon a particular skill, or class of skills, is just asking for trouble. You're basically throwing the dice on whether or not they'll be able to remove it and cripple your character - so the rewards of doing so have got to be impressive.

So will they base their builds on hex spam? Of course not, that would be foolish. But it would be equally foolish to ignore hexes entirely considering the raw power some of them have. No, you'll likely see them sprinkled into flexible, redundant builds to be used in key situations - just as they should be.

Peace,
-CxE

Doesn't the addition of enchantments and the chaff to protect them make Desecrate Enchantments a good choice to include on your skill bar? Even going so far as to include ways to multi/fast cast it?

Desecrate Enchantments [15,2,15] (Spell) Target foe and all nearby foes (within 25 feet) take 6..49 shadow damage and 4..17 shadow damage for each Enchantment on them.

Desecrate Enchantments does damage, it doesn't do anything about the enchantments being there, which is the real important part. You might do decent damage with it only to run into an enchantment to neutralize it like Divine Intervention, Reversal of Fortune, Protective Spirit, or Shield of Healing.

For that matter, 15 energy with a 2.75 casting time and a 15 second recharge time for 49 damage plus 17 for each enchantments isn't really all that much to write home about. That's 18DPS + 6DPS for each enchantment on a target. You need four enchantments on a target before it even becomes a bit threatening but it's still a lousy 3.2DPE + 1.2DPE per enchantment with a long recharge time. If you can catch someone with a lot of enchantments it can be fairly effective but there are better skills for causing damage - not really for a Necromancer, but still. Granted, it's AoE and a fairly good spread but that's only good if your opponents are bunching up which they shouldn't be. It's just a pretty conditional skill overall and one that's only good if your opponent acts how you expect them to, never a good assumption to make.

I was thinking that with the environment where stacked enchantments were common, it would go from a "No Way" to a "Maybe".

The fact that it DIDN'T remove them was to be a plus (providing reusability) but, it is true that some of the ones not removed could be an issue.

One medium-high level Reversal of Fortune will completely negate the damage from Desecrate Enchantments. I think you have the right idea looking for skills that punish people for enchantment spamming, but this isn't the right skill for it.

No, in my mind, Melandru's Arrows is more in line with punishment when removal isn't reasonable.
Unfortunately it's an elite skill, but it's still one of the best, if not the best preparation available, making all of your arrows into Power Shot arrows for 18 seconds. Bleeding is nice if you want to spread it around, or if you have a lot of sword warriors with Gash who don't want to bring sever artery.

Good points,

I have lent towards that some pfb members comments on the game are true.

For instance

Rangers:

70 armor +30 vrs elemental

... +30! thats 100 armor vrs elemental damage.

Now you look at the caster class of ele....

The only one you will see in high tier competition would be Air mage.. and then I dunno...

If you want to be an awesome team..

run 2 Rangers/Warriors

Watch yourself (4 addren (bows gain addren))
Shields up (10 energy)

+50 armor vrs piecing
+20 armor vrs everything else.

If you use a good skill combo aka KIN, average 90 damage a hit, + Tigers furry to increase that 33%

2 Ele

Secondary or primary

Ward against elements
Ward against foes
Ward against Mellee
Ward Against Harm

Slows movement
+24 armor vrs elements
+24 armor vrs evertyhing else (harm)
Mellee 1/2 time they miss.


Stack up all this on your front line..

Now just mix in this defensive stuff, ex Traps, Wards, Enchants...

Hold a line, keep your monks back.. Pull if they target you... And gg

BTW hado get in the irc I wanna talk if ya care

and also, there are counters to this strategy. But no one has run one good yet.. well ive seen it happen once.

Necros need something more along the lines of "healing booby-traps" and a more parasitic line. I could see necros more feeding off the living than controlling the dead, IMO, but I'm still no game designer.

I like hado's points..

Lingering curse is okay, but for 25 energy, huge cast time, you basically get a rend and defile flesh which is removed asap by good teams. Hexes just lose their flavor when vrs a good team..

Although I would have to say, good coordinated and smart hexing is viable.

For instance, throw up lingering, cover with 2 spam hexes. This requires at least 15 energy or a 3 second purge signet to remove.

but still you would be hard pressed to kill the focused target (lingering curse basically is,KILL this target), because healing seeds, guardian, protective spirit, would all go up if while you are plinking away. Requiring a rend which takes a while.. in this time they can remove etc.

I think the major strategic point of KOR > n0 was the point of pulling. I have no knowledge of the actual match, nothign but mostly fake heresay.

But basically, KIN would hold a line, if you targetted one of them, they would pull you. While pulled you are just running, doing nothing. The fault of the strategy was, you could run up to a certain X distance away, where you could continue firing for enough time to kill them before they escaped. Actually snaring them would require spamming a hex, and the best cost on any snare is 15 energy without elite... Try spamming that and killing the running target, While getting hit. Warriors in some cases dont have to run if they use Watch yourself, (4 addren cost) etc and have decent healers/prot

Interesting discussion.

Saus made a good point about how there are different 'classses' of enchantments so the one size fit all removal we have now seems to cause problems. By this i mean that enchantment removal works regardless of how much energy was put into casting the enchantment to begin with - stuff like IW is as easily dispelled as stuff like RoF.

So, why not add in some abilities that work based on the amount of energy it took to cast the enchantment in question. An example: Rend remains as it is, being able to remove any and all enchantments up to its current limit. You add in a new spell, lesser rend enchantments that has stats like (10, 2, 15) Target loses 1...4 enchantments, for each monk enchantment removed you take 30 damage. Only removes enchantments that cost 5 or less base energy.

Add in similar types of spells to the various existing enchantment lines. This way you keep the higher energy/return abilities somewhat difficult to counter while making the lesser abilities used as either chaff or just buffs that weren't worth removing before more risky.

Laz