What to do against swarms of Air Eles?

So basically, what can you do against 5 air eles and 3 monks?
besides bring your air ele swarm too i mean...
They kill anything in less than 2 seconds.
Use the immune to spells thing? they just switch targets.
Heal that damage? No you can t. That s around 600 dmg in 2 secs.
Why is there spells that make melee useless (what i use as monk/E : armor of earth/ward vs melee) and nothing worth mentioning vs spell damage (and specifically that crazy armor bypassing lightning stuff)?
The halls are turning into a who-can-bring-most-air-eles game.
It gets dumb.

lol i've seen this rant so many times but alas i have no answers i'm just a W/R who gets killed too

Lifebond, Ward Against Elements, and Healing Seed?

-Virt

I've had no luck with Air in PvE - must not have the right skills.

-Lifebond doesn t work on spells (wasnt last time i used it at least)
-ward against elements is 15 mana for 24 armor vs elements (why are defense against elem damage so pitiful when compared to melee defense?).
And anyway lightning has armor pen, so your 24 armor will do maybe -15 to 20% dmg reduction if lucky
-i m not sure seed triggers when hit with spells, but anyway when you heal for 30 vs a 100 dmg blast....does not do much. And in the off chance you can keep them healed with it on, they can just switch targets. It leaves ya with 15 mana wasted.
so definetely not, not really and no

Protective spirit?

No real thing that would work in this post Ninna
-people say blackout...yeah go in that pack of eles and disable one for 6 secs if you don t get wasted for whatever reason...doesn t work
-people say ranger's good armor vs elem dmg...lightning goes trough armor like a hot knife trough butter...
-people say a team of as many mesmer as there is elementalists...yet the elem teams just has to call one target and focus, mesmers have to coordinate and get an elem each...how many of your party members will be dead by the time they do this. Plus having a mesmer heavy team for anything but casters teams will not be good.
-people say interupt ranger skills...same coordination problem as with mesmers
-people say use protective spirit so they (only) deal 50 dmg a shot...can you say shatter enchantment? with 5 guys assisting it's going to be a world of hurt even with 50 dmg a pop

cry of frustration / blackout / power spike?

-cry of frustration : have to go "hey Mr elementalists, will you all bunch up so i can interrupt your fast casting spells with my 3 seconds 15 mana not-sure-it-will-work spell? Pretty Please?" With fast cast that amounts to 2 or 1.5 secs, which is as much time it takes them to waste a team member
-blackout: touch range as i said, coordination problem as well (see previous post)
-powerspike: can interrupt one spell, being a fast casting spell, but coordination problem. Plus got to ask them to stop casting while you wait for recast

Surprise surprise, using mesmers effectively requires coordination. So does using an air ele spike build. Prot spirit or whatever does actually work. Stack on reversal of fortune or something to eat single-enchantment removal, and if you see a rend coming, that's what spell breaker's for (or alternatively just recast because rend has a long cd). Your average air ele team is out of energy after 4 salvos or so unless people are running double attunement or something.

There is NO comparison between the skill needed to use an air elem build and a coordinated team of mesmers who each have an assigned elem to counter.
The elem team needs TS, one non-mute player to say "GO waste the focus" on TS, 7 non-deaf players to assist, and 8 players with at least one finger to push that lightning orb/strike button (or heals for monks). Not that hard to meet these requirements huh? Three good monks, 5 guys who can click.

Even if the five elems can t -for some reason- eat the 2 or 3 enchantments you could maybe manage to stack on the focused target before it's dead in 2 seconds, can you heal 5 lightning orbs at 50dmg (reduced by prot spirit) followed by 5 lightning strikes at 50 ish too in 2 seconds? stick in some staff hits in between the 2 series of spell and that's any player's hp gone.
And that s assuming your whole team can foresee and guess who they will focus on and waste in 2 seconds, too.
That is a lot of "if"s.

Remember a month ago when everyone was complaining that a group of Wa/Mo backed up with a couple healing monks was unbeatable? Well... some people figured out that Air Els could beat them. Does that make them better? No. It means that the Whamo group has a foil. That foil has become popular because of the melee intensive groups that we started with. Since it's so popular, people will start playing more and more groups designed to foil that group.

What the designers have to stay away from is:

1) groups that are their own foil. This leads to stagnation. It's the Stealther Wars that was in DAoC, or the counterspell decks of early MTG.

2) Giving in to calls for nerfs. There are plenty of tools you can use in this game, many of which counter the damage from a AE team. Use them.

Ah, another "use the tools you have", mentioning no such tool.
Please answer the question in the title of the post...
Point is, there are TONS of very powerful tools to counter the war/monks builds you mentioned (ward vs melee, soothing images, cost of failure, empathy, various snares etc..to name a few). Where are the effective anti-stacks-of-air-elementalist tools? That is the question.

Monk's Spell Breaker. The recharge time is long compared to duration time tho..

A lot of domination skills.. Guilt seem good.. but once again recharge time is long.

Ranger also have a lot of disrupting spell. A good one is Concussion Shot or Choking Gas.. Quickning Zephyr can probably be good also to make them out of energy.
I wonder if the Winter nature ritual can prevent the armor penetration of lighting since it make all elemental damage to cold?

Elementalist's maelstorm.. but it's easy to move out of it.. they also have Ward Against Elements.


Necromancer's Mark of Subversion, Malaise, Spiteful Spirit(not sure if it works against spell), Wither.

Warrior's Disrupting Chop, savage slash, distracting blow, skull crack..

And all knockdown skills from any class.

usually they go for monks first...

mo/mes Wanderers armor, staff with elemental armor
mantra of lightning, prot spirit, RoF and ahwtever other spells you might want

ofcourse, every monk doesn't have to use that setup, the prot spirit and RoF is just to counter the spike.

and mantra of lightning is a stance, so it can't get shattered or removed

oh, and use backfire, they will be killing themselves, because they HAVE to cast to keep up their damage.

and, lightning orb can be dodged

-Spell breaker: available 1/3 of the time with 12 divine, have to guess who will get wasted in 2 secs...not very useful
-Guilt: they can wait it's gone to cast, only cancels one spell, requires to tag every air elem with it. practical use : not much
-Concussion shot: 25 energy (for a ranger, that s a tad much), have to hit them while casting, have to have rangers:elem 1:1
-choking gaz:15 energy, interrupts 10 secs/24 secs,2 secs casting... have to have rangers:elem 1:1
Though with the good armor rangers have vs lightning, this could be a nice solution. Can be kinda cancelled with "shields up" though. They can strafe and wait the prep ends to kill you too.
-Quickening zephyr: interesting, they can prolly staff down the poor spirit in a couple secs though
-Winter nature ritual: lightning damage and armor penetration aren t linked (see lightning surge).. it can be cold damage , still will have 25% armor pen
-Maelstrom:everytime i get this casted on my monk i take a step on the right and laugh at the wasted mana...Not to mention the water line is not very good to kill elems
-Mark of subversion:Great spell, though 25 energy and only last 9 secs with a recast of 30 s...They can wait 9 s to make a small pile of mess out of you. or smite hex it.
-malaise: great spell, low cost, that could annoy them some, unless they have remove hex type spells handy
-spiteful spirit: elite spell, can do a few dmg to them if they re nicely bunched up..have to stick that on all of them though and doesn t prevent people getting killed
-wither: like malaise
-warrior interrupt/knockdown skills : air elementalist, does it ring a bell? That's it, blind blind blind. not sure warriors are going to be the way to kill them^^

-mantra of lightning: It s a pain to have to take inspiration as a monk just for the mantra, but it could be a solution. That skill slot will be wasted on everything but air eles though. It's a reduction of 45% (if you put half your points in inspiration, too...eeeek). 45% is nice but monk armor is weak vs elem damage (60, lowest armor rate). Think they can still kill you in 2 assisted spells.
-Prot spirit : wont do much if anything at all if you already have mantra though.
-backfire: gotta have it on every ele and pray they don t have smite hex
-dodge : since you don t know who ll be the next one to get wasted, should the whole team strafe the whole time?
Can t win? Dance while waiting for certain death! Now that s the solution!

Feels more like you don't want a solution instead of trying new thing. 3 monk with 12 divine favor and spell breaker can make elementalist useless if timed correctly.
Inspiration is a good secondary attribute for monks because of the energy stealing.
If they can't cast anything and get their energy drained, what else can they do beside attacking with wands/staves or dance?


I agree disrupting might be hard against air elementalist since every air spells have pretty low casting time. I'm pretty sure its possible to kill them. Just gotta try many skills combo with good coordination.

My earth ele build could thrash an air ele build... wait... that's still putting ele's on top... hmm

Obsidian flesh with 16 earth, making it quite impossible to be hurting me... and armor of earth gives me +62 armor, and i have +15 vs air, only because of these builds... but yes, they can't take me down any quicker then they can a ranger/mes with mantra of lightning + lightning armor.

Not to mention my obsidian flame deals 118 dmg, without being effected by armor... so i never have to worry about something countering me.

--Secrets been let out the bag... but earth molds are harder to make good, and the rest ill leave to you to try and figure out... Earth owns all.

Or if these idiotic people would stop thinking rangers are so horrible... they could make ranger builds... 5 rangers 3 monks... try to kill the poison + daze + barrage + insane elemental defense with your puny elementals... not to mention the shot that drains mana by 10... if people just started thinking outside their normal... "Hey, thats good, ill try to perfect that build, rather then counter it"... then maybe this game would be alright pvp wise... but people are stupid... its a known fact.

Rangers = self heals, traps if you want, blinding, high defense, interupting, ranged shots, aoe... and snaring type of hits... well... seems they have it all... yet, people think they suck, so pft...