Focus Shenanigans - How To Break an Energy Denial Lock

This is the Guru site man, they forget more about Guild Wars than most of us have learned.

Being a mesmer, I feel like I have to fight for them (being an underdog too ) If this swapping ability is allowed, what is the point of a mesmer? Support damage... you could be an elementalist? What I am getting at is the mesmer builds are there to defunct members of the other team, and each person on the other team has this EASILY equippable counter to everything mesmer (there really is no point to being one is there?). Maybe I'm just not well versed enough at being one (it's my new character).

In my opinion if your able to switch to this exploitable counter, give one to the mesmers. I.e. I see a monk I've been keeping defunct with spells (and they seem to be having no effect on him whatsoever, he is still casting like a mad monk). Then let my character equip a Render Modifiers Useless wand (or make it a skill). This would even the playing field a bit, I like my new character and I feel as if his very anti-caster core is being attacked. Please someone tell me if my ranting is completely misplaced (particularly another more experienced mesmer's comments would be helpful)

Lansing Kai Don

How bout "Crack Shield" or "Crack Focus" effect skills. Make them reduce armor or energy for a set period of time on the items. Or they could just change foci so they have to be charged when equipped.

i havent but i dont know wat ur talking about really
i have a necro/monk and im level 9
that might be y i havent dealt with this yet

Yeh, or not allow bonuses when into battle as FrogDevourer kind of suggested. That way you just wouldn't be swapping around to increase the areas you need at that particular moment. There is a big difference between preparing for a fight and hot swapping like a mad man to keep your energy/health/damage up. The only problem is now my character will have to equip ANOTHER skill just to counter a weapon exploit?


Lansing Kai Don

Simply cast Mind Wrack, if no damage is taken, cast a drain. Either they will take the damage from Mind Wrack innitially, and you can cast Wrack again as soon as you are able, or if they equip their focus you can drain them to hit them with Mind Wrack, and cast Wrack again. If they wish to not be the subject of repeatable Wracks, they will have to keep their focus equipped, have someone else deal with you, or predict which spell you are casting at the time to render your drains useless, which still hurts them a lot, but your energy won't last forever.

Anyway, bringing a skill to deal with the focus switching is a very situational thing.

Matt

You know, instead of all this debating about weapon slots, switching times, and coming up with complicated fixes, they could just change the way Foci/+hp items work by affecting your max hp/energy only so you don't actually gain points when you switch to them.

Say you're at 0/30 Energy without the Focus, and when you switch to it your Energy becomes 0/40. I'm sure you get what I mean.

In all fairness, the answer was at least 20 posts behind...


Just encouraging people to thoroughly read what's already written.

If you say there's no point to using any strategy that has a counter, you're going to be very unhappy with this game. Personally, I'm quite happy to know there are counters to virtually everything, if you've prepared for it.

And? When/if they get around to nerfing this trick, it would still be much better for the game to have Max energy/mp affected rather than having crap like weapon switching delays/penalties. That just slows down gameplay and muddles up the game for everyone else who switches weapons on a regular basis.

Personally, I think it's good the way it is now. It adds another trick that good casters have to learn and keep track of. I'll enjoy it before it gets popular.

I may have missed it (kinda skimming) but it was my understanding that mind wrack only does damage when your mana goes TO zero from something greater than zero. In this case, the caster would be pretty well insulated from both mana drains and mind wrack damage until their mana ticked positive. Focus swapping seems to me a very useful and insightful means of dealing with energy denial. Bravo

To me, four weapon options sounds like too much. I would advocate two sets, essentially making a 'main' set and a 'backup' set (locked in combat, obviously). This still increases your tactical options, but without allowing a counter to too many situations, and also preserves realism (carrying four sets of weapons is a bit much, really. Those things weigh a ton).

I would also say that foci should only change maximum energy, not current. As is stands, a focus gives energy that can't actually be used, it just lets you go negative in your own energy. To me, that doesn't make sense. Also, it allows equipment to counter (and therefore be more powerful than) skills, which seems to be totally against the intended design of the game.

The issue of swapping out foci for more useful items once their energy bonus has been used up is countered by locking in the two set options before battle. The energy focus would presumably be part of the main weapon set, and the backup set would have something else 'more useful'.

Sure, this puts the emphasis a bit more on strategy and forward planning, but that's surely not a bad thing. The strategy involved in choosing between two options is a much greater asset than the twitch skills needed to switch weapons on the fly.