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.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t=18069&page=1

-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...

Spell breaker is 9 secs/30 secs plus got to guess who is getting focused. I m no psychic
Inspiration is kinda ok, too bad the 2nd and better mana drain is elite, not really worth it when compared to word of healing

But Earth magic sounds nice. Armor of earth is great, ward vs melee awesome, ward vs foes is icing on the cake and obsidian flesh is your get-out-of-air-eles-cheese card. A load of very skilled Earth eles backed off by MO/E specced in earth could possibly win against Air ones. Weee!

Spell Breaker is not a target spell.. its an enchantmen. Meaning every enemy in sight are affected. it last 15 second max and recharge in 45 second.. 15x3=45 so having 3 monk doing coordinated Spell Breaker would stop enemy caster to do target damage.. Only whirlwind isn't a target damaging spell in air magic but it only affect adjacent foe.. so you can just move.

Spell Breaker {Elite} - Enchantment Spell
For 5-15 seconds, enemy spells targeted against target ally fail.

And i also agree that earth elementalist could do very good too.


My Ranger have hard time to find party because people don't understand them.
They probably didn't realise that for some reason, summit beastmaster aren't doing their knockdown skill.. or that jugle troll could not use troll unguent suddenly...

Most people don't understand Mesmers, Curses Necromancers or smiting Monks either =/

Cry of Frustration
Arcane Echo
Backfire
Ether Feast
Illusion of Weakness
Mantra of Lightning
Elemental Resistance
Mantra of Recovery

That build sounds remotely workable. I doubt any lightning elementalists will have any luck killing you, and if they try they'll most likely simply kill themselves. The basic idea here is to cast all of your preperation stances and spells to make yourself a walking lightning-rod. Then, when you find yourself being focused on, you simply drop the mantra, echo, and then backfire two opponents. If it gets a little heated you can inturrupt a spell here and there, and drop the feast for some health regen. With Mantra on, the second they stop casting, you'll be able to cast it again, so you should be fine. The only real issue is when they start removing the backfires, 'cause then you're offensively worthless, outside of your staff. Seeing as I don't know any Me spells that deal tons of damage, I'd assume you could replace elemental resistence with something. Also note that you'll never need to worry about energy, as Mantra of Lightning will always be regening that for you, assuming you get attacked.

Well, spellbreaker IS a targetted spell, makes one of your ally invuln to spells. you have 1/8 chance to guess who ll be targetted and maybe save one guy every 45 secs if you re fast enough...not all that useful.
They ll just switch targets and kill the guy you just saved 15 secs later.
Spell Breaker (elite) (Enchantment)
For 15 seconds, enemy spells targeted against target ally fail. This is an elite skill.
Casting cost: 15 energy
Casting time: 1 sec
Recharge time: 45 sec
Relevant attribute: Divine Favor

Could work to protect you if you have godly skills. BUT!
Does not help your healers that are getting wasted. And what do you do with these skills against warrior heavy teams? Yeah, staff em down!

Lol, I was replying to the post that refered to teams consisting of only Air Elems. Honestly, I'd never use this build unless facing one - it's focused rather narrowly.

1. Divine Spirit (1/4 sec cast time)

2. Spell Breaker (1 sec cast time)

3. Reversal of Fortune (1/4 sec cast time)

4. Protective Spirit (3/4 sec cast time)

5. Repeat #3 and #4 on every ally you can target for 10 seconds.

... in that order.


But you are right... with monks, this is a tough one to crack, IF they are well trained together. I am sure they are looking into this.


Jana

OK, here is my idea if we consider this will be two guilds fighting each other with teamspeak and one consists of 5 aeromancers and 3 monks.

Your team:

5 warriors with 2 weapon sets each: swords/focus and sword/shield (strength, sword)
3 rangers with longbows (expertise, marksmanship and optional beast mastery)

Warrior skill set:

Sprint
Endure Pain
Distracting Blow (5 energy)
Savage Slash (5 energy)
Healing Ability
Res Signet
Flourish (Elite) - optional
Spell Breaker (Elite) - optional

Ranger skill set:

Concussion Shot (15 energy on 10 expertise)
Savage Shot (6 energy on 10 expertise)
Bestial Pounce (5 energy)
Res Signet

OK, now with an Aeromancer Team, their strength is their massive concentration of spike damage while the monks heal. This strategy I have isn't perfect and people will probably die, but if done right, it should shake up the Aeromancers. You can't defend against such power, so foget about monks. Eventually, those defences will crack and then you'll be smoked. The only other option is to take out their damaging capacity.

1) Rangers move into position at 100'. Each one takes targets one aeromancer.
2) Warriors Endure Pain and Sprint/Spell Breaker.
3) Warriors move in a pack towards one aeromancer ASAP. If one has spell breaker, let them charge first. This should waste a few seconds with the aeromancers targetting the first warrior to rush into range.
4) Rangers stop lighting on 2-3 aeromancers through their shots or beast pounce. This will lessen the amount of spike damage on a targeted warrior who has the boost of Endure Pain.
5) If done well, all warriors should survive the charge to an aeromancer.
6) Ignore the monks and pound away at an aeromancer. The collective damage of 4-5 warriors should take one out even if they are being healed.
7) Warriors use distracting blow or savage shot at the first sign of an aeromancer casting. Rangers continue to distract the casters. Finish one aeromancer and repeat. After 2 or three are gone, monks can be killed. If the monks become a problem, the one or two rangers can change targets.

The weakness of the Aeromancer Team is that even though they are effective, taking out 2-3 will basically destroy their spiking capability. I'm assuming the monks are merely to heal. The basic strategy is to minimise the spike damage while the warriors take out aeromancers, thereby lowering their overall damaging capacity. If you wanted to be devious, a ranger could charge with the warriors and cast Frozen Soil after a few aeros go down to prevent easy rezzing.

The skills I have chosen are all energy based skills and low to cast with no casting times. Also, by tweaking the skill set a little (make the warriors deal more damage), you should be able to take on other teams, not just spellcasting teams. The point is, each warrior and each ranger has several disrupt capabilities that have very little cooldown...you can interrupt anytime you want to. The trick is to get the warriors right up to the aeromancers ASAP and the disrupting rangers, sprint and endure pain are the key to that.

Who knows? With a little luck, the team will panic and stop concentrating their spikes. In that case, your team has won.

I dont know what im missing and i know im not heavy into the PvP yet, but as an Air-Earth Elem theres one thing that majorly annoyed me in PvE (im sure if you went through Shiverpeaks areas you MUST have experienced it):

Now i don't know whether Rangers in the end DO get above skill, but it is listed in the skill listings though. I believe theres another spirit that turns all physical damage into fire, so isnt there similar stuff which simply converts the damtype?