Weathering the Storm, anti FotM.

Currently natures renewal with a bit of spirit spam. weve had a thread about strat, so heres a stab at a team build. any comments welcome. The fotm is well known, but the counter isnt. I think itll be a lot fairer to make one that is well known, then they can have a fight 

First members, the monks:

Monk/Warrior x 2

Divine Favour: 10 +2
Healing: 11+2
Tactics: 10

Word of Healing [e]
Signet of Devotion
Sheilds up!
Deflect Arrows
Healing Touch
Draw Conditions
Remove Hex
Heal Other

Word is a good heal under qz which is often found under nr teams as well. It’s also a good heal to boot if its not up. Signet of devotion, also good for strain healing, it’s free.
Removed Hex, seems a bit odd if your expecting nr, but if its not up youll need it. Draw conditions- Unlinked, but condition movement on the healers as well as the prot streamlines the prots job a little.
Healing Touch for self healing, heal other for anti spike maybe? Im not really sure what to put in its place, so suggestions? Considering qz and nr.
Shields up!, my recently discovered new best friend, gives aoe prot against rangers, and my, aren’t ranger teams popular atm
Was balanced stance, is now deflect arrows, since i fear rangers more than kd/as atm.

Elementalist/Monk x 1

Energy Storage: 10+2
Protection: 11
Earth: 10+2

Ward against Melee
Protective Spirit
Guardian
Reversal of Fortune
Shielding Hands
Mend Ailment
Martyr
Remove Hex

El/mo, for the energy. I was convinced of the idea that prot is about delivering large amounts of prot when it mattered, which means muchos energy. Ward against melee, not counter able by nr, but is a dam good prot anyways, and stacked with guardian is almost untouchable ness. Rof, hands, spirit, guardian, remove, martyr and mend are just the standard protty things, but the spam ones that can still be used under nr

Warrior/Monk x 2

Axe:
Strength:

Eviscerate [e]
Executioners Strike
Disrupting Chop
Frenzy
Restore Life
Watch Yourself
Distracting Blow
Warriors Cunning

Lots of ranger teams, and nr. That means high possibility of stances and preps. This guy is for going through those. Wild blow kills whirling defense, thing about ranger stances is, they’re good, but they got long recharge. Disrupting chop and distracting blow give him something to do when charging his adrenaline. Either monks or spirit spammers he can go at. Restore life for the ‘hidden’ res, and watch yourself gives extra aoe bonus, meaning if the monks stay close they can have around 130al against rangers. And everyone else has more.
Frenzy executioners strike, and evis for spiking. Will it be enough? Comments please.

Ranger/Mesmer

Expertise: 10+4
Wilderness Survival: 9 +2
Beast Mastery: 9 +1
Marksmanship: 9+1

Echo [e]
Debilitating Shot
Distracting Shot
Frozen Soil
Tigers Fury
Choking Gas/Signet of Humility
Fertile Season
Quickening Zephyr

Energy denial as the primary role, everyone knows the power of echo’d debil!
Distracting, well its standard, maybe get some spirits or a res attempt. Frozen… against just one of those things that is useful. Tiger’s fury /choking gas for lots of interrupts, or signet of humility? But this aint a condition team, so I don’t know how useful it’ll be.
Fertile Season gives the monks breathing room if you run into a spike team, and qz is to lay down if you run into a team that has monks unprepared for it. Your monks are, so take the advantage.

Necromancer/Mesmer

Soul Reaping: 8+2
Domination: 8
Death: 8+2
Inspiration: 8
Curses: 9+2

Putrid Explosion
Diversion
Enfeeble
Power Leak
Rend Enchantments
Channeling
Power Block [e]
Death Nova

This guy is a little all over the place, but the numbers come out alright considering his role. Still an interrupt/shutdown base with diversion power block and power leak. Channeling abuse by the spirits, and soul reaping mean hes ready to spam putrid. rend against none nr teams, ready for the spike, and death nova to take advatage of deaths. stacked with putrid its almost worth it. Enfeeble spam on rangers and warriors. blood has too long a cooldown.

Warrior/Elementalist

Strength:8+1
Hammer: 12+4
Earth: 10

Devastating Hammer [e]
Heavy Blow
Bulls Strike
Stoning/Frenzy
Wild Blow
Sprint
Shock
Aftershock

I think ‘lack of originality’ springs to mind when reading this build, although I would say it has a place. Shock after shock at the beginning, instead of waiting for adrenaline. After that, use devastating etc to trigger. The weakness given by devastating can be used to trigger the knockdown from stoning, but its energy and likelihood of being removed may result in it being replaced by frenzy perhaps? Sprint, bulls strike, heavy blow, all standard. Wild blow again stops stances. All the more important here since we might run into balanced stance, which shafts us.

TACTIC: build up adrenaline on none specific targets. the spirits go up during this time, qz is the one im thinking of mainly. the w/e might start some commotion with a shockaftershock, try and get the prot unloaded on one guy before the spike. When the spike comes, wa/mo use warriors cunning to bypass the wards and dodges etc, then they unload, along with the w/e, the designated target caller. The n/me takes one off monk, the r/me the other, which should leave one left over on most standard teams. That guy *should* die. Putrid and nova spam spread the other team thin, which maybe dislodges them out of wards etc. rinse and repeat till dead.

Now just to use it.

Comments etc?

That looks pretty good.

A few comments, though. First, you should probably get rid of wild blow on the 2 axe warriors, since it goes much better with the hammer warrior, and its recharge time is more than enough to deal with 30s+ recharge stances.

Also, with 3 warriors, you should really consider running rigor mortis on a necro, since ward against melee is gonna wreak havoc on your warriors. Hell, you should really have a necro primary in general, someone needs to be mashing that putrid explosion key
Throw in some snares (either pindown on your rangers, or some water snares on your ele), and your warriors will be tearing it up there.

Then there's my personal favourite, channeling. I'd always run this on any /Me caster, since the likelyhood of meeting ranger spirit teams is huge, and this baby alone guarantees you infinite energy (as long as it stays up). Just park yourself next to a few spirits, and start casting away. If you get into a nice position, your energy bar will be getting filled up with every cast. I'd consider making the 2 monks into mo/me just for that.
Of course, there's the matter of natures renewal, but with the likelyhoodof them running quickening zephyr as well, your channeling will be on a ~7 second recharge, letting you just recast it after it's gone. This is the same reason why I'd bring smite hex over remove hex, since you don't really want to be sitting there casting remove hex for 2 seconds.

Well, ill mod it to fit your recommendations.
Rigor mortis' cooldown is 30 seconds, and this build assumes a nr every ten seconds (extreme circumtances). Thats a bit too hazy really, so cant do that. Nice point about the wild blow, well restrict that to just the w/e.
replacing it with on the wa/mo.......................?
only thing is warriors cunning. but thats got a long recharge also. hmmm. ill dwell on this and return.

purtid. dam. forgot about that. tbh, i really dont want to put a necro in there. A necro aint doing anything for this build. Its all hexes and enchants. or minions.
actually, how about a conversion of the ranger/mesmer interrupter to a nero/mesmer death putrid and spam hex shutdown (diversion etc). I wont change it till youve replied, im really not sure how effective thats going to be. Then soul reaping death domination. a bit in curses and we might as well get rigor mortis. go 10 10 10 and 4 i think, then rune like hell.

For the me, i want shields up and balanaced stance, theyre good counters. and the problem with channeling recast is way to much on a max 10 second lasting time. And i dont want to bank on a large amount of spirits for energy to be close enough. A possibility though, of just getting on with it, and having one mo/w and one mo/me. I REALLY want that tactics prot. Dont want smite, too long a recharge time. But, if i try the build and it needs it, ill put it on the el/mo.

as for snares i want to keep it simple if you insist. ranger/mesmer debil spammer gets pin down. nothing more. under qz it should be enough.

on a note, anyone who wants to run this with me, that would be cool. itd be good to test, and i always run into spirit spammers no probs :S pm me.

so what daya think of those changes?

You do realize that FoTM isn't based off of what players want...It's based off what build is the best counter to whatever was the previous FoTM..but whatever

Wha? by fotm, i mean the most prevalent and often found strat in tombs. Atm, this is nr spam. so i made a team build to counter it. this is it. and i know how it works, but of course, this fotm needs a counter, which im trying to do (a lot of people get lost when facing nr, lots of threads on the topic of what to do)

dont know what you mean but whatever....

Quote:

Ah, i forgot about qz. that reduces the recharge on warriors cunning to 30 seconds *slaps head*. thats 1/3 of the time to have it up, and its not counterable in any way. Thats the solution right there.
The necros going in, and since hes n/me, ill see if i can get channeling in as well, might as well abuse those spirits. as for shadow of fear and enfeeble, ill stick with enfeeble of enfeebling blood since its condition..... shadow will get removed.
*gos to mod op*

This isn't really a counter to spirit spam IMO. It's more like a build that can run under NR. Looks good, but I wouldn't call it a counter. The Mo/W's are good vs Rangers though.

Yeah, ironic that this "counter" is exactly the sort of thing the NR team will be running. Without a dedicated spirit spammer, you'll probably beat an NR team, but if you run up against any normal team, you'll get beat down.

^^ hmmm im not sure. Its still got hex removal, condition removal, and resonable damage and healing. IT has a few spirits of its own (qz mainly) that give it an edge over normal teams.

Vindexus: A 'counter' to spirit spam would be kill the spirits, but thats just stupid, so the best way to counter it is to make a build that can run under them. Which i think is this. If i wanted a vs spirit spam counter, id need to make some me/e with channeling and lots of pbaoe, but theyd be pretty dam useless against anyone not a spirit team, and if your running tombs, you need something to attack other teams. he wouldnt be it.