I must be dreaming...
Poison Ivy
*Migraine* - *Reply :Contemplation of Purity* (So damn evil!)
Siren
I'm well aware of the Surge incidental damage, and back when we still had 10/10 on Burn/Surge, it was worthwhile. Doing 80-something damage with one skill was pretty respectable; doubling through through a tag-team was even better. Now, I've done the Burn/Surge/Wrack combination before, and yeah, it was pretty effective, and even though I've had plenty of casters start running around after I've drained them, that build was flawed in two important ways:
1) The e-denial only targets conventional energy reserves.
What I mean by that is we're knocking off 40-something energy (well, that's only with Dual Surge) and nothing more. We're not stripping away e-regen. We're not limiting their energy itself. We're just doing nothing more than using E.Drain over and over again. Maybe that's all well and good, but unless you can limit their e-regen...you've done very little.
Consider it for a moment. The most important aspect of e-management (and by extension, e-denial) is not getting the target down to low energy. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important part of e-management/e-denial is concerned with energy regen. If a caster has no e-regen anymore, they can't do much.
If they get zeroed out when it comes to energy, they have ways around that, whether it be focus-swapping, timing Mantra of Recall beforehand, etc.
But they still have options there. It's a pain in the ass to get sent into energy degen--especially if you're a Monk.
Even though it's not quite feasible at this point, a Wither/Malaise/Ether Lord combination is pretty nice...particularly when you're running at a high Inspiration (sounds crazy, I know). I didn't expect it to work, but it does. At higher levels of Inspiration, Ether Lord hits a 3 e-degen breakpoint. After you blow through enough of your energy, having casted Malaise and Wither, you hit them with Ether Lord. I know how crazy and bizarre it sounds, haha, but I'm completely serious here.
Ether Lord is one of those red-headed stepchild skills that people never think can be useful at all due to its duration...and how lackluster it seems when they work out the energy effects mathematically. But they're looking at it in the wrong way. You're not using the skill to regain energy, just like you're not using it to actively drain energy from your target. You're using Ether Lord much like how you use Malaise and Wither: to suppress the target's e-regen.
And I suppose that's my main point here. Surge/Burn is active drain, whereas Wither/Malaise/Ether Lord is passive suppression, and I think that's why people don't "get it" when it comes to forms of e-denial other than Surge/Burn. They don't even see the possibilities of passive suppression...and Arcane Languor is entirely passive suppression, because you aren't actively draining the target's energy.
Instead, you're attacking their ability to regen through the infliction of Exhaustion. When they've only got 5E left, and the rest of their energy bar is gray, they have no energy regen at that point, because they have nowhere to regen to. It's a similar principle to ripping out their 3-4 pips of regen, then hitting them with another 3 degen.
2) The ratio of your energy spent to their energy lost favors your target (especially now).
Burn/Surge both cost 10E, and have a recharge of...what is it now, 20 seconds? You're spending 10E to actively drain 8E from your target, and inflict some incidental AoE damage on top of that. Running Dual Surge is a bit better, because it at least alleviates that ratio a bit.
The fact that Dual Surge was the standard, rather than just a single Surger for the most part is pretty telling, I think. Single Surge was adequate, but Dual Surge was where it became truly effective. It's like a doublemint commercial, only instead of gum and attractive people, there's burning and mildly unsettling Riverdancers.
Arcane Languor, on the other hand, doesn't need a partner to castrate the two professions it's designed to take down (Monks and Mesmers). Just think about what we're going to be seeing. With Ritualists, having one or two Monks is possible again--and I'd imagine BoonProt would still be viable (hell, it still is viable with some mild alterations to the build). No team goes without Mesmers, usually, and I rarely see any Mesmers using spells with slow cast times.
Now...if in a guild scrimmage, within 4 seconds, in a heavily reduced PvP environment, Arcane Languor inflicted 40-50 points of Exhaustion from just Reversal of Fortune, Guardian, etc...what's going to happen in a full-on game environment? You can watch the GvG battles right now and see the Monks damn near spamming their spells, right? Put an Arcane Languor on them, covered with one or two other hexes and watch what happens.
And if hex removal is a factor...there are only going to be three characters on any 8-man build that carry hex removal. What are those three characters? Monks, Mesmers, and Ritualists. And Monks and Mesmers are Arcane Languor fodder for sure.
1) The e-denial only targets conventional energy reserves.
What I mean by that is we're knocking off 40-something energy (well, that's only with Dual Surge) and nothing more. We're not stripping away e-regen. We're not limiting their energy itself. We're just doing nothing more than using E.Drain over and over again. Maybe that's all well and good, but unless you can limit their e-regen...you've done very little.
Consider it for a moment. The most important aspect of e-management (and by extension, e-denial) is not getting the target down to low energy. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important part of e-management/e-denial is concerned with energy regen. If a caster has no e-regen anymore, they can't do much.
If they get zeroed out when it comes to energy, they have ways around that, whether it be focus-swapping, timing Mantra of Recall beforehand, etc.
But they still have options there. It's a pain in the ass to get sent into energy degen--especially if you're a Monk.
Even though it's not quite feasible at this point, a Wither/Malaise/Ether Lord combination is pretty nice...particularly when you're running at a high Inspiration (sounds crazy, I know). I didn't expect it to work, but it does. At higher levels of Inspiration, Ether Lord hits a 3 e-degen breakpoint. After you blow through enough of your energy, having casted Malaise and Wither, you hit them with Ether Lord. I know how crazy and bizarre it sounds, haha, but I'm completely serious here.
Ether Lord is one of those red-headed stepchild skills that people never think can be useful at all due to its duration...and how lackluster it seems when they work out the energy effects mathematically. But they're looking at it in the wrong way. You're not using the skill to regain energy, just like you're not using it to actively drain energy from your target. You're using Ether Lord much like how you use Malaise and Wither: to suppress the target's e-regen.
And I suppose that's my main point here. Surge/Burn is active drain, whereas Wither/Malaise/Ether Lord is passive suppression, and I think that's why people don't "get it" when it comes to forms of e-denial other than Surge/Burn. They don't even see the possibilities of passive suppression...and Arcane Languor is entirely passive suppression, because you aren't actively draining the target's energy.
Instead, you're attacking their ability to regen through the infliction of Exhaustion. When they've only got 5E left, and the rest of their energy bar is gray, they have no energy regen at that point, because they have nowhere to regen to. It's a similar principle to ripping out their 3-4 pips of regen, then hitting them with another 3 degen.
2) The ratio of your energy spent to their energy lost favors your target (especially now).
Burn/Surge both cost 10E, and have a recharge of...what is it now, 20 seconds? You're spending 10E to actively drain 8E from your target, and inflict some incidental AoE damage on top of that. Running Dual Surge is a bit better, because it at least alleviates that ratio a bit.
The fact that Dual Surge was the standard, rather than just a single Surger for the most part is pretty telling, I think. Single Surge was adequate, but Dual Surge was where it became truly effective. It's like a doublemint commercial, only instead of gum and attractive people, there's burning and mildly unsettling Riverdancers.
Arcane Languor, on the other hand, doesn't need a partner to castrate the two professions it's designed to take down (Monks and Mesmers). Just think about what we're going to be seeing. With Ritualists, having one or two Monks is possible again--and I'd imagine BoonProt would still be viable (hell, it still is viable with some mild alterations to the build). No team goes without Mesmers, usually, and I rarely see any Mesmers using spells with slow cast times.
Now...if in a guild scrimmage, within 4 seconds, in a heavily reduced PvP environment, Arcane Languor inflicted 40-50 points of Exhaustion from just Reversal of Fortune, Guardian, etc...what's going to happen in a full-on game environment? You can watch the GvG battles right now and see the Monks damn near spamming their spells, right? Put an Arcane Languor on them, covered with one or two other hexes and watch what happens.
And if hex removal is a factor...there are only going to be three characters on any 8-man build that carry hex removal. What are those three characters? Monks, Mesmers, and Ritualists. And Monks and Mesmers are Arcane Languor fodder for sure.
dgb
Quote:
Originally Posted by Themis
Come on now... no-one actually removes 6sec hexes !!! Simply because in the mid-battle, hex removal is prioritized differently, so by the time they're being removed (by another player, WHEN and IF he has the time to do it), 3 to 4 seconds have already passed 
So players don't bother asking for removal, they choose the simple (and best imo) solution : pick a spell and cast through.
If I'm monking and I want a hex off in GvG, it goes off. It all comes down to your communication/ability to play as a team. Losing a skill for a minute is stupid when good communication would have been far more effective.
Siren, no decent monk is going to let their energy get down to a max of five. And if they do, they'll work off focus swaps. You're talking an unrealistic situation, good monks may spam skills at time but they are just as quick to cancel them. Half the time if a diversion lands in the middle of a RoF I can cancel it and a diversion has to have near ridiculous timing to catch a guardian, mend or other skill.
At this point a monk calls on vent and says get this hex off of me, or eats the exhaustion and removes it themselves, or they just cast through it, take thirty points of exhaustion (which is still skimming off the top) and put defences in place for the next time you try it. If your target lets themselves get down to five maximum energy, then you're fighting scrubway and it doesn't matter.
The current build I'm running with in GvG has hex removal on four different characters. How exactly are you going to shut all of them down? As soon as people realise you're running around with a dangerous hex, removal gets prioritised and it won't survive longer than a couple of seconds.
Lastly as soon as you say wither and malaise on a caster, your argument breaks down. These skills are pox beyond all recognition and will never last on a caster for more than the two seconds required to do a focus switch.
You're also wrong about conventional reserves... A surge mesmer who understood what they were doing and who could coordinate with their team was scary to a monk with MoR. A shatter followed by a twin surge and the monk just took 300 damage and lost all the gain from their energy management, attacking their energy management.
So players don't bother asking for removal, they choose the simple (and best imo) solution : pick a spell and cast through.
If I'm monking and I want a hex off in GvG, it goes off. It all comes down to your communication/ability to play as a team. Losing a skill for a minute is stupid when good communication would have been far more effective.Siren, no decent monk is going to let their energy get down to a max of five. And if they do, they'll work off focus swaps. You're talking an unrealistic situation, good monks may spam skills at time but they are just as quick to cancel them. Half the time if a diversion lands in the middle of a RoF I can cancel it and a diversion has to have near ridiculous timing to catch a guardian, mend or other skill.
At this point a monk calls on vent and says get this hex off of me, or eats the exhaustion and removes it themselves, or they just cast through it, take thirty points of exhaustion (which is still skimming off the top) and put defences in place for the next time you try it. If your target lets themselves get down to five maximum energy, then you're fighting scrubway and it doesn't matter.
The current build I'm running with in GvG has hex removal on four different characters. How exactly are you going to shut all of them down? As soon as people realise you're running around with a dangerous hex, removal gets prioritised and it won't survive longer than a couple of seconds.
Lastly as soon as you say wither and malaise on a caster, your argument breaks down. These skills are pox beyond all recognition and will never last on a caster for more than the two seconds required to do a focus switch.
You're also wrong about conventional reserves... A surge mesmer who understood what they were doing and who could coordinate with their team was scary to a monk with MoR. A shatter followed by a twin surge and the monk just took 300 damage and lost all the gain from their energy management, attacking their energy management.
fatboyslimerr
Hear me now (rasta accent). Siren and a few others aren't really getting the point. Diversion and Langour only have an affect if a monk/mesmer casts through them and their durations aren't exactly that threatening. Most decent monks will notice diversion/langour and just REGEN ENERGY for this period till it goes away by itself. So what, they are inactive for 6-8 seconds, unless you dual exhaust + a couple of covers both enemy monks + mesmers, their teams other monk should be able to management keeping the team alive, then when langour/diversion end that monk has a bit more energy and can continue to heal like a pimp.
Wither/malaise/ether lord are nice on paper but in practice, you would have to have such a hex heavy build, that these spells will be the least of a teams worries otherwise, one will be removed and the combo becomes less effective, also ether lords duration just isn't long enough imo. They just aren't that great, oh yay -1 energy degen, focus swap ?? energy management skill ??. I came up against a Panic {E} mesmer the other day and with only +2 energy regen I was still effective, I jsut made better use of my energy management skills.
Dual Surge ?? Solo Power Leak ftw
I think its more likely to be able to interrupt a boon prot than catch them casting through diversion/langour. This is why i'm a power leaking pimp daddy 
Wither/malaise/ether lord are nice on paper but in practice, you would have to have such a hex heavy build, that these spells will be the least of a teams worries otherwise, one will be removed and the combo becomes less effective, also ether lords duration just isn't long enough imo. They just aren't that great, oh yay -1 energy degen, focus swap ?? energy management skill ??. I came up against a Panic {E} mesmer the other day and with only +2 energy regen I was still effective, I jsut made better use of my energy management skills.
Dual Surge ?? Solo Power Leak ftw
I think its more likely to be able to interrupt a boon prot than catch them casting through diversion/langour. This is why i'm a power leaking pimp daddy
Eaimirth Etaivella
Which brings us back to the arguement that diversion/Arcane Langour is only a wanna be blackout. They don't have to cast if they don't want to. The whole arguement "If we spike a guy the monk will have to cast" is a bunch of bullshit. If they were blackout'd the guy would die. If they weren't the have the choice to let them live or to let them die. Whether or not they make the correct decision is difficult to discern but what is clear is that letting them have that choice is a bad thing.
Siddious
I think at this moment in time people will not be aware of what 'Arcane Langour' does. You will cast it on a monk, they won't know what the spell does and will cast through it. The monk will suddenly be confused and begin panicing as he has large amounts of exhaustion. Taking this into account, he will try and be more aware in the near future.
Basically what I'm trying to say is Arcane Langour will be like Backfire, where at first people casted through it only to relize it was killing them. They became aware of this and stopped casting, so now Backfire is really just a shutdown spell. THE SAME WILL HAPPEN TO LANGOUR... They will just treat it as they do backfire, meaning it will just become a shutdown spell but with less duration than Backfire, meaning it will be pretty useless.
Basically what I'm trying to say is Arcane Langour will be like Backfire, where at first people casted through it only to relize it was killing them. They became aware of this and stopped casting, so now Backfire is really just a shutdown spell. THE SAME WILL HAPPEN TO LANGOUR... They will just treat it as they do backfire, meaning it will just become a shutdown spell but with less duration than Backfire, meaning it will be pretty useless.
BaconSoda
sorry, accidently made a double post, 2nd one has more info.
BaconSoda
Back to the arguement about diversion/blackout, as well as arcane lanuor. Although situaltional diversion and languor can be very useful pressure skills, as is backfire (correct me if i'm wrong). Also, if someone must take the time to communicate for someone to remove a hex, that takes both time and energy off of the team's original strategy, thus disrupting the forseen effect of the build (idealy, unless the team is dumb enough to finish their line before removing such a potent hex). Whereas these are situaltional, so is blackout, but in a less direct manner.It takes direct contact, and disables the one who has cast it, as well as the one it has been cast on. Although the direct contact can be aleiviated by "Aura of Displacement", this skill takes an eilte spot, and can almost as easily be replaced by "Recall" if one is using it for the thought of getting away from the action. If you see a mesmer running directly at you, do you think the same way as I do and think "it's an IW mes or a BO mes get out of the way!" or do you stand there and take the hit? Every skill in the GW universe is situational, and when used in the correct situation can be effective.The Mesmer was created as an indirect damage/shut-down class, and every skill mentioned in this thread has been to these topics, and when used correctly can do the indeirect damage and shut-down the class was created to do.
Siren
Quote:
Originally Posted by dgb
At this point a monk calls on vent and says get this hex off of me, or eats the exhaustion and removes it themselves, or they just cast through it, take thirty points of exhaustion (which is still skimming off the top) and put defences in place for the next time you try it. If your target lets themselves get down to five maximum energy, then you're fighting scrubway and it doesn't matter.
Other bits I find particularly amusing are...
Quote: And if they do, they'll work off focus swaps. ...because Mesmers aren't going to be looking for that, and won't again start throwing around Arcane Languor when they see the focus swap?
Quote: or they just cast through it, take thirty points of exhaustion (which is still skimming off the top) ...because out of a possible 60E total (75 if you count the foci swap), 30 points of Exhaustion is much more than just "still skimming off the top." 30 points of Exhaustion is just about half of your total energy, and even then, that's being generous by giving a Monk 60E to play with in the first place.
Quote: The current build I'm running with in GvG has hex removal on four different characters. How exactly are you going to shut all of them down? As soon as people realise you're running around with a dangerous hex, removal gets prioritised and it won't survive longer than a couple of seconds. Tell me the characters, the builds, the attributes, etc., and I'll give you an answer.
Quote: Lastly as soon as you say wither and malaise on a caster, your argument breaks down. These skills are pox beyond all recognition and will never last on a caster for more than the two seconds required to do a focus switch. Quote:
Even though it's not quite feasible at this point, a Wither/Malaise/Ether Lord combination[...]
Note the bolded portion of the quote, please. Thank you, come again![/Apu]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siren
...because out of a possible 60E total (75 if you count the foci swap), 30 points of Exhaustion is much more than just "still skimming off the top." 30 points of Exhaustion is just about half of your total energy, and even then, that's being generous by giving a Monk 60E to play with in the first place.
Quote:
Uh, that's not the point. You need langour to inflict ridiculous levels of exhaustion before it gets crippling because of a monks ability to dynamically alter their max energy.|
You're also wrong about conventional reserves... A surge mesmer who understood what they were doing and who could coordinate with their team was scary to a monk with MoR. A shatter followed by a twin surge and the monk just took 300 damage and lost all the gain from their energy management, attacking their energy management.
Either way, the meat of the Surge Mesmer is still hitting the energy that's right there in front of them, directly draining it out of the target. No amount of conjecture is going to change that. The idea of a Surge Mesmer is almost stupid-simple because there's no deeper strategy than taking a direct approach...and I don't think there's any deeper strategy possible with Surge. Quote:
And that's just not going to happen. Langour works in the same way as diversion, you don't see good monks running around in top level PvP with five skills diverted, you won't see good monks running around with fifty points of ehaustion either.
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Quote:
Quote: Originally Posted by Siren Tell me the characters, the builds, the attributes, etc., and I'll give you an answer. How about no. You're the one making Arcane Langour out to be the pinacle of caster shutdown, I'm saying that it gets beaten by intelligent hex removal. If you need to know the exact build that you're going up against before you can make it work then it's clearly flawed in any realistic situation.
Quote: Originally Posted by Siren
Note the bolded portion of the quote, please. Thank you, come again![/Apu]
Then why the hell are you mentioning it at all? I can throw in random crap all I want as well but it doesn't exactly do anything useful for my argument so I try not to pollute the forum with it. It's nowhere near feasible at the moment and doesn't even deserve a mention in any serious context.
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So you have no build then? Come on, dude, let's be honest here. Either you have some build that forced "intelligent hex removal" on four of your eight characters, or you're trying to bullshit people here, and since you're trying to bullshit...you have no build. Rather, you have no workable build.|
Originally Posted by Siren
Either way, the meat of the Surge Mesmer is still hitting the energy that's right there in front of them, directly draining it out of the target. No amount of conjecture is going to change that. The idea of a Surge Mesmer is almost stupid-simple because there's no deeper strategy than taking a direct approach...and I don't think there's any deeper strategy possible with Surge.
Then you're not playing your mesmer right. If you're just slamming surge, burn and signet into your target as soon as they recharge you're playing it wrong. Any gimp can do that and it's not particularly effective against any monk who understands how energy works. The good surge mesmers attack energy which isn't initially available by forcing releases etc. Quote:
I'm sorry, I must have forgotten the options for focus swapping. What were they again? Going to negative energy, swapping up, swapping down...am I missing any there?
The negative energy trick only works for active drain. That's the entire point of going into negative energy: so you can't get targeted by active drain e-denial. Energy Burn can't take 8E out of you when you're running at -5E after swapping down. You can swap up if you need to, right? Let's say you just got Exhausted by 30 points right off the bat, because you had no choice but to cast, because your other hex removals were either pre-occupied or their own hex removals were locked down. You're down to 20E, right? You're burning through that, and the recovery from Exhaustion is severely limiting your ability to cast anything other than the typical BoonProt spam. (Oh, and let's not forget typical BoonProt spam is what put you at 30 Exhaustion in the first place) But wait, what's that? You've got +E foci in another weapon slot? Yeah, because it's just stupid to go into battle with all of your energy "out." So you swap up. If you're really hurting for energy, you may very well be swapping up to a set that's dropping your energy regen down by two pips. Do you believe that's tactically sound, especially if the opposing Mesmer has already had such success with Arcane Languor? You're giving that Mesmer even more of your energy to Exhaust. Yeah, you'd swap back down, into negative energy, after casting what you needed to cast, but if that Mesmer already threw yet another Arcane Languor on you, with the suitable cover hexes...you just got hit with another 2-3 rounds of Exhaustion. Your emergency energy reserves just got raped in the eye (and that's a pretty nasty skull-f--k). lol So you really want to tell me that the Mesmer will need to inflict 60 Exhaustion to cripple the Monk? If you tell me that, you're dead wrong, because the "opening" energy pool (normal regen, normal energy pool) is radically different than the "closed" energy pool (more energy at the cost of pips of regen). The opening E-pool operates independently of the closed E-pool, just like how the closed E-pool operates independently of the opening E-pool. It's not a total of 60 Exhaustion required to cripple the Monk. It's 30 for their first item set, and maybe about 20 for their alternate. Once the first 30 Exhaustion hits, that number is no longer a factor, because the goal of focus swapping (apart from defending against active drain e-denial) is to temporarily boost--rather, temporarily replace--one's energy pool for further casting. And once that Monk focus swaps, their opening E-pool no longer exists, which means the basis for your argument here doesn't exist. Quote: |
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Then why the hell are you mentioning it at all?
I mentioned it because I was illustrating there are other options available for e-denial, you fool. lol. And those other options have different philosophies behind them rather than the asinine and trite Surge build. Quote:
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