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

i agree, our air ele build got owned by a earth ele build ;(

Spike damage is hard to coordinate. You didn't get owned by newbs, you got owned by a coordinated team build working in unison. However, there are ways to defeat this build. Try looking at some of the monk enchantments which can keep damage down to -10% and then look at shielding hands and things that can reduce recieved damage.

Blackout helps.

Power Block (Elite) Mesmer spell, 15 energy, 1/4 cast time, 30 second recast, interrupt target's spell, that spell and all spells of the same specline are disabled for X seconds, mine's 16 at level 16 domination.

This isn't limited in use to just vs monk spells, y'know ;D

By the way, blackout's touch range, and probably wouldn't do too well against ele's since they're in the back, and you'd have to run through their entire group, and out of your healer's range, to cast it.

-edit-

...and, Human Torch, your avatar put me in a temporary coma. Thanks T.T

I haven't played too much PvP but wouldn't it make sense to equip yourself and your team with interrupt skills to prevent them from casting or knock them down magic users aren't hard to cut down once a warrior gets to them so i would imagine if you keep them on their backs or hit them with disrupting skills they wouldn't be too hard to beat just keep trying what difference does it make if you lose a few times i don't want any nerfing of this game i've seen too many games being ruined because of it once you start that ball rolling it's hard to stop it until the game is unplayable

There are plenty of ways to counter an air ele build... Mesmer heavy teams make them cry. (let me rephrase that) GOOD mesmer heavy teams make them cry.

If you just nerf every build that is hard to defeat the game will have no strategy left in two weeks tops and it'll be a big ol' gimp fest. Tons of gimps frolicking in the PVP arenas cause they can't kill eachother with their crappy builds? Count me out.

Air elementalists are defeatable. Nevermind that an effective air build dosen't have that much energy (exaustion and semi-high costs). You can drain them, interrupt them, knock them down, they can be defeated.

No strategy left? Feels like that now : call one target, fling air spells *1-2 sec later* player dead, next one please!

So while air elem guys just have to call and assist, to counter it we must get a 5 mesmers team, assign one mesmer to each elementalist (how long will it take? Even if mesmer team is godly you WILL have casualties during this time), and pray mesmers cast interrupts at the right split second? Please.
They could possibly be defeated. Problem is it takes 10 times the skill of the elem team. Plus it takes a specialized all mesmer team which will suck against anything else (though thanks to this build's effectiveness and lack of need of a brain, that s all you ll encounter soon ).
Hehe thought about something too: just got to name your air elems "Cheese lIllI", "Cheese lIlll", "Cheese lIIlI",etc... that way other team can t even assign over TS.
Cool beans.

Well, back to teh 4v4 where air ele swarms can t kill anyone in 1 sec. bubye lame tombs games. Or i'll have to join the air swarms
Doesn t seem appealing to be able to kill anyone with the usual call-assist and the same 3 old lightning spells though.

Nothing is easy, but I've had alot of success with my mesmer (as a secondary class to monk) using Backfire, Empathy, Imagined Burden (because your ally fighters need to catch them), and Arcane Thievery (my favorite skill in the game). And that's a budget Mesmer. You find some Mesmer elites and you will pretty much own a caster.

But Mesmers aren't the only answer. 4 Rangers will occupy 4 Elementalists quite nicely. But we all know Rangers suck. Right? Right?

I had a very long drawn out post on how the majority of the suggestions in this thread were pretty much useless. Most of them require Mesmers on a 1:1 basis, are self skills meaning they will do NOTHING to help your teammate that is now enjoying life as a smoking crater, or are completely off topic and clueless (AE). Not to mention that a build designed to take out an Air Ele team will be pretty much worthless against everyone else.

In the time it takes for you to coordinate your team of interrupters and assign each one of them to each one their casters, you've already sustained lethal damage.

But Blabla summed it up pretty nicely though. It takes 0 skill to call a target and click lightning orb.

Lightning orb takes a couple of seconds to cast - and you can dodge it and hiding around a corner will cause it to miss - yes it requires line of sight. If you can't interrupt it, dodge it, hide around a corner etc - well you need to practise more.

I laugh when I see elemntalists using this stuff, especially many of them on a team.

Elementalists go down too easy.

Protective Spirit and Reversal of Fortune for teh win

All too easy. Especially since these 2 monk spells cast at an incredible 1/4 of a second, I can cast them on more than myself, and recharge in a second. Using Divine Spirit, I can cast them on everyone on my team for a bit.



Jana

Actually, right now, an even vaguely competent Ranger team with a plurality of Choking Gas attacks will more or less crush one of these Air Spike builds. With Choking Gas, the Ranger doesn't even need to time their attacks particularly well: they just get into longbow range—well outside spell range, in most cases—and fire. That shuts down the spellcasting right there. If the Choking Gas is coupled with heavy damage-dealing attacks, those pesky Aeromancers will be down for the count.

The point is that Choking Gas—unlike most interrupts—requires little skill to use: since the Choking Gas itself persists for a couple of seconds, you don't have to time it perfectly, the way you do—for instance—Distracting Shot.

The upshot of this is that if you can advertise "LFG - Ranger (Air Spike shutdown build)" in Tombs, groups there will be bidding for your services, and a team of these will rule in Tombs for the next week or so until people give up on lightning builds and focus on anti-Ranger strategies.

—Siran Dunmorgan

P.S. There is a significant number of interesting things that Rangers can do to spellcasters before the 'casters are even in spell range. Choking Gas just happens to be the one that takes relatively little skill to use.

Too bad that :
-choking gas is a prep(2secs cast) available 10 secs out of 24
-choking gas is tied to your attack.Longbow got a attack rate of 2 secs, so you have to get lucky to interrupt most lightning spells which are way faster than this.

Shatter/rend enchantment?Most of the time it s 5 elems assisting, so the hell if they can t remove anything you can cast.
Plus you must be a psychic to guess who will be wasted in a second. Or you met really bad eles who don t coordonate and don t fling the spells at the same second...It s not hard at all to do, just have to got one guy over TS say "GO" and all push that lightning orb button for the kill

So whole team should be strafing/running away the whole time?
Unless you have a spy on other team to tell you who is getting assisted on and wasted in 2 secs of course.
Bye.

Power Block is definitely one way to go, take Arcane Echo with you and that's two uses on only one Mesmer. Bring 2 Mesmers equipped with that combo and you should be able to cover even 4 Air Ele's. In case there are less, Power Block comes handy on monks, too

Just to clarify - that will give you 16 seconds of breathing room to do something about those aeromancers. Either they do not cast at all, they cast another spell school (which will hurt as well because they won't have any skill with them they don't really use) or they don't get it and finish their air spell. Either way it should really help you and doesn't need a team full of mesmers. And like I said, this spell combo is useful against nearly every team.

Other than the standard counter team builds.

heh, i would be happy just if they made it so you couldnt have more than 3 of any primary class in a team.. it would get rid of the 4 mo, 4 air ele teams, or even the 5+ monk team's... (or even the well known 6+ warrior teams on the euro region )

Never going to happen thou and i think it would cause some lost of game play as well..

Easy. At least it takes player skill and mana management to do that. Wait until you come across a build who has 3 rangers dropping spirits everywhere. Now thats exciting.

Obsidian flesh anyone?