Rend Enchantments and Target Calling: When is it time?

This BWE I came with a few goals, one of which was learning to play a Ranger/Necromancer character well.

This build here
is very close to what I was playing. Just put Expertise at 13, Marksmanship at 12, Curses at 6, and Wildnerness Survival at 6 (for Troll Unguent and Ignite Arrows in PvE).

Another goal of mine was to learn how to call targets well. I've played a monk most for most of the other events and I wanted to see what it was like to put the pressure on the other team for a change. I traded a black dye for Rend Enchantments and Punishing Shot to get the skills I needed.

However, I struggled calling targets. Undoubtably my team had some problems shaking off the rust from more than a month of not playing, but I thought this would be an ideal character to use for calling targets, particularly with Rend Enchantments.

Let's face it: there are far more enchantments than enchantment removal can hope to counter. But a well timed Rend should sign seal and deliver death to your current target. And it should, especially with the heavy cost associated with it. But I was often plagued with indecision, my finger hovering over the button to trigger Rend. Should I hit them at 100% health when they are running 3 buffs like Conjure Flame, Strength of Honor, and Vigorous Spirit?

Do I wait til they're at 50% health and starting to sweat a little?

Or do I wait till they're at less than 20% health and their monks are starting to panic and throw things like Healing Hands, healing seed, mark of protection, Divine Intervention, etc...?

Here's how I see it:
If you rend as they're running towards you, you can strip off their offensive buffs, but it often gives them a chance to reapply them (except with long recharge enchantments like Conjure Flame).

If you hit a target when they're around half health, that's when they're likely to have medium emergency monk enchants on them like Shielding Hands and Healing Breeze.

If you wait til they're nearly dead, you'll likely hit some crucial, life-saving enchantments like the ones listed above, except that maybe you should have used Rend earlier and it would have recharged again by now.

Remember, Rend has a 30 second recharge time, essentially giving you 1 shot at it per target? So when is the ideal time to use it? A simple reply of: "circumstances dictate" doesn't give any guidance. What is the argument for casting it early? If I know why I should use it early, and I see those conditions on the field in front of me, I will make the call then. But I also need to know why I might want to hold off for later.

In the end it will all come down to the judgement of the person using Rend, but they need to know the arguments for "use now" or "wait" so they can evaluate and make the best decision.

I have no experience using rend as a target caller, but I do have experience being a target caller. Usually the amount of life saving enchantments received depends on how fast the target's health is going down, not the current target's health. That being said, the purpose of rend is to give that last final push to finish off a character, not to remove a conjure or some other offensive buff on a character. The single, offensive enchantments can be left to single enchantment removal.

Basically (in theory from here on out), you should be using rend to clear a:
-HH or Healing Seed
-Shield of Deflect/Regen

Any enchantment that directly stops you from accomplishing your goal (the last health point) should be rended. You can't really tell when a monk will use these enchantments because it varies from monk to monk and the current situation, but as a general rule of thumb try and clear one of the enchants you mentioned.

I agree with Sleeky- you should save your Rend Enchantments for when your target has got an important enchantment to remove- namely Healing Hands, Healing Seed, Shield of Deflection, Shield of Regeneration, or Shield of Judgement. Your Rend Enchantments will be fairly ineffective if you use it to remove something like Healing Breeze, and they immediately get enchanted with one of these enchantments. It's best to deal damage through other enchantments, and once they get one of these important ones on them, use your rend at that point.

You want to give the other team enough time to blow their enchantments on the target, so that you can wipe them all out at once and catch the Monks while their enchantments are cooling down. To this end, the right time to Rend is when the target's life total starts to stabilize - Rend still has a 3 second cast, so that's about the headstart you want to catch them just as they recover so you can make that final push.

Don't even bother trying to remove offensive enchantments - single enchantment removal sucks too hard and there are just too many targets to make it worth the effort. Put a good enchantment in that slot instead.

Peace,
-CxE

Ensign- Not many offensive enchantment I can run on a Ranger/Necro. That's a bit beside the point, however.

There has been some useful advice so far:
1)Save Rend for when your target's lifebar stops dropping.
2)Try to hit enchantments like:
-Healing Seed
-Healing Hands
-Shield of Deflection/Regeneration/Judgement
(Any advice on how to get an idea of which enchantment they got? If you're watching the target and can't see what their monks are putting on them?)
3) Don't waste a rend on offensive enchantments.
4) Make sure you're not going to kill yourself using Rend.

At this point I'd some sort of a rough guide or principles on doing a good job as a target caller. It became obvious that one of the first things you need is a cool head in the middle of a fight, and part of that is becoming more familiar with your team, the maps, and how fights play out.

This is what I've heard so far on the subject:
Priority:
1) Monks and secondary healers
2) Elementalists
3) Other casters
4) Warriors and Rangers.

Frankly that isn't deep enough, and doesn't address what you need to do when your targets just aren't dropping.

Other things need to be mentioned.

You need to call your targets every 15(?) seconds, even if it's the same target. The call wears off eventually, and if you want your monks and other off target characters to be able to contribute, they need to be able to hit T at all times to add to the focus.

If you target a monk first, and they're not going down at all, quickly switch targets to the second monk when the other team is still waiting for energy/cooldowns.

Learn to target multiple targets simultaneously. (I don't know how this is suppsoed to be done, but it sounds like it would be effective if you could arrange 2 strike teams.

Learn to coordinate your big (skill) attacks. That might mean synching up 3 Final Thrusts on teamspeak or staggering the punishing shots of all your rangers to land one after the other.
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Any additions to the guide would be welcome. Maybe we can get enough material for an article. Additional advice, like good ways to practice, are welcome as well.

You're not running any single target enchantment removal, either, so it isn't particularly relevant. The point is that the single target ones don't actually counter anything, so just run your own threat and break even, don't guarantee yourself the tackle for loss.


This needs a bit more clarification, I think.

The general pattern that you'll see is that you start pounding on a target, and the other team's defenses start to get focused upon that target - which means defensive buff stacking. If things are fairly evenly matched you'll see people's life totals jumping up and down as offense and defense collide on a single life bar.

The goal with Rend is to hit them during the up and down phase, when buffs are just finishing up being stacked and their monks go into heal mode instead of buff mode. That way, you knock someone down, they start to respond, then you strip off their defenses and finish them off.

You start your Rend at the first sign of this, because Rend has a three second cast time. This way, your opponent will have likely tossed another 2-3 enchantments onto the target while Rend was casting, and you'll promptly rip them right back off, dropping the target as quickly as possible.

You're not aiming for any enchantment in particular - you're just trying to punch a hole that the rest of your team can pound through for a couple seconds and finish someone off. Those enchantments are going to come right back again, after all, so all you're buying yourself is time.


The general rule is:

Monks, Mesmers, Elementalists, Everyone

To go through each of these in order:

Monks are the highest priority targets because as long as their team has functional Monks, it is incredibly difficult to actually kill anyone. Even if you can't kill them, you need to knock them out of commission, via daze, energy denial, interrupt storms, or whatever, so that your offense can do what it does best.

Mesmers are your next targets because they're the biggest threats to your own Monks. Both teams are trying to incapacitate Monks so that they can finish off targets, and Mesmers are excellent at that job. So if you're not targeting one of their own Monks, you want to be protecting your own, and chasing off Mesmers is how that's done. Rangers also fall into this category, though they are generally less dangerous to a Monk, and are a good deal more difficult to kill. Basically, if you aren't knocking out their defense protect your own.

Elementalists are next, because they're the glass jaws. Once you have your defensive advantage, you want to turn to wiping out their offense, and that means taking out their high damage, low defense characters. After Elementalists, you're just doing mop-up - pounding through unsupported Warriors, mopping up their Necros, and the like. The threat is gone, you're just finishing them off.


This order is when all else is equal, though. Situational targets are more important than any of this. If Warriors are pounding on your Monks, finding a way to cripple them should be a high priority - if you've caught a caster separated from the rest of the team, lay into them and try for the quick kill. Recognizing the oppertune targets and reacting to them quickly is what you're looking to accomplish as a good target caller, and that's something that's hard to teach with a forum post. =)

Peace,
-CxE

2)Try to hit enchantments like:
-Healing Seed
-Healing Hands
-Shield of Deflection/Regeneration/Judgement
(Any advice on how to get an idea of which enchantment they got? If you're watching the target and can't see what their monks are putting on them?)

These are fairly easy to notice due to their effects, at least if you're one of the people attacking that target. Healing Hands/Seed heals whenver they are hit, so if you see a blue number pop up next to the yellow number showing your damage, that means that they've got one of these enchantments. If you start missing with all of your attacks, they've got Shield of Deflection, and if everyone attacking them starts to fall down repeatedly, that's Shield of Judgement.

However, Charles comments on just watching for their health bar to stabilize works well too. All of these enchantments work to nullify the damage that they are taking- once their life stops dropping and starts to stay even or rise up, on a consistant basis, that means that they've got some nice defensive buffs on them, and it's time to rend. If their bar is fluxuating wildly, that generally just means that they're getting heal spells such as Orison and Word of Healing- once it stabilizes and moves slowly in one direction or the other, or stops dropping at all, then it's definately time to rend.