A little /rant, please just hear me out....

I love guild wars. I've been playing online games for the better part of 5 years. But not once have I ever cried nerf in any game (not even through daoc) untill now. It's about Aeromancer team builds. My guild and I have fought through many variations of these air builds and it all ended up the same way. Defeat. Everyone seemed to have the same problem untill, of course, they made they're own air team build.

I personaly decided I would never make this build due to (maybe a missunderstanding) the non-exisistant tatics in playing this build (simply target while 4 air e/me spam lightning spells). We have found a few ways to try and counter this build (mostly mesmer skills) but its just not working. Perhalps they should tone down the air damage? I hope so because as playing a warrior/monk and going down in roughly 3 secs with 3 monks on the team is not cutting it for me (trust me its not the gear either).

Anyone feel the same way or is this rant just unfounded?

Unfounded?

Elementalists are supposed to deal good damage with spells (they have nothing else ), so why take that away?

And, I guarentee it, a proper Mesmer build can counter any caster with near any build possible in the game.... so take another look at that "failed" mesmer

What you are seeing will happen over and over in this game. See, the strength of GW is that two or more people who learn to work together are stronger than the sum of the parts... the same people who just do what they will. Air Elementalists have been dubbed "FOTM" and people have worked out how to work with them well. So their power is exagerated simply by the fact that people have put in the effort to learn how to work with them.

This will lead to counters to AEs becoming popular and people will learn to work with them. There is no need for nerfs, because they're already in the game. As players more and more find AEs a pain, they'll adapt strategies to deal with them. See... AEs are counters to the all popular W/Mo. So everyone jumped on it. Soon, more people will be playing Mez/Nec or something similar that has counters to AE's abilities and people will be crying out to nerf them.

The game's not perfect, but if it were we'd see this type of cycle include every class. In reality, there are a couple of these cycles going on right now.

The designers should keep hands off of the character strengths until much much more data is available to them. Only if the cycle stops on a particular class/build should there be any concern in these regards.

Not saying to tone down Ele damage in a whole, maybe just air. And as far as the mesmer builds, do you have any good ideas? I'm at a loss here. :/

Try looking at all skills, and you'll find lots that could be used to counter Aeromancer teams. I havent been PvPing for long, yet, but I assume that there will always be a popular 'build of the month' until people start countering them, and something new is commonly used.

Air usually uses a surge/orb combination. When you see the surge orb appear on your effects monitor you know you're in for some hurt. You want to get protective spirit up on you as fast as you can. Once prot spirit is up you will only be taking ~50 damage max. That will give you enough time to heal. If you can survive the intial spike then you can usually beat an air ele build. You could also bring ward against elements to further reduce damage. If you can grind the match out long enough exhaustion will make most spike damage ele builds less effective after the first 2 minutes or so.

You played DAoC and never wanted to see a class nerfed?! I'm impressed.

aren't there a few monk skills that allow you to take a max of 10% dmg, and a few skill that heal you when you take dmg?

maybe use a combo of those 2 enchanments.... thats how i have gotten threw this... never have i seen it as a problem.. /shrug

I think rangers are a good way to counter AE . Once it does become more popular, (which I happen to see AE much more often) then you'll just have to grab some ranger on your team that are good interrupters and can dish out decent enough damage. I know Ranger have the most def vs elemental attacks. You can could have like 2-3 rangers with the +armor vs lightning attacks rush in to take them out.

Seth, in your mesmer attempts, did you have 4 mesmers to there 4 e/me? The reason I asked is because 4 e/me is a very consentrated attack. Hell, even one air elementist should be a pain to a warrior, its kind of thier design. But four?

4 mesmers against on air elementist would end up with near the same results.

Another thing about the mesmer class, they often find themselves babysitting a target. (rangers do this too sometimes) Its because in order for them to distupt well, they have to time thier distuption well. Elementist dont have to time like this. They select a target and shoot. Next target, shoot.

Air Elem get some awesome spike damage, but if you hit them with a Mes Backfire before they get started good they could easily do themselves in in short order. My mesmer isn't even maxed out on domination yet and his backfire will cause a caster to do well over 100 points of damage to themselves a pop when they cast for the time period that backfire lasts.

I've seen inattentive casters basically kill themselves spamming low power spells and makes them seriously hesitate using high power ones. Couple that with a few high energy and or high damage interupts and casters are in trouble.

I haven't gotten my ranger far enough along to be effective at interrupts yet, but they can really mess up a casters day too.

Sounds like a Ra/Me may work really well in messing them up with the armor resists to elemental attacks, the spirits for changing things the way you want them to be and stuff like backfire and interrupts.

Thank you everyone for the great ideas to couter this. I guess I really wasn't looking at the big picture. I thought I was going to be flamed to hell with this lol.

Thanks again everyone.

Protective spirit or mantra of lighting!! goodluck !

I agree that air eles are a flavor of the month for teams in the tombs. And many things that have been suggested, like ward against elements and ranger's elemental resisting armor simply arent very effective when you consider that all air spells have 25% armor penetration. Therefore, protective spirit is one of the only things that can protect you against an air ele team, but how often are you going to be able to accurately predict which party member will be their first target and get the prot spirit up on him in time? Having been on an air ele team many times, I can say that the only real solution to stop the spiking is a combination of prot spirit, reversal of fortune, and most definately spell breaker. If your team can manage those three monk skills effectively on most high-risk members of your party (monks, mesmers) then you've got nothing to worry about.

I personally whined about savages until my fingers cramped up.
-edit-
Oh whoops forgot to stay on-subject...

As for the lightning surge bit, I can see how spotting the hex early would help you get protective spirit up but I've only seen surge get used maybe once or twice. That and a smart group would pack half damage spells of their own to use on spirited targets that hit just about the damage cap and save themselves from exhaustion, like strike and charge.

I usually find the best way to success is to just have our targetted guys run back out of their casting radius, force the airs to chase, and thusly clump together, so that all of their spells can be interrupted at once w/ cry of frustration or choking gas or meteor or any other aoe-interrupt. ... of course this never worked in practice but it was a novel idea while it lasted.

I'm not a ranger expert, but it is a secondary for my monk...

wouldn't distracting shot (or is it debilitating..) help here. Rangers dont' get noticed overly much, they can contribute to slowing down spellscasters skills something fierce in the "annoyance" dept.

Now, I admit, I'm talking out my patootie... I haven't done one second of PvP yet. I haven't even ascended yet.

But just tossin' it out there...

Err, mesmer skills-- power spike, backfire... ranger skills-- choking gas, other misc interupting skills, daze(concusion shot) (not to mention rangers high defense vs ele dmg) -- ele spells from earth -- ward vs elements, obsidian flesh... -- monk spells -- spell breaker, protective spirit/protective bond...

Using a ranger with ele defense + mantra of lightning... perhaps, just start making groups like i saw one korean build do... mesmer/mo, ele/mo, and necro/mo healers... with wa/mo, and r/mo thrown in there... it worked unbelievably good... as all the characters used a sort of healing/protection, and removed hex's/conditions like no other i've seen... so like, we would be calling what we thought was a healer, and when we attacked it... it would stop to attack, as it was being healed... then we'd get confused, and think someone else was the major healer... but yea... it was a nice over all group... didnt hurt them One bit... it was like their health bars were stuck... perhaps life bond on everyone, with shielding hands? im not sure, but it should be looked into... because it owned...

It's just that people shouldnt have to make builds to go against one thing solely... use a mix of those sort of spells in a team, along with direct dmg, and you'll actually win in hoh... not just kill some teams... actually win.

make a earth ele build, we got owned by one

Just because you suck with primary mesmers or primary rangers does not mean Elementatists cant be blown to bits in seconds.