Curse

Krank · Sep 01, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

IxChel, you whor ed the living hell out of that thread, we got it, you made a thread about ER.

This is just a build, that people screamed NR must be nerfed, because they wanted thier idea to come out, now that the build is rampant, people want to nerf it faster than george bush on iraq, but, you screamed until the enchant-strip is gone, now bask in your profane wells and live with it.

entropy · Sep 01, 2005, 11:29 PM // 23:29

just get a necros with rend, lingering, and well of the profane easy.

Mumblyfish · Sep 01, 2005, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Rend Enchantments has a killer recharge time, Lingering Curse has a killer Energy cost, and Well of the Profane has a killer cast time. Good luck beating the Putrid Explosion chaps to that corpse, mate. Glyph of Sacrifice is certainly an option, but then you're burdening your Necromancer with an otherwise useless secondary profession, and rending Well of the Profane useless for a good two or three minutes.

Dametrus · Sep 02, 2005, 03:17 AM // 03:17

OMG....at all the cry babies in this game. Why the hell is everyone complaining about this. It is a good build....get over it. Everytime something good comes along that works for SOME people, the people that it didn't work for cry about it and want it nerfed. Take the invinci-monk build. Sure, it was kinda ridiculous to me that a char could solo UW, but I was capable of making the same build if I wanted to and do the same thing (with practice and time). But, you run into the people, who more than likely tried to make the build and do the runs and failed over and over and over and over again. Then instead of getting up and trying again....they cry about it and demanded that it be nerfed.

I am not saying that every build in tombs is okay. I personally thought that nerfing the use of spirits was a great idea, but the smite build....LET'S GET REAL HERE. There is nothing wrong with the build. Again I will agree .... something is wrong with Ether Renewal. But, I will say this, even if Ether Renewel did not exist the use of Smiters could still be effective. The guild I am in now, we have used the smite build a few times just to see what is was like mainly. We did fairly well against some groups but sucked against other groups (Shutdown mesmer groups). I was one of the smiters and did not even bring Ether Renewel as a test mainly. The damage output was still pretty good. I mean my E/Mo was sitting on 94 Energy with the moral boost. It takes a while for that to go all the way down. (If you play it smart)

In closing I would like to say....Please....QUIT THE CRYING!!!! It is just getting annoying. The game is made for there to be different builds ... we all know this. But, right now it can seem that there is an overkill of Smite groups. But, that is because people have seen how effective it is, but I have noticed that there is also a lot more mesmers in the groups now. There are plenty of team builds out there to shutdown smite teams. There is no since in whining and crying just because you got spanked by one. Give it time you will find some way of putting a stop to it.

Zeru · Sep 02, 2005, 03:25 AM // 03:25

If Ether Renewal was in line with other energy management spells the El/Mo form of smiting would be total crap. The only real viable smiting would be warrior buffs or the Mo/W aoe smite spiker.

You have to be a complete idiot to not see that Ether Renewal is totally out of line. Smiting outside of ER is fine. ER is just so absurdly good though and needs a nerf.

IxChel, don't base things off bad mesmers.

xChaoSx · Sep 02, 2005, 04:12 AM // 04:12

lol im not crying about counters. I destroy smiters..what im saying its a bloody BORE to play against the same builds over and over..its like playing a FPS and everyone just has pistols...it gets boring after an hour...the whole reason of this post is to fix this problem and have more types of builds being run. 90% of teams smiting is making alot of ppl leave..not because they cant counter it..its because its a bore and they dont want to play smite either

i dont mind smiting at all..as long as i can face 5-6 other builds in hoh...

FrogDevourer · Sep 05, 2005, 04:27 PM // 16:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dametrus

OMG....at all the cry babies in this game.
...
But, I will say this, even if Ether Renewel did not exist the use of Smiters could still be effective.
...
Give it time you will find some way of putting a stop to it.

I'm sure you can try again without the condescending tone.

No offense intended, but you're just spamming banalities without backup. E.R is known to provide more than 15 pips of energy in average, not to mention a near invulnerability + infinite energy for 12s. It's an energy engine that you can restart from scratch in less than 40s, and which only requires a couple of long enchantments and a spammable skill (Draw, Reversal, Flare or whatever). But most importantly it's resilient to most forms of hates. E.R was proven to be overpowered months ago, and it has been buffed instead of being nerfed.

Design a smiter with any other energy management elite, play it, compare both builds and the resulting long term damage output. Let me know how many time you've been able to hold the Hall without any smiter in the group, and how many times you've been steamrolled by a team with 3+ smiters. Then come back and tell us how balanced Ether Renewal is.

An average ether/smiter player can pump out a huge amount of damage without being half as clever as a monkey, whereas even a good mesmer needs practice, good timing, and no lag to tightly shut down more than one smiter. When the counter is less reliable than the problem, the best solution is to run the problem yourself, hence the rampant smiters.

For the records, I'm not whining or crying, I'm just stating what you and many others apparently didn't read properly. Many people have proven that E.R is overpowered using objective numbers. I've been playing a very successful smiter for weeks, and I'll keep smiting players to crisps until it is fixed.

IxChel · Sep 05, 2005, 04:40 PM // 16:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

An average ether/smiter player can pump out a huge amount of damage without being half as clever as a monkey, whereas even a good mesmer needs practice, good timing, and no lag to tightly shut down more than one smiter.

This highlights another for "nerfing" ER; another Elite, the Aura of Lich (Necro Death) has a cast time of 3s. It's a powerful elite, and thus to compensate it has a long cast time. In a serious PvP battle, 3s is almost forever -- if you've got even a 1/2 competent ranger or mesmer, they can interrupt or shut you down. IMHO, ER would still be overpowered even with a 3s cast time -- but at least all of those here claiming you can shut it down with a Ranger or Memser would be more justified in their remarks.

KuTeBaka · Sep 05, 2005, 05:20 PM // 17:20

I went against a team who was fast casting wells and smiting off of pets, the second someone died a well of profane or suffering would come up, it really killed our smite team.
BTW: I remember playing with servants of fortuna

IxChel · Sep 05, 2005, 05:42 PM // 17:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by KuTeBaka

I went against a team who was fast casting wells and smiting off of pets, the second someone died a well of profane or suffering would come up, it really killed our smite team.

You can spend 2 slots on glyph-of-sacrifice + well-of-profine and it's quite effective; the recharge is very long though. However, you can just
leave the well -- and with a BiP necromancer and a monk spamming
30-second duration vigorous spirit, you can re-start that ER energy
engine far faster than a sacrificed well-of-profane can be recast. If your
opponent got off that many wells... then you're not exploding them or
using them for necrotic traversal fast enough.

cookiehoarder · Sep 05, 2005, 07:39 PM // 19:39

Smite is not over powered. As ensign said, diversion works great. Rend their enchants and they are useless, diversion draw/reversal and their damage is reduced. OR you can just healing seed the person taking smite damage and watch them instantly jump back to 100%.

Ensign · Sep 05, 2005, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Every skill in the game is balanced because Leech Signet exists. If you can counter it, it isn't unbalanced, right? Why did they even touch Nature's Renewal? You just needed like two guys with Leech Signet and you could shut him down completely! Same thing with Ether Renewal. You can just Rend it right off, right? Problem solved. Who cares if it gives 5 energy or 5000 energy, you can Rend it so its ok.

People who think that skills need to be balanced against each other are just a bunch of whiners. Obviously if you can counter a skill or build in any way, shape, or form, that build is perfectly acceptable and there's no reason to nerf it.

Hell, I'm sure there are a ton of 'anti-whiner' whiners on this here forum here with their super-secret anti-smite builds that just beat smiting teams senseless. Of course those builds are never shared, and certainly never played, so we're all left to suffer as a bunch of uncreative fools who can't beat a smiting team.

Peace,
-CxE

Zeru · Sep 05, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Every skill in the game is balanced because Leech Signet exists. If you can counter it, it isn't unbalanced, right? Why did they even touch Nature's Renewal? You just needed like two guys with Leech Signet and you could shut him down completely! Same thing with Ether Renewal. You can just Rend it right off, right? Problem solved. Who cares if it gives 5 energy or 5000 energy, you can Rend it so its ok.

People who think that skills need to be balanced against each other are just a bunch of whiners. Obviously if you can counter a skill or build in any way, shape, or form, that build is perfectly acceptable and there's no reason to nerf it.

Hell, I'm sure there are a ton of 'anti-whiner' whiners on this here forum here with their super-secret anti-smite builds that just beat smiting teams senseless. Of course those builds are never shared, and certainly never played, so we're all left to suffer as a bunch of uncreative fools who can't beat a smiting team.

Peace,
-CxE

Unfortunately your sarcasm will probably be lost on the people it's intending to reach.

My only gripe with smite (besides ether renewal) is that it's so easy to use compared to the counters. Air spike was hard as hell to use correctly and thus most teams got owned by a prot monk who wouldn't have mattered vs a real spike team anyway. Smite is sooo easy to perform compared to the counters (mesmers are not easy) that it's out of line. With a good team I could run an anti-smite build (diversion, signet humility/mantra inscriptions, and wards). With a pug, I'd be better off running a generic smite build and hoping. Of course, once ether renewal is nerfed, it's going to not be very potent anymore.

FrogDevourer · Sep 05, 2005, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Every skill in the game is balanced because Leech Signet exists. If you can counter it, it isn't unbalanced, right?

Just to make things clear to those who still believe Ether Renewal is balanced: Ensign forgot to use the <sarcasm> tag in his post. I guess that's understandable after 34 zillion posts about one skill.

Ensign · Sep 06, 2005, 12:42 AM // 00:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

Unfortunately your sarcasm will probably be lost on the people it's intending to reach.

I'm not really intending to reach the people who make those arguments. The counterpoints have already been made elsewhere in this thread and if they don't want to learn from those yet another post saying the same thing isn't going to help.

A bit of hyperbole to show how ridiculous their arguments are, though, is more fun, and can prove useful to those who just lurk these discussions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

My only gripe with smite (besides ether renewal) is that it's so easy to use compared to the counters.

What, no gripes about Zealot's Fire?

I don't think that ease of use is fundamentally a problem - I'm fine with there being great strategies that are easy to play - but having an overpowered strategy that's easy to play certainly makes the problem more obvious. When there's an imbalance that only a select few teams can exploit (Zephyr) then it's pretty invisible - when it's something like smiting that's in your face, everyone notices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

With a good team I could run an anti-smite build (diversion, signet humility/mantra inscriptions, and wards).

You know, I've seen these builds run, and I'll be blunt - I don't care about anti-smite builds at all if you're not running smiters of your own. You know that Rends and Diversion are good against smiting. I do too.

The bad teams see your counters and roll over and die. The good teams shut down your counters and smash you with a superior strategy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

With a pug, I'd be better off running a generic smite build and hoping.

Actually with a true pug I'd rather run the "I Will Avenge You!" build. You don't have to expect much coordination from your team, and you just beat every other pug you'll face. Sure you get beaten by good, prepared guild teams, but were you expecting to do better with a pug and a normal build?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

once ether renewal is nerfed, it's going to not be very potent anymore.

Depends on how hard they nerf Ether Renewal. That skill just kicks out insane amounts of energy if you build for it, and needs to be nerfed hard to compensate.

Zealot's Fire needs to get hit too, though. That skill just does way too much for too small of a cost. The uptime/cooldown doesn't help either. If not this build, you'll have shouters, or whatever the next form is. Tacking 48 AoE damage (*exactly* the same damage as Flare) onto *every* skill for 60 seconds is just retarded. It'd see play as an elite.

Peace,
-CxE

Phades · Sep 06, 2005, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Depends on how hard they nerf Ether Renewal. That skill just kicks out insane amounts of energy if you build for it, and needs to be nerfed hard to compensate.

Energy without something equally useful to use it on ends up being just incompotent and unceccary, unless of course you are trying to offset the current forms of e-denail. I do believe you were the one who did the numbers on flare spam versus conjure+wand spam. Using other slower cycling spells does not improve the situation due to the downtime following the period of efficiency. Ether renewal tries to help the elementalist compete with sustained damage, but the class just is not designed to do that very well.

Although in use, i appriciate the healing it provides just as much as the energy at times.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Zealot's Fire needs to get hit too, though. That skill just does way too much for too small of a cost. The uptime/cooldown doesn't help either. If not this build, you'll have shouters, or whatever the next form is. Tacking 48 AoE damage (*exactly* the same damage as Flare) onto *every* skill for 60 seconds is just retarded. It'd see play as an elite.

Asumming flare was aoe damage and considering how this skill is commonly triggered by skills requiring .25s to activate, just to place it on the same level damage wise, the damage would almost have to be cut in half or flare would have to become a .25 cast time spell as well. I am rather surprised at how people can point at one thing as being overinflated and not recognize the same situation comming from a non-specialized damage dealing class. This also ignores the ability to react. Once flare is cast, the effect will happen, regardless of what changes while its being cast or durring the flight of the projectile. By contrast, things like zealots fire and balthazar's aura do not share this same disadvantage, allowing for the mellee player to turn it into a smart weapon. Even balthazar's aura could stand to be more chaos storm like in damage all things considered.

Personally id suggest changing the teeth aspect before you fully evaluate the engine supporting it. Hell, id even try preventing zealots triggering on a target with balthazars as well before making ether renewal into a divine spirit clone. The result would be justified through enchantment effect stacking issues, but that is also another argument for a rebalancing of all enchantments really. Elementalists already have 2 distinct versions of divine spirit working at different levels of efficiency. All a change like that would cause, would make the skill only useful in the smite setup instead of being somewhat useful in other formats and overly efficient in one.

Zebes · Sep 06, 2005, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Well we had made a new build that actually had no smite, had lots of success and now everyone else is running it in tombs already. Flattery is nice, but lack of imagination is rather annoying.

FrogDevourer · Sep 06, 2005, 07:42 AM // 07:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zebes

Well we had made a new build that actually had no smite, had lots of success and now everyone else is running it in tombs already. Flattery is nice, but lack of imagination is rather annoying.

So ? Does that make Ether Renewal a balanced energy skill? If the "new build" is the pet avenger, then you'd better rethink about it since it's not even half as robust as a good group with 3 smiters.

Zebes · Sep 06, 2005, 09:28 AM // 09:28

Quote:

So ? Does that make Ether Renewal a balanced energy skill? If the "new build" is the pet avenger, then you'd better rethink about it since it's not even half as robust as a good group with 3 smiters.

Oh, Ether Renewal is still mightily powerful, easily exploitable. I don't like all the smite either, but why did you say three smiters? I haven't seen that work as well as a more balanced two smite team.

My point was people should try out things for themselves, get creative.

scatman · Sep 06, 2005, 11:41 AM // 11:41

One thing I am getting very tired of seeing is people bitch and moan about the new and latest build that just won HoH or is dominating HoH.

Ive had my own groups in HoH make it to hall a few times, and the last build we were using was a Spirit Spam group. Why even nerf spirit spammers? You know easy it is to kill a spirit, on top of that, how easy it is to interrupt a ranger casting a spirit? Did it work? Yes. Did we destroy some guild teams? Yes.
Did we get worked by some guilds? YES. Did we get worked by some pubs? YES.

There are counters to every single build out there. THE GAME IS BALANCED, PEOPLE ARENT BALANCED. Every single build will EVENTUALLY get nerfed because some pub teams just cry and bitch about every build that rolls them. However, a guild that knows what they are doing will find a way to counter builds.

On another note, a ranger can very easily shut down a smite team. You just have to know what to watch for and what to interrupt. What I found that worked best, for me personally, was concussion shot, quick shot, distracting, and choking gas.

I really hate when they nerf stuff because it ruins more then just THAT build in PvP.
Some may say "just think of another build" Why? Once another successful build comes out you will just bitch and moan about that one. I say "just think of way around the build that already exists"